The nonalcoholic beer that’s brought new meaning to brewskis with the boys is about to pop up on even more drink menus. Athletic Brewing closed a new round of funding that values the company—known for its cool branding and less than 0.5% ABV—at $800 million, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The new valuation, which doubled from two years ago, comes as the company received $50 million in funding led by private equity giant General Atlantic. With the money raised, Athletic plans to expand at retailers and increase production.

Its surfing-oriented branding appears to have carried over to its business, because Athletic is now riding a wave:

• It’s the top nonalcoholic brand by sales in US grocery stores, and a top 20 US brewery by barrels sold.
• The company generated $90 million in revenue in 2023 and expects to do more in 2024.
• It produced over 258,000 barrels of beer in 2023, up from a few hundred barrels when it launched in 2018.
• Athletic has 19% of the domestic market share for nonalcoholic beer and is driving 32% of total nonalcoholic beer category growth, according to NielsenIQ data.

Changing attitudes: Nonalcoholic beer is the fastest-growing segment of the beer market, thanks to the more than 40% of Americans who say they’re trying to drink less alcohol. Athletic said that 80% of their customers still drink alcohol but turn to their brews when they need a break from the nectar of the gods.

Zoom out: It’s not the only alt-drink brand that’s capitalizing on a consumer shift that’s helped by the prevalence of weight-loss drugs. Water-in-a-can company Liquid Death was valued at $1.4 billion in March, while “healthy soda” brand Olipop is reportedly circling an $800 million valuation of its own.—CC

Working the local burger joint’s fryer is tough—so much so that it’s getting harder and harder for fast-food restaurants to staff their kitchens. In fact, ~3m fast-food jobs will go unfilled in the US alone.

Thankfully, “Miso Robotics has created some of the only restaurant-robot experiences that actually work.” That’s what Fast Company said in one of Miso’s back-to-back Most Innovative list inclusions.

It’s why brands like White Castle turned to Miso’s AI-powered robot, Flippy, to operate their fryers and boost their profits up to 4x.

Now Miso’s ready to scale. They’re even collaborating with NVIDIA.

To fuel their growth, Miso’s opened a funding round for investors to tap into the $1t fast-food industry’s automation. Check out Miso’s investment and bonus shares offer today.

The FTC made two rare moves. In a scathing report, the Federal Trade Commission accused pharmacy benefit managers—the companies that act as go-betweens for drugmakers and consumers—of jacking up drug prices. The criticism was unusual from the FTC, which has typically used a hands-off approach with the companies and could suggest a formal investigation or lawsuit is imminent. Elsewhere, the agency banned the controversial anonymous messaging app NGL from hosting underage users, the first time it’s ordered a digital platform to stop serving minors amid a crackdown on social media’s exploitation of teens.

Millions of Texans are without power after Hurricane Beryl. It could take weeks for power to be restored to the more than 2 million people who were still without electricity as of yesterday afternoon, CNN reported. The National Weather Service said the outages could create dangerous conditions as the state (and much of the rest of the country) deals with extreme heat. In Houston, where Beryl struck as a Category 1 hurricane on Monday, the heat index passed 100 degrees this week. Texas utility CenterPoint Energy said it expects about 1 million homes to regain power by Wednesday night.

Meta is removing some posts that target “Zionists.” The company that owns Facebook and Instagram announced yesterday that it’s updating its hate speech policy to take down posts using the term “Zionist” when it’s used generally to describe Jewish people or Israelis. “We will remove content attacking ‘Zionists’ when it is not explicitly about the political movement, but instead uses antisemitic stereotypes, or threatens other types of harm through intimidation, or violence directed against Jews or Israelis under the guise of attacking Zionists,” the company wrote in a blog post. The move comes after a formal review, which included consulting with 145 academics, civil rights experts, and other advisors. Meta admitted that enforcing the new policy will be difficult.

Just like students when a teacher hints at what’s on an upcoming exam, economy watchers latched onto every soundbite of Jay Powell’s biannual testimony to Capitol Hill lawmakers yesterday.

Though the Fed chair neglected to directly address interest rate plans:

• He noted the cooling job market and recent progress in lowering inflation, adding that price growth would need to continue slowing for the Fed to issue a cut.
• Powell explained the Fed’s conundrum: Keeping rates elevated for too long could hamper the economy, but cutting too quickly could reignite inflation.

His words reinforced analysts’ expectations that rates will be slashed sometime this year, with investors estimating a 73% chance of a rate cut by September, according to CME Group.

Politics vs. Powell

Any Fed moves in the coming months carry more political weight than usual due to the presidential election in November. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee that heard Powell’s testimony, urged him to consider how high interest rates push up housing costs and jeopardize the job market. Meanwhile, his Republican colleague Senator Kevin Cramer said a rate cut before the election would “be a bad perception.”

Rates aside…Powell told Senators that the Fed is making progress on revising controversial rules proposed by regulators that would require big banks to keep a larger financial cushion, devised as part of an international agreement to prevent crises.—SK

De-stress in style. Are meditation, mindfulness, and breathwork just not cutting it, especially when you’re already busy and feeling stressed? The Apollo wearable puts you back in the driver’s seat. Developed by neuroscientists and physicians, it’s designed to alleviate stress and improve sleep quality. Users also report significant improvements in focus and heart rate variability. Check it out.

Etsy CEO Josh Silverman thinks he’s found a way to help you sift through thousands of the same “wine o’clock” t-shirts on his site: by going back to its human roots. The site released new standards for its sellers yesterday that it hopes will increase transparency about how items are produced.

Etsy’s products will now be required to fall into one of four categories: “made by” (like a handmade necklace), “designed by” (e.g., a digital illustration), “handpicked by” (items such as vintage clothes), or “sourced by” (like craft supplies).

• Sellers will still be able to tag items as “vintage.”
• Art generated with the help of AI will still be allowed and would likely fall under the “designed by” category.

Big picture: The change is accompanied by a big “human-made” marketing campaign in an attempt to win back some customers and appease sellers who have complained about drop-shippers and low-quality products. Etsy, which has seen sales shrink since its mask-filled boom in 2020, is trying to compete with companies like Temu, Shein, and Amazon, which are battling to make the cheapest and fastest-shipped products.—MM

The only thing more vacant than the look in the eyes of Jets fans every September is the US office building. Vacancy rates hit a record 20.1% in Q2, the highest since Moody’s started tracking nearly 50 years ago. It’s particularly empty in San Francisco, where the vacancy rate reached 34.5% this quarter, up from 33.9% in Q1 and just 5% pre-pandemic, per real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. That’s despite the AI boom bringing lots of new business to the tech-centric city, including a 500,000-square-foot OpenAI office—San Fran’s biggest lease in six years. Moody’s projects vacancy rates will continue to climb through 2026 as companies figure out ways to get employees back into the office that don’t involve donuts.