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Tech 5: AI Takes Center Stage at CES, NVIDIA Unveils Cosmos Platform

Global markets were turbulent this week on speculation about US President-elect Donald Trump’s trade policies.

Initial gains on Monday (January 6), driven by rumors of less aggressive tariffs, were followed by a mixed performance as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicked off in Las Vegas, Nevada, and investors awaited key economic data.

1. AI takes center stage at CES

Unsurprisingly, CES underscored the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) across the tech landscape, with AI chips for PCs, new electric vehicles and the imminent influence of robotics on the workforce taking center stage.

AI was prominent, featured in everything from appliances to pets. Following substantial investment, companies are under pressure to demonstrate the value and justify the cost of AI integration in their products.

As mentioned, tech stocks rose on Monday as the event began, with chipmakers like NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO), Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) (NASDAQ:AMD) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE:TSM) leading the surge.

NVIDIA, whose CEO Jensen Huang gave the keynote address at CES, was a key focus.

Following the company’s weaker-than-expected revenue outlook in November, investment interest in AI has been dispersing to include companies such as Broadcom and Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL), whose share prices increased in the fourth quarter of 2024 while NVIDIA’s remained relatively flat.

Broadcom, NVIDIA and Marvell Technologies performance, Q4 2024.

Broadcom, NVIDIA and Marvell Technologies performance, Q4 2024.

Chart via Google Finance.

After a product reveal, NVIDIA saw its share price fall 8.5 percent to US$140.01 on Tuesday (January 7), its largest intraday drop since October 15. Chief among the AI bellwether’s long list of new products are the new GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs, built on the Blackwell architecture. The flagship RTX 5090 for demanding workloads will be available this month for US$1,999, while the RTX 5070, a more budget-friendly version, will arrive in February for US$549.

NVIDIA also unveiled Project Digits, a desktop PC designed to empower AI researchers, data scientists and students with the ability to run very large AI models on their laptops. Developed in collaboration with Taiwan’s MediaTek (TPE:2454), the model is equipped with a Grace Blackwell Superchip and runs a version of the Linux operating system. Project Digits essentially puts an AI-powered personal supercomputer within reach for US$3,000 starting in May.

NVIDIA performance, January 6 to 10, 2025.

NVIDIA performance, January 6 to 10, 2025.

Chart via Google Finance.

NVIDIA’s move highlights a broader trend at CES this year: the rise of AI PCs. AMD, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) all introduced chips designed to bring AI to everyday computing. AMD’s high-powered Ryzen CPUs, which will power Dell’s (NYSE:DELL) corporate PCs, reportedly outperform Macs and offer a longer battery life.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm is broadening its business beyond mobile phone chips with the Snapdragon X Platform, an affordable chip for laptops and PCs that will run Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Copilot+ software. The company will also soon release a small desktop computer built with the chip. PC makers including Dell — which announced a rebranding of its PC line — will reportedly offer laptops based on the new product in early 2025.

AMD, Qualcomm and Dell saw share price increases of between 2 and 3.5 percent between Monday and Tuesday. However, Intel’s new processors featuring built-in AI acceleration and a dedicated neural processing unit in select models weren’t enough to impress investors, and its share price was little changed over the same period.

2. Autonomous vehicles have their moment

While AI PCs generated excitement at CES, another trend emerged: the rise of generative physical AI.

During his keynote, Huang emphasized how the forthcoming shift will revolutionize factory and warehouse automation, a rising subsector he described as ‘a multi-trillion dollar opportunity.’

This sentiment is seemingly shared by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who wrote in a weekend blog post of a near future where “AI agents join the workforce and materially change the output of companies.’

To accelerate this transition, Huang unveiled NVIDIA Cosmos, an open-source platform designed to simulate real-world environments and accelerate the training of physical AI models like robots and cars. Within Cosmos, AI agents can be trained using Nemotron, a new family of large language models optimized for agentic AI. Based on Meta’s (NASDAQ:META) Llama models, Nemotron leverages NVIDIA’s CUDA and AI acceleration technologies.

“Cosmos will dramatically accelerate the time to train intelligent robots and advanced self-driving cars,” Rev Lebaredian, vice president of omniverse and simulation technology at NVIDIA, said at a press conference on Monday.

Later, news broke of a partnership between NVIDIA and Toyota (NYSE:TM) that will see the carmaker use NVIDIA’s autonomous driving chips and software to advance its self-driving cars. NVIDIA also announced a partnership with Uber (NYSE:UBER) to use its drive logs for AI model training.

“After so many years, with Waymo and Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) success, it’s very clear (autonomous vehicles) have finally arrived,” said Huang on Monday. Later, during an interview with Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley, he disclosed that NVIDIA’s technology for autonomous driving is projected to generate US$5 billion in annual sales.

3. Crypto market struggles to find footing

The Bitcoin price rose above US$102,000 early on Monday, following a weekend in which the cryptocurrency regained its 50 day simple moving average, an indicator often described as crucial for a continued bull market.

Adding to the momentum was strong speculation that MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) was preparing to increase its holdings further after CEO Michael Saylor hinted at a potential acquisition over the weekend. The company ultimately purchased 1,070 Bitcoins for a total price of US$101 million.

Adding to bullish sentiment was a research report from JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM); it indicates that Bitcoin miners’ revenue increased for the second consecutive month in December. The positivity extended to altcoins as Solana’s DEX trading volume exceeded that of Ethereum and Base; the price action prompted analysts to set a US$15 target for XRP.

However, as conflicting US jobs and inflation data rolled in, traders’ hopes of an interest rate cut by March diminished. Yields for 10 year treasuries touched 4.73 percent, resulting in a broad selloff affecting cryptocurrencies and other risk-on assets like tech stocks. The top cryptocurrencies dropped between 4 and 9 percent in early trading on Tuesday.

Bitcoin performance, January 6 to 10, 2025.

Bitcoin performance, January 6 to 10, 2025.

Chart via CoinGecko.

US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw near-record outflows of US$582 million on Wednesday (January 8), as the downward trajectory continued. Ether ETFs also saw substantial outflows totaling US$159.3 million on Wednesday, their largest on record since July. By Thursday (January 9), US$655 million in Bitcoin futures contracts had been liquidated.

Adding to the uncertainty, the US Department of Justice has reportedly been cleared to sell US$6.5 billion worth of Bitcoin seized from Silk Road, which could put downward pressure on Bitcoin’s price.

Altcoins saw greater losses, with XRP being the sole exception.

Ripple’s native cryptocurrency saw periods of recovery on Wednesday after it was reported that CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty met with Trump for dinner. Analysts at Cointelegraph project XRP could surge 40 percent if prices can break out of the current “descending triangle” pattern.

Friday’s (January 10) US jobs data release coincided with a 2.24 percent drop in Bitcoin’s price to below US$92,000 before the markets opened, followed by a rise to US$95,000 midday. Bitcoin’s latest downtrend has led market analysts to believe that the coin’s price may retest areas around US$90,000 as traders contend with uncertainty regarding tariffs and their effects on the US economy, stoking concerns about the possibility of renewed inflation.

According to Santiment analyst Brianq, Bitcoin’s performance can also be partly attributed to decreased purchasing activity by wallets holding between 100 and 1,000 Bitcoin, which drove Bitcoin’s most recent bull cycle.

Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.

This post appeared first on investingnews.com
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Trump tasks blue state Republicans with ‘homework’ as GOP plots massive conservative policy overhaul

President-elect Donald Trump is giving Republicans his blessing to negotiate on a key tax that could prove critical to the GOP’s negotiations for a massive conservative policy overhaul next year.

Trump met with several different groups of House Republicans at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, including blue state GOP lawmakers who make up the House SALT Caucus – a group opposed to the current $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions that primarily affect urban and suburban residents in areas with high income and property taxes, such as New York, New Jersey, and California.

‘I think it was productive and successful,’ Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said of the meeting. ‘The president supports our efforts to increase the SALT deduction. He understands that mayors and governors in blue states are crushing taxpayers and wants to provide relief from the federal level.’

But Trump also signaled he was aware of the opposition from others in the House GOP conference, particularly rural district Republicans, who have viewed SALT deductions as tax breaks for the wealthy. Before the cap was imposed in 2017, there was no limit to how much state income and local property taxes people could deduct from their income when filing their federal returns.

‘He gave us a little homework to work on, a number that could provide our middle class constituents with relief from the high taxes imposed by our governor and mayor, and at the same time, you know, something that can build consensus and get to [a 218-vote majority],’ Malliotakis said.

 ‘I think we pretty much know that it’s not going to be a complete lifting of the SALT cap. There’s not an appetite within Congress or even among American taxpayers to lower taxes for the ultra-wealthy.

‘Our efforts are really targeted to middle-class families, and that’s what we’re focused on in trying to achieve the right balance.’

The current SALT deduction cap has been opposed by New York and California lawmakers for much of its existence, since being levied in Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).

Trump suggested he would change course during his second administration as early as September last year, when he posted on Truth Social that he would ‘get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more.’

The discussions are part of Republicans’ wider talks about passing a massive fiscal and conservative policy overhaul via a process known as ‘reconciliation.’

By lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage to a simple majority instead of two-thirds, the process allows the party in control of both houses of Congress and the White House to pass certain legislation provided it deals with budgetary and other fiscal matters.

Some pro-SALT deduction Republicans, like Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., had signaled they could withhold support from the final bill if the cap was not increased.

‘The only red line I have is that if there is a tax bill that does not lift the cap on SALT, I would not support that,’ Lawler told Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.

Lawler also said Trump agreed that SALT deduction caps needed to be raised.

House Republicans have virtually no room for error with a razor-thin majority from Trump’s inauguration until likely sometime in April.

Meanwhile, Trump also told New York Republicans that he would help them fight their state’s controversial congestion pricing rule that levies an added cost to drive in parts of Manhattan.

‘He understands how unfair this is and how it would impact the city’s economy and the people we represent and so we’re currently working with him on legal options to reverse the rubber stamp of the Biden administration,’ Malliotakis said. ‘If there’s a legal option, if there’s a legal option for him to halt congestion pricing, he will.’

‘You have, you know, cops, police, firefighters, nurses, the restaurant workers that have to go in at odd hours, and they drive because they don’t feel that the transit system is clean or safe.’

Congestion pricing took effect in New York City earlier this month.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump transition team for comment on this weekend’s meeting.

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Croatia’s President Milanović wins another term after defeating ruling party candidate in runoff

Croatia’s opposition-backed President Zoran Milanović, a critic of the European Union and NATO, overwhelmingly won reelection for another five-year term on Sunday, defeating a candidate from the ruling conservative party in a runoff vote, official results showed.

Milanović won more than 74% of the vote compared to his challenger Dragan Primorac, who received nearly 26%, according to the results released by Croatia’s state election authorities after more than 99% of the ballots were counted.

The result presents a major boost for Milanović, who is a critic of Western military support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Milanović is also a fierce opponent of Croatia’s conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and his government.

In a speech after the results were released, Milanović said his victory was a sign of approval and trust from the voters but also presented a message “about the state of affairs in the country for those who need to hear it.”

“I am asking them (the government) to hear it,” said Milanovic. “That is what the citizens wanted to say. This is not just support for me.”

Milanović, 58, is the most popular politician in Croatia, and is sometimes compared to US President-elect Donald Trump for his combative style of communication with political opponents.

His triumph sets the stage for a continued political confrontation with PM Plenković, with whom he sparred during his first term.

Milanović also won comfortably in the first round of voting on Dec. 29, leaving Primorac, a forensic scientist who had unsuccessfully run for president previously, and six other candidates far behind.

The runoff between the top two contenders was necessary because Milanović fell short of securing 50% of the vote by just 5,000 votes, while Primorac trailed far behind with 19%.

The election was held as Croatia, which has a population of 3.8 million, struggles with biting inflation, corruption scandals and a labor shortage.

Upon voting on Sunday, Milanović again criticized the EU as “in many ways non-democratic” and run by unelected officials. The EU position that “if you don’t think the same as I do, then you’re the enemy” amounts to “mental violence,” Milanović said.

“That’s not the modern Europe I want to live and work in,” he said. “I will work on changing it, as much as I can as the president of a small nation.”

Milanović served as prime minister in the past with a mixed record.

He regularly accuses Plenković and his conservative HDZ of systemic corruption, while Plenković has labeled Milanović “pro-Russian” and a threat to Croatia’s international standing.

Political analyst Višeslav Raos said the increasingly outspoken Milanović has no motive to “try to please someone or try to control himself.”

“If there was no cooperation with the prime minister for the first five years (of his presidency), why would there be now?” he said.

Though the presidency is largely ceremonial in Croatia, an elected president holds political authority and acts as the supreme military commander.

Milanović denied he is pro-Russian but last year, he blocked the dispatch of five Croatian officers to NATO’s mission in Germany called Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine. He also pledged he would never approve sending Croatian soldiers as part of any NATO mission to Ukraine. Plenković and his government say there is no such proposal.

Despite limited powers, many believe the presidential position is key for the political balance of power in a country mainly governed by the Croatian Democratic Union, or HDZ, since gaining independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

Primorac, 59, entered politics in the early 2000s, when he was science and education minister in the HDZ-led government. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in 2009, and after that mainly focused on his academic career including lecturing at universities in the United States, China and in Croatia.

This post appeared first on cnn.com
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Sullivan claims Biden admin leaves Russia, China and Iran ‘weaker,’ America ‘safer’ before Trump handoff

National security adviser Jake Sullivan claimed in an interview Sunday that Russia, China and Iran are ‘weaker’ and the United States is ‘safer’ after four years under President Biden’s leadership. 

‘Our alliances are stronger than where we found them four years ago,’ Sullivan said on CNN’s State of the Union, referring to President-elect Trump’s first term. ‘They’re stronger than they’ve been in decades. NATO was more powerful, purposeful and bigger. Our alliances in the Asia Pacific are at all-time highs. And our adversaries and competitors are weaker across the board. Russia’s weaker, Iran’s weaker, China’s weaker, and all the while we kept America out of wars.’

‘I think that the American people are safer, and the country is better off than we were four years ago, and we’re handing off that to the next team, as well as having the engines of American power humming,’ Sullivan said. ‘Our economy, our technology, our defense industrial base, our supply chains. So the United States is in a stronger, more secure position, and our competitors and adversaries are weaker and under pressure.’ 

Biden’s presidency was mired by the botched 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel, as the Pentagon monitors the rising threat of Islamic extremism worldwide. 

Much of Trump’s promise to voters while campaigning for a second term in 2024 centered on justice for the families of the 13 U.S. service members killed at Abbey Gate and promising peace through strength on the world stage. 

Sullivan defended Biden’s handling of the withdrawal on Sunday. 

‘If we were still in Afghanistan today, Americans would be fighting and dying, Russia would have more leverage over us, we would be less able to respond to the major strategic challenges we face,’ Sullivan said. 

‘We have not seen, although the investigation continues, any connection between Afghanistan and the attacker in New Orleans,’ he added, referring to the New Year’s Day truck-ramming attack on Bourbon Street. ‘Now the FBI will continue to look for foreign connections, maybe we’ll find one, but what we’ve seen is proof of what President Biden said, is that the terrorist threat has gotten more diffuse and more metastasized elsewhere, including homegrown extremists here in the United States – not just under President Biden, but under President Trump in his first term, and that is part of why we had to move our focus from a hot war in Afghanistan to a larger counterterrorism effort across the world.’ 

During the final weeks of his presidency, Biden has been rushing billions of dollars more in U.S. aid for Ukraine before Trump takes office.

Meanwhile, the Republican president-elect has claimed the war in Ukraine would never have started under his leadership and vowed to broker a deal to stop the fighting between Moscow and Kyiv. 

At a press conference from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, last week, Trump warned Hamas terrorists that ‘all hell will break out’ in the Middle East if the remaining hostages aren’t released before he takes office on Jan. 20. 

On the status of the negotiations, Sullivan said, ‘We are very, very close, and yet being very close still means we’re far because until you actually get across the finish line, we’re not there.’ 

Sullivan stressed how President Biden’s top Middle East adviser, Brett McGuirk, had been in Doja for a week ‘hammering out with the mediators the final details of a text to be presented to both sides.’ 

‘And we are still determined to use every day we have in office to get this done,’ Sullivan said. 

Related Topics

  • Joe Biden
  • Foreign Policy
  • Donald Trump
  • Iran
  • China
  • Russia
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Biden awards Pope Francis with highest civilian honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, over the phone

President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to Pope Francis on Saturday.

The medal was scheduled to be presented to the pope in person in Rome during what was to be Biden’s final overseas trip of his presidency, but Biden canceled his travel plans so he could monitor the wildfires in California.

Instead, Biden bestowed the award on the pope during a phone call in which they also discussed efforts to promote peace and alleviate suffering around the world.

‘Pope Francis is unlike any who came before,’ a White House announcement reads. ‘Above all, he is the People’s Pope – a light of faith, hope, and love that shines brightly across the world.’

It was the first time during his four years in office that Biden awarded the medal ‘with distinction,’ it said.

Biden, 82, leaves office on Jan. 20. The lifelong Catholic is also a recipient of the award with distinction, recognized when he was vice president by then-President Barack Obama in a surprise ceremony eight years ago. That was the only time in Obama’s two terms when he awarded that version of the medal, according to the Associated Press.

Biden ripped for Medal of Freedom ceremony:

Both Biden and Francis have been weakened by global events, said Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic and professor at Villanova University who follows the papacy.

‘That is really hard to underestimate how tragic this moment is for both men in different ways,’ he said. ‘Because what could go wrong did go wrong in these few years.’

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. 

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Netanyahu and Biden discuss progress in Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal talks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken with US President Joe Biden about the progress in negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal.

“The prime minister discussed with the American president the progress in the negotiations to release our hostages and updated him on the mandate he gave to the negotiating team to Doha in order to advance the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement Sunday.

It added, “the prime minister wanted to thank the American President (Joe) Biden and the incoming President Donald Trump for their cooperation for the holy mission.”

The White House said Biden and Netanyahu discussed the negotiations in Doha, based on the proposal the US president laid out in May. Biden once again called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the return of the hostages and increased humanitarian aid to the enclave.

Biden also spoke to Netanyahu about the “fundamentally changed regional circumstances” following the ceasefire in Lebanon in November last year, the collapse of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime the following month, and Iran’s weakened position in the region, the White House said.

The call between the two leaders comes as Netanyahu summoned two major critics of Biden’s ceasefire deal proposal to meetings to discuss a potential deal.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have previously rejected a peace proposal laid out by Biden in May of last year, which would pair a release of hostages with a “full and complete ceasefire.” Both ministers rejected the idea of an immediate ceasefire and have called for fighting to continue until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are returned.

The far-right ministers have previously threatened to resign and topple Netanyahu’s governing coalition if he accepted Biden’s proposal.

The meetings with the Israeli cabinet members on Sunday come as Israeli negotiators have expressed “cautious optimism” at the talks ongoing in Doha this weekend, which involve a high-level Israeli delegation including Mossad chief David Barnea.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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Italy’s justice minister asks court to release an Iranian held on a US warrant

Italy’s justice minister has asked an appeals court to revoke the arrest of an Iranian citizen wanted by the US over a drone attack in Jordan that killed three Americans a year ago.

Mohammad Abedini was scheduled to appear at a Milan court on Wednesday in connection with his bid for house arrest pending the extradition process to the U.S.

Iranian state TV said Sunday Abedini will return to Iran “within hours.” The report said the release and return of Abedini came after Iran’s foreign ministry pursued the case, as well as “talks” between Iran’s intelligence ministry and the Italian intelligence service.

Abedini was arrested on a US warrant on December 16, three days before Italian journalist Cecilia Sala was detained while on a reporting trip to Iran. Sala, who was believed held as a bargaining chip for Abedini’s release, returned home last week, giving rise to speculation about his fate.

An official note released by the Justice Ministry on Sunday said that under Italy-US extradition treaties, “only crimes that are punishable according to the laws of both sides can lead to extradition, a condition which, based on the state of documents, can’t be considered as existing.”

The ministry said that the potential charge against Abedini — criminal association for violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a US federal law — “did not correspond to any conduct recognized by Italian law as a crime.”

The US Justice Department has accused Abedini of supplying the drone technology to Iran that was used in a January 2024 attack on a U.S. outpost in Jordan that killed three American troops.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni described a “diplomatic triangulation” with Iran and the United States as being key to securing Sala’s release, confirming for the first time that Washington’s interests in the case entered into the negotiations.

Sala’s release came after Meloni made a surprise trip to Florida to meet US President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

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Chuck E. Cheese makes a comeback, with trampolines and a subscription program

Four years after exiting bankruptcy, Chuck E. Cheese is making a comeback, thanks to a dramatic makeover to introduce its games and pizza to a new generation.

In June 2020, just as some states began lifting their pandemic lockdowns, Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company CEC Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It emerged from bankruptcy months later with new leadership and freed from about $705 million in debt.

Even when Covid subsided, the company faced another existential threat: figuring out how to entertain children — and their paying parents — in the age of iPads and smartphones. The company has spent more than $300 million in recent years tackling that challenge — and the investment has started to pay off.

CEC Entertainment, which also includes Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings and Peter Piper Pizza, has seen eight straight months of same-store sales growth and is no longer in debt, according to CEO Dave McKillips. The company isn’t publicly traded, but it discloses its financial results to its bond investors.

CEC Entertainment’s annual revenue grew from $912 million in 2019 to roughly $1.2 billion in 2023, according to Reuters. And that’s with fewer open Chuck E. Cheese locations. The chain has 470 U.S. locations currently, down from 537 in 2019.

Sustaining the growth won’t be easy. Like all restaurants, the chain has to win over consumers who are eating out less often as costs rise. Chuck E. Cheese also has to draw the attention of children and parents in a fragmented media market.

Since Atari founder Nolan Bushnell opened its first location in 1977 in San Jose, Chuck E. Cheese has grown to become a staple of many childhoods, known for its pizza, birthday parties and animatronic mouse mascot and band.

After exiting bankruptcy, Chuck E. Cheese and its stores underwent a makeover, giving today’s locations a very different look. Gone are the animatronics, SkyTube tunnels and physical tickets of yore. Instead, trampolines, a mobile app and floor-to-ceiling JumboTrons have replaced them.

Those changes came from McKillips, a former Six Flags executive. He joined the company in January 2020, just months before lockdowns would temporarily shutter all of its locations. By April 2021, the company raised $650 million in bonds, which it’s been spending on its restaurants.

“The company was capital-starved for many, many years. It had not been remodeled. It had not been touched,” he said.

Apollo Global Management took Chuck E. Cheese private in 2014. Five years later, CEC Entertainment tried to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. But the deal was scrapped without explanation.

The new cash prompted a frank look at the Chuck E. Cheese model — including its iconic animatronic band, featuring Charles Entertainment Cheese and his friends.

“We pulled out the animatronics. It was a hot debate for many legacy bands, but kids were consuming entertainment in such a different way, you know, growing up with screens and ever-changing bite-sized entertainment,” McKillips said.

The chain also redid its menu, upgrading to scratch-made pizzas. Kidz Bop became an official music partner. Other kid-friendly brands, like Paw Patrol, Marvel and Nickelodeon, became partners for its games.

And then came the trampolines.

“We found one glaring opportunity for us … active play,” McKillips said. He added that growth in the family entertainment category is largely coming from activity-based businesses, like trampoline parks and rock-climbing walls.

The company first tested the trampolines in Brooklyn and then in Miami, St. Louis and Orlando. As of December, 450 Chuck E. Cheese locations now have kid-sized trampolines. And unlike the SkyTubes or ball pits of the past, customers have to pay extra to use trampolines. (The ball pits disappeared from Chuck E. Cheese locations in 2011, while SkyTubes lasted roughly another decade.)

After the company spent $230 million to remodel Chuck E. Cheese locations, McKillips now says that process is finished.

“We needed to fix the product. The product is fixed,” he said.

Reintroducing customers to the brand — especially adults who only know the Chuck E. Cheese of their own childhoods — has been another focus.

“You come in around three years old, you leave around eight or nine and you don’t come back for 15 years. We had to go and speak to a whole new generation of kids, and we were off-air during Covid. We had to build all that,” McKillips said.

For example, Chuck E. Cheese’s birthday business, one of the company’s best marketing tools, struggled in the wake of the pandemic. Today, it’s back at pre-pandemic levels.

And as Chuck E. Cheese started seeing the pullback in consumer spending that hit many restaurants last year, from McDonald’s to Outback Steakhouse, the chain had to come up with a way to appeal to the value-oriented customer.

Over the summer, Chuck E. Cheese launched a two-month tiered subscription program that offered unlimited visits and discounts on food, drinks and games. The membership encouraged families to visit more often than the typical two or three annual visits. The subscription starts at $7.99 a month, with additional tiers at $11.99 and $29.99 that promise steeper discounts and more games played.

“In 2023, we sold 79,000 passes. This year, we sold close to 400,000 passes during the same time period,” McKillips said, referring to 2024. “This shows that the value consumer will seek and will spend if they’re getting great return on their spend.”

In the fall, the company followed up on the success of the passes with a 12-month membership and has already sold more than 100,000 of them.

McKillips’ biggest dreams for the chain and its mascots lie outside of the four walls of its restaurants.

“There’s another cute mouse down in Orlando that does this pretty well, so I see us in the same way, but we’re just getting started right now,” McKillips said.

In addition to 30 licensing deals for everything from frozen pizzas to apparel, Chuck E. Cheese is also exploring different entertainment partnerships that would make its mouse mascot a starring character, according to McKillips.

And that’s not all. The company has looked into the possibility of a game show. It has a prolific YouTube channel, with videos focused on its characters, not its pizza or games.

Plus, Chuck E. Cheese himself has six albums available on streaming platforms, and his band plays live, choreographed concerts.

“My dream would be to have a feature movie,” McKillips said.

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McDonald’s to close three CosMc’s locations — and open two more

McDonald’s will shutter three locations of its drinks-focused spinoff brand, CosMc’s.

To test the concept, the fast-food giant opened its first CosMc’s location more than a year ago in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, followed by six more in Texas. McDonald’s has converted larger namesake restaurants into CosMc’s, in addition to building smaller prototype locations.

The smaller stores work better for the test, the company said Thursday. As a result, McDonald’s will close three of its larger format CosMc’s locations and open two more small Texas restaurants. The company didn’t disclose the locations for either the openings or closures, although CosMc’s website says a store is coming soon to Allen, Texas.

McDonald’s also shared other early learnings from the pilot on Thursday. Savory hash browns are the top-selling food — at any time of day — followed by McPops, the chain’s mini filled doughnuts. Best-selling drinks include the Island Pick Me Up Punch, Churro Cold Brew Frappe and the Sour Energy Burst.

The CosMc’s test will continue for the “foreseeable future,” according to the company.

McDonald’s created CosMc’s as its entry point into the growing “afternoon beverage pick-me-up occasion.”

While CosMc’s menu features some McDonald’s classics, it also offers a host of new items playing off other beverage and snacking trends, like its iced turmeric spiced lattes, tropical spiceade and pretzel bites. Starbucks, Dutch Bros. and bubble tea chain Kung Fu Tea have found success with younger consumers by offering customizable cold drinks.

The name for the new brand comes from CosMc, a McDonaldland mascot that appeared in advertisements in the late 1980s and early 1990s. CosMc is an alien from outer space who craves McDonald’s food.

While it’s unclear just how much McDonald’s plans to grow CosMc’s, it’s still a miniscule part of the burger giant’s overall U.S. footprint. The company has more than 13,500 U.S. restaurants. Still, McDonald’s is hoping to learn more about its CosMc’s customers; last year, it rolled out a loyalty program specific to CosMc’s.

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Politics

Influential leader of Canada’s Ontario province seeks Trump, Musk meeting: US ‘needs us like we need them’

After President-elect Trump mused about using ‘economic force’ to acquire Canada as the 51st state during his Mar-a-Lago news conference on Tuesday, outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded on social media that ‘there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.’

However, as Trudeau announced on Monday his plan to resign as prime minister once the Liberal Party that he leads chooses his successor, the biggest pushback to Trump’s pitch to annex Canada – and his planned 25% tariffs on exports from the country – has come from the premier of Canada’s most populous province, Ontario.

Doug Ford, a former businessman and conservative like Trump who has served as Ontario’s 26th premier since 2018, told Fox News Digital in an interview that the president-elect’s targeting Canada is both ‘crazy’ and ‘ridiculous.’

He said the bilateral focus should be on ‘strengthening’ what the Canadian government calls a nearly trillion-dollar two-way trade relationship to ‘make the U.S. and Canada the richest and most prosperous jurisdiction in the world.’

At a Toronto news conference on Monday following Trudeau’s resignation announcement, Ford chided Trump with a ‘counteroffer’ to his Canada-as-a-51st state idea. 

‘How about if we buy Alaska and throw in Minnesota?’ the premier said at Queen’s Park, Ontario’s legislature.

Ford jokingly told Fox News Digital that he heard from Canadians after making those remarks that he should have chosen ‘somewhere warmer, like Florida or California.’

‘California never votes for him anyway,’ he added.

At his Monday news conference, Ontario’s premier said that ‘under my watch,’ annexing Canada ‘will never, ever happen.’  

Ford is also taking Trump’s tariff threat seriously.

Last month, his Progressive Conservative government launched a multimillion-dollar U.S. ad campaign on television and streaming apps touting Ontario as an ‘ally’ to generate ‘more workers, more trade, more prosperity, more security.’

‘You can rely on Ontario for energy to power your growing economy, and for the critical minerals crucial to new technologies,’ says the 60-second ad.

Ford said the 25% tariff against Canada, which Trump plans to implement on his first day in office on Jan. 20, would hurt millions of American and Canadian workers.

‘Nine million Americans produce products for Ontario alone every single day,’ he said. ‘The problem is China shipping goods into Mexico and Mexico slapping a made-in-Mexico sticker.’

Ontario is ready to take retaliatory measures ‘that will really send a message to the U.S.’ in response to the imposition of U.S. tariffs, said Ford, who was involved in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement during the first Trump administration, but would now like Canada to have separate deals with the U.S. and Mexico.

‘It’s unfortunate because retaliation is not good for either country,’ he offered, noting that Ontario is the top exporter to 17 states and the second largest to 11 others. 

‘The last thing I want to do is hurt those people,’ said Ford. ‘I want to create more jobs in the U.S., more jobs in Canada. And we can do that by making sure that we toughen up and put tariffs on places like China.’

By way of example, he said that ‘someone in Texas who purchased a GM pickup truck made in Oshawa, [Ontario] might have paid between $50,000 and $60,000,’ and with a tariff, ‘would be paying 70 some-odd thousand.’

‘It just doesn’t make sense whatsoever,’ Ford said. 

He would like to have a face-to-face meeting with Trump and said he has reached out to U.S. senators and governors to make that happen. A sit-down with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk – whom Trump appointed to co-lead, with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, the proposed ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ – is also on Ford’s wish-list.

Ford said Trump ‘doesn’t realize’ that Ontario is the U.S.’s third-largest trading partner, amounting to about US$344 billion in 2023, ‘split equally down the center.’

Ontario’s premier said he wants to ship more electricity and critical minerals to the U.S., which ‘needs us like we need them.’ 

In 2012, the premier and his late brother, Rob, who was mayor of Toronto at the time, met Trump, along with his daughter, Ivanka, when they were in the city to open the former Trump International Hotel and Tower, now unaffiliated with The Trump Organization and known as The St. Regis Toronto.

Ford, who ran a Toronto-based family business, Deco Labels & Flexible Packaging, before entering municipal politics as a city councilor in 2010, considers Trump ‘a shrewd operator’ and ‘a smart businessperson.’

The incoming president ‘knows about Ontario,’ the premier said.

‘Not one senator, not one governor, not one congressperson or businessperson, has said that Canada is a problem,’ said Ford, who opened a Deco branch in Chicago in 1999.

He said Trump has not set his sights on such other U.S. allies as the United Kingdom and France, but ‘wants to target’ the U.S.’s ‘closest friend,’ Canada. 

‘I’m not too sure if it’s personal against Trudeau, but Trudeau is on his way out, so hopefully we’ll have a better conversation,’ said Ontario’s premier, who added that he would consider taking a run at federal politics in the future.

On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social that ‘the United States can no longer suffer the massive Trade Deficits and Subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat.’ 

‘Justin Trudeau knows this, and resigned,’ said the next, and 47th, U.S. president.

But Trudeau is still the prime minister, and Ford and the premiers of the other nine provinces and three territories will meet with him next Wednesday in Ottawa to address the Trump tariff issue.

Despite his departure as prime minister sometime over the next two months when the next Liberal leader is expected to be chosen, Trudeau should not think ‘he’s off the hook’ and Canadian premiers ‘will hold his feet to the fire’ in ensuring that Canada is ready to respond to the Trump administration’s imminent and punitive trade measure, said Ford.

He chairs the Council of the Federation – a gathering of Canada’s premiers, which has kept Canada-U.S. relations top of mind and has made avoiding U.S. tariffs ‘a priority,’ according to a statement issued last month.

‘Canada and the U.S. form one of the largest integrated markets in the world, with more than C$3.5 billion [about US$2.4 billion] worth of goods and services crossing the border each day. The U.S. sells more goods and services to Canada than it sells to China, Japan and Germany combined.’

To help assuage Trump’s concerns over border security, Ford’s government launched on Tuesday ‘Operation Deterrence,’ to crack down on illegal crossings, and drugs and guns – 90% of which are entering Ontario from the U.S., the premier told Fox News Digital.

On drugs, he said his government is also collaborating with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to identify the source of fentanyl ingredients – and whether they originated in ‘China or Mexico or the U.S.’

Last month, the Trudeau government announced its own border-security plan.

Related Topics

  • Trump Transition
  • Canada
  • Justin Trudeau
  • Trade
  • National Security
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