The investors claim they were told that “Selena Gomez, one of the most famous women on earth, with a billion-dollar brand and a platform unmatched in social media, would be actively building the company as its head of marketing”.

Gomez’s attorney Matthew Rosengart says their allegations are “vague, generalised and contradictory” and that Gomez never agreed to, and did not, manage the company, or make the kind of commitments they are suggesting.

The emphatic pushback from Gomez may reflect a concern for her reputation but it also leaves her mother in the hot-seat, facing the fraud allegations alongside the company itself and a third co-founder.

Crisis PR commentator, Lauren Beeching, founder of Honest London says Gomez is far from the first celebrity to try working with a close family member. At times it can come off like in the Jenner-Kardashian household or with the tennis-playing Williams sisters.

But there are plenty of examples – from the Beckhams’ to Britney Spears – where family brands and business don’t mix well.

Working with close relatives, whether that’s a sibling or a parent, or someone else is almost always a higher risk approach, says Beeching.

“It can make the boundaries between the personal relationship with the business and the celebrity’s reputation much harder to separate,” she says.

The natural level of trust means that you might not apply the same rules as you would in a normal commercial relationhsip, so better guardrails are needed, she says.

“If you’re going into business [as a] family, I’d put more structure around it, not less, for sure.

“Define everybody’s responsibilities, bring in independent oversight, and decide what happens if something goes wrong before something goes wrong.”

“A family relationship shouldn’t be a company’s governance structure.”

At the end of the day Gomez may not need to worry too much over this case, says Beeching

“This will generate headlines because Selena Gomez is enormously famous, but I don’t think it’s the type of story her core audience is particularly interested in.

“There’s an important difference between generating negative headlines and causing lasting reputational damage. “

Still, for celebrities considering trading on their personal brand, she does have words of advice.

“Before lending your name to a company, don’t ask what your reputation could do for the business. Ask what that business can eventually do for your reputation as well.”

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AUSTIN, Texas — Shares of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings surged Thursday, climbing as much as 17.69% to $222.64, after the company delivered stronger-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results and raised its full-year outlook, capping off what its chief executive called the best quarter in the company’s history.

The stock jumped $33.46 in Thursday’s trading session, extending gains that began Wednesday evening after CrowdStrike released its earnings report. The rally came as part of a broader wave of enthusiasm for software and cybersecurity stocks, with peers Salesforce and Okta also posting double-digit gains following their own quarterly reports released the same evening.

A quarter that beat across the board

CrowdStrike reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $1.47 billion, up roughly 26% from $1.17 billion a year earlier and above Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $1.44 billion. Adjusted earnings per share came in at 31 cents, topping analyst expectations of 29 cents. Free cash flow reached $377.4 million, ahead of the $353 million analysts had projected.

Net new annual recurring revenue, a closely watched measure of new business growth for subscription-based software companies, surged 51% to a record $333 million, prompting the company to raise its full-year net new ARR growth outlook by 630 basis points, according to 24/7 Wall St.

Chief Executive George Kurtz described the results in stark terms in the company’s earnings release. “The best quarter in CrowdStrike’s history,” Kurtz said, crediting the company’s positioning in the fast-growing market for AI-related cybersecurity threats.

Raised guidance for the year ahead

Building on the strong quarterly print, CrowdStrike lifted its full-year revenue guidance to a range of $5.99 billion to $6.01 billion, up from a prior midpoint of roughly $5.94 billion, while raising its adjusted earnings per share outlook to between $1.25 and $1.26. For the current quarter, the company guided toward revenue of $1.52 billion to $1.53 billion, also ahead of the $1.51 billion analysts had expected.

AI threats driving demand

Much of the enthusiasm around CrowdStrike’s results centered on the company’s positioning at the intersection of two major technology trends: the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence across enterprises, and the corresponding rise in security risks that adoption creates. As companies increasingly deploy AI agents and automated systems across their operations, demand has grown for tools capable of protecting those systems from emerging threats — a dynamic CrowdStrike executives say is playing directly into the company’s favor.

The company also highlighted strong growth in its Falcon Flex offering, a platform that allows customers to deploy and swap between different security tools as needed. According to the earnings call, Falcon Flex adoption more than doubled from the prior year, with the company adding 935 new Flex accounts during the quarter — accounts that comprised its top 10 deals by value. Finance chief Burt Podbere told analysts on the call that the Flex model was helping the company win larger, longer-term contracts by allowing customers to purchase multiple products under a single platform.

A stock already on a hot streak

Thursday’s jump adds to what had already been an exceptional year for CrowdStrike shares. Heading into the earnings report, the stock had gained more than 63% year-to-date in 2026, far outpacing the S&P 500’s roughly 12% advance over the same period, according to Yahoo Finance. Shares had briefly surpassed a record $225 earlier in August before pulling back to around $186 ahead of Wednesday’s report, according to the Motley Fool.

That run-up had raised questions among some investors about whether the stock’s valuation, trading at more than 150 times forward earnings heading into the report, had already priced in much of the company’s anticipated growth. Ahead of the release, analysts at firms including Scotiabank, KeyBanc, Robert W. Baird, Mizuho Securities and J.P. Morgan had raised their price targets on the stock, reflecting growing confidence in the company’s AI-driven cybersecurity momentum, even as some cautioned the shares looked more like a hold than an aggressive buy given the premium valuation.

Part of a broader earnings wave

CrowdStrike’s report landed alongside a cluster of other closely watched technology earnings releases Wednesday evening, most notably Nvidia’s own blockbuster results, which dominated investor attention during the after-hours session. Salesforce and identity-security firm Okta also posted strong beats that evening, with Okta shares spiking as much as 18% and Salesforce climbing more than 21% in premarket trading Thursday, according to FXStreet and Yahoo Finance.

The broader earnings season has been unusually strong across the board. According to data from FactSet cited by Yahoo Finance, second-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are on pace to grow 50% year over year, the fastest growth rate since 2021, with Bank of America strategists pointing to artificial intelligence as the primary engine behind that broad-based strength.

With CrowdStrike’s stock now trading well above levels seen just a day earlier, attention turns to whether the company can sustain the pace of growth reflected in Thursday’s raised guidance through the remainder of its fiscal year. Investors will be watching upcoming quarters for confirmation that the surge in AI-related security demand, and the accompanying growth in products like Falcon Flex, represents a durable long-term trend rather than a temporary spike tied to the broader wave of enterprise AI adoption sweeping across corporate America this year.

For now, Thursday’s rally reinforced a theme that has run through much of this earnings season: companies positioned to benefit from the operational and security demands created by rapid AI adoption are being rewarded handsomely by investors, even as questions persist about how long the current pace of growth, and the elevated valuations that have accompanied it, can be sustained.

The robot pizza-making business has, it’s true, been littered with sorry tales of overcooked promises and melting fortunes. Besides Picnic, other companies that have come and gone include Zume, external and Pazzi, which used, external robot arms to assemble pizzas, as well as Basil Street, external, a purveyor of pizza vending machines.

Although so-called fast food might seem an easy target for automation, it’s proved harder than many expected. Plus, bringing robots into pizza restaurants could take away entry-level jobs in the hospitality sector. Is the future really filled with robotic pizza?

“We haven’t yet seen any of the success stories materialise the way some people thought they would,” admits Sara Senatore, senior restaurants analyst at Bank of America. Her employer has financial interests in multiple high street pizza chains including Papa Johns and Domino’s.

Food preparation bots are sometimes clumsy – dropping ingredients in the wrong places at times, she explains. Conversely, “Humans are very efficient at making pizza.”

But Kindell, despite his frustrations with Picnic, is surprisingly undeterred. He is a fan of full automation. “I want to be able to walk up to, let’s say, a type of kiosk, put in your order, and it makes a fresh pizza,” he tells the BBC.

Kindell, who once made all his dough by hand – until an elbow tendon injury forced him to investigate using machines instead, is now working on his own version of a pizza-making robot.

He declines to share details but the contraption will make square pan-style pies and that the machine is inspired by the way 3D printers work. If things go well, he says he could have a fully operational version of the device by the summer of 2027.

Given that he admits he has “no experience” in robotics, I question why he would want to invest in such a dicey business. Kindell says that failed pizza robot companies have nonetheless generated useful data and made strides in developing their technology. It’s just a matter of time before someone gets these things to work, he insists.

On jobs, he claims that even “fully autonomous” pizza robots won’t threaten workers. Kindell previously used Picnic’s robots at T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners, a baseball team.

Usually, he’d need about 10 people to make pizza in such a setup. With the robots that number fell to just two. But the other eight people were still employed, he says, in roles where they interacted with customers, and advertised the pizza around the stadium.

“We had so many more people able to hand out the pizza,” says Kindell. “It was so much faster.”

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple has officially confirmed its highly anticipated September event will take place Wednesday, Sept. 9, setting in motion a launch sequence expected to introduce the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max and the company’s first foldable device.

Apple sent invitations to members of the press and select guests Wednesday, Aug. 26, confirming the keynote date alongside the tagline “Surprise and shine” and an accompanying image. The keynote is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1 p.m. Eastern and 6 p.m. British time, and will be held at the Steve Jobs Theater on Apple’s Cupertino campus.

A date chosen around the calendar

This year’s scheduling carried unusual complexity due to how the calendar fell in 2026. Labor Day landed on Monday, Sept. 7, and Apple has historically avoided holding its iPhone event on the day immediately following the holiday, ruling out a Tuesday, Sept. 8 date. That left Wednesday, Sept. 9 as the most likely option, a prediction that multiple outlets, including Forbes and MacRumors, had made in the weeks leading up to Apple’s official confirmation.

The Sept. 9 date also matches the exact day Apple held its iPhone event in each of the past two years, extending a pattern of holding its flagship product reveal during the second week of September. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman had also flagged the date in his Power On newsletter earlier this month, describing Apple’s preparations as being in full swing ahead of what he called a big event.

What’s expected on stage

The centerpiece of Wednesday’s keynote is expected to be the debut of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, alongside Apple’s first foldable iPhone, a device widely viewed as the company’s most significant new hardware category in years. Reports have suggested the foldable device could start at around $2,000, with pricing potentially climbing past $2,500 for higher storage configurations.

Apple is expected to stick with familiar display sizes for the standard Pro lineup, with the iPhone 18 Pro featuring a 6.3-inch display and the iPhone 18 Pro Max featuring a 6.9-inch display, consistent with the current generation. Notably, Apple is not expected to release a standard iPhone 18 model alongside the Pro lineup this year; that device is anticipated to arrive separately in early 2027.

Beyond the phones, the event is expected to include the introduction of two new Apple Watch models. Apple has already addressed part of its fall hardware lineup separately, having unveiled new Mac computers on Tuesday, Aug. 25, ahead of the September keynote.

The pre-order timeline, with a notable shift

Perhaps the most closely watched detail surrounding this year’s launch has been the timing of pre-orders, given an unusual calendar conflict. Apple traditionally opens pre-orders on the Friday immediately following its September keynote. This year, however, that Friday falls on Sept. 11 — the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, a date Apple has respectfully avoided using for major announcements or sales activity in the past.

As a result, pre-orders for the iPhone 18 Pro lineup are widely expected to shift to Saturday, Sept. 12 instead. If Apple follows its typical pre-order timing pattern from past launches, orders would likely open at 5 a.m. Pacific, 8 a.m. Eastern and 1 p.m. British time that day.

Following the pre-order window, the new devices are expected to become available in stores and begin shipping to customers on Friday, Sept. 18 — one week after pre-orders open, consistent with Apple’s typical rollout cadence in recent years.

A launch two weeks in the making

Apple’s decision to send invitations on Aug. 26 also followed a pattern industry watchers had anticipated. The company has announced its annual iPhone event exactly two weeks in advance for four consecutive years, according to 9to5Mac’s Zac Hall, making late August the strongest predicted window for this year’s invitations even before they went out. That timing held true, with Apple issuing its formal invite precisely 14 days ahead of the Sept. 9 keynote.

Why this year’s event carries extra weight

This year’s launch arrives with added significance beyond the usual annual iPhone refresh. The event is expected to double as one of the final major keynotes overseen under Apple’s current leadership transition, with incoming Chief Executive John Ternus set to formally take over the role on Sept. 1, just over a week before the keynote takes the stage. Outgoing CEO Tim Cook is transitioning to the role of executive chairman after 15 years leading the company.

The introduction of Apple’s first foldable device alongside that leadership shift has raised the stakes considerably for what is typically a predictable annual product cycle, with analysts and industry watchers framing the September event as a pivotal moment both for Apple’s product lineup and for its next generation of corporate leadership.

With the keynote date now officially locked in, attention turns to the specifics Apple will reveal on stage Sept. 9, including final pricing, technical specifications for the foldable device, and confirmation of the broader software updates expected to accompany the new hardware. Apple has not released an official agenda beyond confirming the date, time and location of the event, meaning many of the details currently circulating remain based on analyst predictions and industry reporting rather than direct company confirmation.

For consumers planning to purchase the new devices, the coming weeks are expected to follow a now-familiar rhythm: an announcement on Sept. 9, pre-orders opening Sept. 12, and devices reaching customers’ hands by Sept. 18 — assuming Apple’s typical launch cadence holds for a third consecutive year.