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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.”

Yes. Corporate subscriptions are available for teams and organisations, with discounted rates as user numbers increase. Pricing starts from $1,625 + GST per user.
Get in touch
to discuss the right option for your organisation.

Business News subscriptions are used by executives, investors, consultants and professionals who need to stay informed and make better decisions about the WA market. When you subscribe you’ll get

• Unlimited access to WA’s most trusted business journalism
• Data & Insights — detailed profiles of WA companies, people, projects and deals
• MyBN — a personalised feed based on the companies, people and sectors you follow
• Special publications and industry reports
• Daily and weekly email newsletters

Data & Insights is a research tool built specifically for the WA market. It draws on more than 30 years of Business News reporting, updated regularly to reflect what’s happening now. Use it to:

• Look up detailed profiles of WA companies, including financials, directors and ownership
• Find decision-makers and track their career movements
• Research live and completed projects across WA industries
• Monitor deals, appointments and market activity
• Access industry rankings and league tables

Data & Insights is updated daily by our dedicated research team, which uses the latest announcements, ASX filings and editorial coverage to keep our person, company, list and project records up to date.

Business News welcome all opportunities to make our dataset accurate, complete and current, so if you have an update request, please email the team at
general@businessnews.com.au, and we’d be happy to assist.

MyBN
is part of every subscription. It’s your personalised view of Business News. You can follow the companies, people, sectors and projects that matter to you, and get a news feed and alerts tailored to your interests. You can save articles to read later and retain only what you need.

Only subscribers have full access to all content on the Business News website.

If staying informed about the WA economy is part of your job, and/or you’re looking for networking opportunities in WA, Business News is built for you.

Business News subscribers are:

• Executives and directors tracking competitors, clients and market movements
• Investors and advisers researching companies, deals and industry trends
• Consultants and professionals staying across sectors relevant to their clients
• Business owners looking for leads, context and market intelligence

Most Business News publications cover national or global markets. Business News is focused entirely on Western Australia, which means the journalism, the data and the intelligence are all built around WA companies, people and projects — not adapted from a national feed. Data & Insights, included with every subscription, combines more than 30 years of WA-specific editorial research with live business data. There’s no comparable product for the WA market.

The Morning Digest Email provides a comprehensive wrap of the major headlines, relevant to WA business, and includes with a snapshot of the overnight news covering oil, gold and ASX-listed companies.

The Afternoon Wrap Email focuses on the news covered by our team of journalists during the course of the working day, including exclusive stories and analysis, all of which relates to WA business and the local economy.

The BN Weekender Email contains a wrap of the Business News from the week that was, highlighting the top stories in each area of WA business.
Sign up for free.

We’re happy to help.
Get in touch
and our team will come back to you.

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.”