Subscription movie theater ticket sales company MoviePass is taking a cue from fantasy sports with a daily fantasy platform themed around Hollywood. Called Mogul, it has launched in beta with backing from blockchain company Mysten Labs and Hong Kong-based Web3 software company Animoca Brands. Mogul lets users track the performance of fantasy films and compete to climb leaderboards. Players are assigned a budget and given a digital wallet in which to store “studio credits” to fund projects and bet on box office performance. MoviePass says it has more than 400,000 sign-ups for Mogul’s early-access waitlist. Read more

Apple reported revenue increased 5 percent to $95 billion in Q1, beating Wall Street analysts’ expectations. Net income was up by nearly 5 percent, to $24.8 billion, from the January-to-March period in 2024, and iPhone sales increased by 2 percent, helped by demand for the more affordably priced 16e model. Services were particularly strong, with $26.6 billion in revenue for the quarter, up from $23.9 billion year-over-year, also beating analysts’ expectations. But it isn’t exactly business as usual. CEO Tim Cook said tariffs will increase costs by $900 million in the June quarter. Read more

Amazon’s growth contracted in Q1, with revenue up 9 percent compared to 13 percent a year ago. That was good enough to outperform Wall Street forecasts, with overall sales increasing to $155.7 billion, compared with $143.3 billion in Q1 2024. In addition, Amazon Web Services sales grew by nearly 17 percent to $29.3 billion. Yet Amazon share price fell by up to 4.3 percent after hours, a reflection of a Q2 forecast the company says could be affected by newly imposed tariffs. “Obviously, none of us know exactly where tariffs will settle, or when,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told analysts on the Q1 earnings call. Read more

Artificial intelligence is making big inroads in shopping, with Visa, Mastercard and PayPal all announcing AI-enhanced purchasing. Unveiled at the Visa Global Product Drop event, Visa Intelligent Commerce enables AI “to find, shop and buy for consumers based on their pre-selected preferences,” Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell said, noting “each consumer sets the limits, and Visa helps manage the rest.” That news came a day after Mastercard introduced Mastercard Agent Pay and PayPal emphasized agentic efforts at its Dev Days event last week. Agentic commerce is the use of AI to transact on behalf of a customer or business. Read more

Meta Platforms revenue for Q1 was $42.3 billion, up 16 percent year-over-year and besting Wall Street estimates of $41.3 billion. Profits were up 35 percent to $16.6 billion, hurtling past analyst estimates of $13.6 billion. Advertising, up nearly 15 percent for the quarter compared to last year, comfortably passed $41 billion, driving the revenue performance. Meta began Q2 by launching its anticipated standalone Meta AI app. Built with natively multimodal Llama 4 models, the company is positioning the Meta AI app as “a personal AI designed around voice conversations,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Read more