📬 Musk’s pay fight
Good morning, Quartz readers!
Here’s what you need to know
Elon Musk is revisiting the battle over his $56 billion pay package. The Tesla CEO is urging Delaware’s highest court to reverse the previous ruling.
Nvidia’s CEO claims ‘useful’ quantum computers are decades from reality. Shares of quantum computing companies like IonQ and Rigetti fell sharply following Nvidia’s Jensen Huang’s prediction.
Delta eyes AI to improve the airport experience. The century-old airline is revamping its tech with AI concierges, YouTube collaborations, and plans for 10-minute airport journeys.
Zuck is fully embracing president-elect Donald Trump. The Meta CEO made a bold move to align with Trump by adjusting Facebook’s content moderation policies.
Budget airline seats are getting more luxurious. Breeze Airways CEO David Neeleman says the industry’s budget carriers are undergoing a major transformation.
Chick-fil-a does the robot
Chick-fil-A is deploying robots at its Bay Center Foods facility to speed up lemon juice production, improve efficiency, and minimize waste.
The California plant processes up to 35 truckloads of lemons daily, using driverless forklifts and robotic arms to handle unloading, sorting, squeezing, and packaging.
Automation at the plant, which opened during the pandemic five years ago, has resulted in fewer finger injuries, near total lemon usage (up from 40% when done manually), and saved around 10,000 labor hours per day.
What’s the excess lemon juice being used for? Quartz’s Francisco Velasquez breaks it down.
Delta dumps Lyft for Uber
Delta Air Lines has dropped Lyft in favor of Uber. The partnership will allow SkyMiles members to earn miles through both Uber Eats and ride-hailing services.
Uber will now be Delta’s exclusive rideshare partner in the U.S., offering new ways for passengers to rack up rewards. While SkyMiles can be redeemed for things like flights or baggage fee waivers, it requires flyers to spend a lot to earn enough rewards – like 60,000 miles for a one-way ticket from Atlanta to Los Angeles.
How do customers earn rewards? Quartz’s Melvin Backman has those insights.
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Surprising Discoveries
Dell is taking a page out of Apple’s playbook. The company is rebranding its laptops and replacing traditional names like Latitude and XPS for those commonly used by Apple.
Samsung’s subscription play. The company is introducing a subscription service for its Galaxy smartphones next month, offering users the option to rent devices for cheaper rates.
A homecoming of sorts. An Italian journalist was released after three weeks in Iran, following a diplomatic standoff linked to an Iranian engineer arrested in Italy and wanted by the U.S.
L.A. County Fires destroy over 1,000 buildings. The raging fires have left a trail of destruction, killed two individuals, and made this one of the most catastrophic fire seasons in recent memory.
A 2,600-year old shipwreck off Spain’s coast has been unearthed.
The ancient vessel will now be examined and preserved for historical study.
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Our best wishes on a safe start to the day. Send any news, unearthed shipwrecks, or lemon-squeezing robots to [email protected]. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Francisco Velasquez and Audrey McNamara.
