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Basketball fans are keeping their eye on the ball, and soon the screen, as Game 1 of the NBA Finals begins tonight. The Oklahoma City Thunder are set to face off with the Indiana Pacers on Thursday, June 5, with an 8:30 p.m. ET tip-off at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City. The game will see Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton square off against Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the battle for the championship trophy. Lets recap some team history and developments before we dive into how to watch the big game live. Pacers vs. Thunder: How did we get here? The Oklahoma City Thunder return to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2012, after defeating the Minnesota Timberwolves in the playoffs, 124-94, in Game 5. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander took home the NBA’s most valuable player award after he led the regular season in scoring with 32.7 points per game and 6.4 assists per game. (Oklahoma City lost Game 3 of the West Finals to Minnesota, 143-101, making the Thunder just one of three teams in the history of the NBA to lose a game in a series by 40 or more points, and then go on to win the series.) Meanwhile, the fourth-seeded Indiana Pacers arrive at the finals after outpacing the New York Knicks in six games. “We understand the magnitude of the opponent,” Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle told CBS Sports. “Oklahoma City has been dominant all year long.” What is the full schedule for the NBA Finals? Here’s the series breakdown: Game 1: Thursday, June 5, at 8:30 p.m. ET in Oklahoma City Game 2: Sunday, June 8, at 8 p.m. ET in Oklahoma City Game 3: Wednesday, June 11, at 8:30 p.m. ET in Indianapolis Game 4: Friday, June 13, at 8:30 p.m. ET in Indianapolis Game 5 (if necessary): Monday, June 16, at 8:30 p.m. ET in Oklahoma City Game 6 (if necessary): Thursday, June 19, at 8:30 p.m. ET in Indianapolis Game 7 (if necessary): Sunday, June 22, at 8 p.m. ET in Oklahoma City Up-to-date game day information is available on the NBA’s website. How can I watch or livestream the NBA Finals? In the United States, the NBA Finals will air live on ABC. ABC is available for traditional cable viewers and free with an over-the-air antenna. Cable subscribers can also watch ABC live through the ABC website. Cord-cutters also have the option to stream on Fubo, which carries ABC, using the app or website. The 2025 NBA Finals can also be accessed on ESPN Radio, ESPN Deportes, and the ESPN app.
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E-Commerce
Billionaire entrepreneur and Wonder CEO Marc Lore has confirmed that his food and restaurant technology startup is planning for an initial public offering. And though it won’t happen right away, he offered a very specific time frame. “We’re going to IPO [and we’re] kind of working backwards from March 30, 2028,” Lore said on Thursday at Fast Company‘s Most Innovative Companies Summit in New York. “Whether we hit it or not, we will see. He added that a full board of directors will be in place and that the restaurant technology startup wants to “look and act like a public company” by the end of next year in preparation for the future offering. “So all of 2027, we get four quarters of practice,” Lore said. “That was really important to me to get four quarters of practice where we’re giving EPS [earnings per share] guidance, having quarterly earnings calls, doing the comp committee, treating it like a public company. So when we go public in Q1 of 2028, we’ve already had that muscle.” He predicted an accelerating growth rate for the business, continuing through 2028 with $5 billion in revenue, and additional “big growth” in 2029. The ‘Amazon of food’ grows up Wonder, which Lore has described as a kind of “Amazon for food and beverage,” has brick-and-mortar restaurants and a vertically integrated food delivery app. Lore is working to revolutionize the food and restaurant space by building a “superapp for mealtime”one that blends food delivery, AI-driven nutrition, and smart restaurant tech. The company most recently secured $600 million in a funding round backed by Google Ventures, for a post-funding valuation of $7 billion, according to PitchBook. Wonder ranks No. 45 on Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies list for 2025. The ultimate goal? To become the platform that meets all your food needs while embracing personalized dining, driven by AI, Lore said. The startup has also acquired a number of food companies, including Blue Apron, Grubhub, and the media brand Tastemade. When asked by Mansueto Ventures CEO Stephanie Mehta why an IPO is the goal, Lore replied, “I am really excited about having that public currency.” The entrepreneur has founded a number of notable companies, including Jet.com, which he sold to Walmart nine years ago. “I think there’s so much growth and potential in this business that we could put a lot of capital to work, even post-IPO,” Lore said. “I’m excited to do some big acquisitions.”
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Something was wrong with Edemanwan Eyo Basseys chickens. Their movements seemed slower, more lethargic, like they were becoming paralyzed, she said. But as a new farmer in a remote part of southern Nigeria, she didnt know where to turn. Her region has a shortage of extension agents (EAs), government workers who provide expert agricultural advice. I couldnt get across to my EA, said Eyo Bassey. So I asked AI, ‘Why are my birds walking funny?’ The AI assistant told her it could be a kind of Newcastle disease, a highly contagious viral infection that can cause paralysis and death in infected poultry. Hotter temperatures and heavier rains linked to climate change can leave poultry more vulnerable to the virus. The tool told her to try the LaSota vaccine to prevent further spread. “I was able to give treatment to the birds and save them,” she said. Farmers across the globe, including tens of thousands of African farmers, are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to stay ahead of shifting weather patterns, respond to pests and diseases, and connect with buyers. For many, AI is an inexpensive lifeline as other lines of aidincluding from the United Statesdry up. [Photo: courtesy Plant Village] Since starting her farm two years ago, Eyo Bassey has asked Farmer.chat, an AI tool developed by the San Francisco nonprofit Digital Green, how to keep tiny flies called aphids off her pepper plants and which poultry breeds thrive in rainforest-rich Cross River State. The tools weather forecast helps her know when to heat her chicken coop. She poses questions in English, but the chatbot, which is used by more than 50,000 farmers across Africa, also responds to Hausa, an Indigenous language in Nigeria. The last growing cycle was difficult for many poultry farmers, according to Eyo Bassey: About 100 birds died at a nearby farm, and many birds were underweight, including hers. But her Noiler chickens survived, which she attributes to their breed and her weather preparations. With the AI, I’ve been able to reduce the mortality rate of my birds, she said. AI has also expanded the reach of overstretched extension agents. For years, Veronica Igbana, director of extension services for Benue State, struggled to keep up with farmers requests for in-person visits in Nigerias Benue State, where the agent-to-farmer ratio is 1 to 23,000, she said. Since she started using Farmer.chat last year, shes taught 170 peoplefarmers and both government and private sector extension agentsto use the tool themselves. “They’re able to help reduce my workload,” she said. “It gives me an opportunity to face other assignments.” AI is far from a cure-all for agriculture in a changing climate. The hardware and software that drive the technology drain resources like water and electricity, rely on unsustainably mined minerals, and produce electronic waste. But AI is becoming critical for the officials making decisions that can determine farmers’ livelihoods, according to Catherine Nakalembe, a geospatial scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA. By combining many different data setsrainfall, temperature, soil moisture, vegetation conditionsAI can reveal why certain agricultural areas are underperforming and guide large-scale interventions, like investment in new irrigation infrastructure, pesticide spraying, or food aid. Nakalembe, who is from Uganda and researches agriculture and food security in Africa, said these tools are most effective when they incorporate local knowledge and expertise. “If you co-develop an app with extension agents, you can further improve it. They give a lot of really good feedback about all sorts of things,” she said. “It’s supposed to help them do their job rather than replace them.” Evolving digital tools help farmers adapt AI chatbots have gained momentum among remote smallholder farmers and extension workers in the last two years, according to Eric Firnhaber, director of global communications at Digital Green. That growth has been fueled by advances in cloud computing that have enabled offline use, improved language access, and lowered costs. Many tools, like Darli AI, a chatbot from the Ghana-based company Farmerline, are being developed in Africa. Other U.S. and European nonprofits collaborate with African farmers, extension agents, and researchers. Digital Green has offices in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, and has been working on the ground with African farmers since 2008. Plant Village, which reaches about 15 million African farmers per season through various media channels, works closely with extension officers in Africa. Creating tools in Africa is important, because a lot can go wrong when AI lacks local context, Nakalembe said. AI mapping platforms, for instance, often flub critical details, mistaking cacao crops for forest because the plant grows beneath trees, and rice fields for wetlands because they look similar from afar. “If you zoom in, you start to see a whole bunch of issues, because the people who need to use it are not the ones developing it,” Nakalemebe said. Those collaborations have been paying off. In 2020 and 2021, when locusts swarmed East Africa, eating everything in sight, the AI app eLocust3developed by Plant Villagecollected farmers’ photos and GPS coordinates, fueling a geospatial system that predicted where the insects would travel next. That enabled targeted pesticide spraying that protected tens of millions of farmers’ livelihoods and $1.7 billion worth of crops, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. [Photo: courtesy Plant Village] It’s a landscape that’s changing on a daily basis, where we’re seeing cheaper, better models come out, said Annalyse McCloskey, operations director for Plant Village, an agricultural technology nonprofit at Penn State University. Plant Village is testing several different large language models (LLMs) to improve its AI chatbot, Nuru. The bot can glean a lot from a photo of a farm, such as the crop stage of growth, and the farms soil type and tilling practices. It also pulls in satellite data on soil moisture and evapotranspirationconditions affected by climate change. Farmers have traditionally relied on generational knowledge, but in the past 12,000 years of the agricultural era, weve never farmed under these conditions, McCloskey said. We need data to be coming in from the ground and then interpreted by scientists and AI to make predictions to better support farmers’ decisions. [Photo: courtesy Plant Village] Justine Ong’ala, a 50-year-old farmer in Busia, in western Kenya, recently used the Plant Village app to identify cassava mosaic disease in her seedlings and save her crop; higher temperatures and rainfall shifts can promote whiteflies that spread the virus. Like Igbana in Nigeria, Ongalas connection to Plant Village has had a ripple effect: Shes helped over 300 neighboring farmers who dont have smartphones, relaying feedback from the tool. It’s helping identify most of the diseases that are affecting them, Ongala said. But advocates say the recent suspension of nearly all U.S. foreign aid may hamper efforts to get these tools into farmers hands. Plant Village had been working with local universities across 10 African countries to provide extension agents and farmers with access to its AI chatbot. USAID had previously pledged $39 million to the project, but with the aid freeze, “some of the networks absolutely fell apart,” McCloskey said. She said Plant Village is now looking for new sources of funding. [Photo: courtesy Plant Village] Building a “path to wealth” with support from AI Though AI can diagnose disease and ward off pests, advocates say that it can also be a powerful tool to train farmers in regenerative practices and connect them with markets. These tools could be particularly potent on a continent with the worlds youngest population and 60% of its uncultivated arable land, said Farmerline CEO and founder Alloysius Attah. Farmerlines app, Darli, responds to questions in 27 different languages, and farmers without smartphones can call or text an AI helpline. Attah said these tools demystify farmingfor farmers and their investors alike. People used to see agriculture as risky, because you just couldnt understand every single component of it, Attah said. Now, AI and financing platforms help farmers anticipate adverse conditions, such as drought, and better preparefor instance, by allowing them to purchase irrigation systems in advance. That, in turn, will help them compete in the global economy, Attah shared. The path to creating wealth is to unleash opportunities, assets, access to information, access to finance, Attah said. The problem has never been farmers finding markets. Its about the farmers being ready to meet the requirements of the market. Nexus Media News is an editorially independent publication of MEDA.
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