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Shares of major U.S. carriers jumped on Tuesday after upbeat airfare data for July signaled improving pricing power for the industry, as airlines bring capacity in check to align with a soft demand environment. Shares of legacy carriers United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines jumped nearly 10% each, while budget rival Southwest Airlines gained 4% in afternoon trading. Smaller peers Alaska Air and JetBlue Airways rose about 10% each and low-cost carrier Frontier Group surged 22%. Data from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday showed airfares rose 4% in July after slipping 0.1% in June, marking their first increase in six months. Uncertainty stemming from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and budget cuts has prompted travelers to curb discretionary spending and reassess plans. A soft demand environment, particularly from budget-conscious domestic travelers, had forced carriers to discount fares, squeezing margins despite summer typically being their peak money-making season. Airlines have since been trimming seats on offer and readjusting routes to keep their pricing power in control and shield margins. During their second-quarter earnings calls in July, major executives expressed confidence in the industry’s ability to cut capacity and boost airfares in the latter part of the year. Shivansh Tiwary, Reuters Shares of major U.S. carriers jumped on Tuesday after upbeat airfare data for July signaled improving pricing power for the industry, as airlines bring capacity in check to align with a soft demand environment. Shares of legacy carriers United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines jumped nearly 10% each, while budget rival Southwest Airlines gained 4% in afternoon trading. Smaller peers Alaska Air and JetBlue Airways rose about 10% each and low-cost carrier Frontier Group surged 22%. Data from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday showed airfares rose 4% in July after slipping 0.1% in June, marking their first increase in six months. Uncertainty stemming from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and budget cuts has prompted travelers to curb discretionary spending and reassess plans. A soft demand environment, particularly from budget-conscious domestic travelers, had forced carriers to discount fares, squeezing margins despite summer typically being their peak money-making season. Airlines have since been trimming seats on offer and readjusting routes to keep their pricing power in control and shield margins. During their second-quarter earnings calls in July, major executives expressed confidence in the industry’s ability to cut capacity and boost airfares in the latter part of the year. Shivansh Tiwary, Reuters
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E-Commerce
As the battle to train artificial intelligence models becomes more intense and Reddits rich content library becomes more valuable, the social media giant has taken steps to block the Internet Archive from indexing its pages. While the Wayback Machine has historically recorded all Reddit pages, comments and user profiles, the company has put limits on what the system can scrape. Moving forward, it will only be permitted to archive the sites home page, which shows popular posts and news headlines of the day, but no user comments or post history. The action comes as Reddit has become increasingly protective of the content on its site. Reddit, in May, announced it had struck a deal with OpenAI to use its content to help train ChatGPT. It previously announced a similar deal with Google and blocked other search engines from crawling the site after that deal unless they struck financial agreements with Reddit as well. AI companies that are less well-financed, however, have reportedly been using the Internet Archive to scrub the sites previous posts and train their large language models from that content. Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, in a statement, told Fast Company “Internet Archive provides a service to the open web, but weve been made aware of instances where AI companies violate platform policies, including ours, and scrape data from the Wayback Machine. Until theyre able to defend their site and comply with platform policies (e.g., respecting user privacy, re: deleting removed content) were limiting some of their access to Reddit data to protect redditors.” Reddit shares were higher Tuesday, gaining more than 3% in midday trading, hitting $228. Year to date, the company’s stock is up 38%. Reddits legal battles meet its AI ambitions In June, Reddit sued Anthropic, claiming the AI company behind the Claude chatbot was scraping the Reddit site. “In July 2024, Anthropic claimed, in response to Reddits public protests regarding Anthropics misuse of Reddit content, that it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit. Not so,” the suit reads. “Anthropics bots continued to hit Reddits servers over one hundred thousand times. Unlike its competitors, Anthropic has refused to agree to respect Reddit users basic privacy rights, including removing deleted posts from its systems.” (Anthropic has denied the accusations.) Reddit’s latest defensive act against AI scraping comes as the company is focusing more on its own AI initiatives. Last December, the company rolled out Reddit Answers, an AI-powered tool that will summarize conversations and posts on the site, letting users bypass traditional search engines. That AI product is now used by six million people, the company said in its second quarter earnings announcement, up from one million in the first quarter. Reddit is planning to use that momentum, as well as the significant use of its own internal search engine (which the company says services 70 million users per week) to challenge Google and other popular search tools. “The world and the internet are rapidly changing, and I believe Reddit has a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said CEO Steve Huffman on an earnings call following the earnings. “Were unifying [search and Reddit Answers] into a single search experience. Were going to bring that front and center in the app. So, whether youre a new user opening the app for the first time or returning user opening the app, that search box will be present immediately for users who open the app looking for something specific.” While Reddits efforts in the search space will include AI components, the company said it hopes to differentiate itself from the growing number of AI search engines by highlighting the human component. “Conversation and connection are becoming more valuable and rare,” said Huffman. “In a world increasingly dominated by algorithms and automation, the need for human voices has never been greater.”
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Eastman Kodak, the iconic American company known for its photography and film business, said it is at risk of going out of business, prompting a massive stock slide on Tuesday. Here’s what to know. Kodak Q2 2025 earnings Let’s start with Kodak’s earnings report on Monday. For the second quarter ending June 30, Kodak reported its revenue was $263 million, a decrease of $4 million, or 1%, compared with the same period in 2024. Adjusting for the favorable impact of foreign exchange of $5 million, revenues decreased by $9 million, or 3%, compared with the year prior. Kodak ended the quarter with a cash balance of $155 million, a decrease of $46 million from December 31, 2024. The decrease was primarily driven by capital expenditures to fund growth initiatives, changes in working capital, the impact of higher costs, and lower profitability from operations. Most importantly, Kodak included a disclosure regarding its concern assessment in its second quarter 2025 Form 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In its earnings press release, the 133-year-old company said current financial conditions “raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” which publicly traded companies are required to mention. The reason: It doesn’t have the ability to pay its debt obligation, which runs some $500 million, according to CNN. Kodak stock price slides As a result, shares of Eastman Kodak (NYSE: KODK) fell more than 7% in premarket trading on Tuesday, and at the time of this writing, were down a whopping 25% in early afternoon trading. Kodak is a leading global manufacturer focused on commercial print and advanced materials and chemicals. Founded in 1882 by George Eastman, it has earned 79,000 worldwide patents over 130 years of R&D (research and development) and is known as a pioneer in the photography business, specializing in both cameras and film. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy as its business became increasingly irrelevant with the advent of digital photography and smartphone cameras.
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