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Foot Locker soars after massive $2.4 billion takeover bid from Dick’s Sporting Goods

The struggling sneaker chain (finally) got a lifeline — but the deal could face hurdles.

5/15/25 8:43AM

Foot Locker  shares sprinted over 80% in early trading after Dick’s Sporting Goods announced a massive $2.4 billion takeover offer. Dick’s said it would pay $24 per share in cash for the sneaker retailer (nearly a 90% premium to recent trading levels) even as Foot Locker has shuttered hundreds of stores amid cooling demand. Dick’s shares fell about 11% on the news.

The footwear industry has been hit hard by tariff uncertainty and shifting shopping habits, especially for mall-based retailers like Foot Locker. The Y2K-era brand has been shuttering stores and struggling to revive its image, even after a splashy rebrand aimed at Gen Z shoppers. Foot Locker missed sales estimates in the latest quarter as Nike, its biggest brand partner, pulled back on wholesale deals.

Together, Dick’s and Foot Locker would operate more than 3,200 stores and bring in over $10 billion in annual revenue, including more than $5 billion from footwear alone. But given Dick’s dominance in the category, analysts warn the move could attract regulatory scrutiny.

Streamers continued retreating from original shows in 2025

The death of “peak TV” has not been exaggerated, per a new report from Luminate.

Max Knoblauch4h

Retail display of Takis snack food in various spicy flavors in Target store, Queens, New York

America’s love for spicy food and mouth-tingling sauces has surged, but are we approaching “peak heat”?

Takis doesn’t think so, as it searches for a “Chief Intensity Officer.”

Claire Yubin Oh7h

Tom Jones

reduced to tiers

Netflix made $1.5 billion from advertising last year, about 3% of its total revenue

The figure rose more than 2.5x last year, per the company.

Tom Jones1/20/26

OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

OpenAI Anthropic ARR race — Sherwood News

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

Washington, DC, looks set to get America’s second Sphere

Revenue for the Las Vegas version of the big orb has soared, but the Sphere is still a money pit.

Claire Yubin Oh1/19/26