NEWS THAT MATTER

Five years ago, Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. Since then, there’s been a lot of changes, including a new CEO starting Sept. 1. It added a palm-scanning payment option, hundreds of cameras and sensors to enable checkout-free shopping, and a “dark store” devoted entirely to online orders. We tried out the new high-tech shopping experience and take a look at how prices and product selection have changed since Amazon took over the specialty grocer in 2017.   Amazon has opened 60 new locations, including one “dark store” entirely devoted to filling online orders. Yet Whole Foods still controls just over 1% of the grocery market, according to research firm Numerator, compared with Walmart’s 19% and Kroger’s 9%.  Next week, Whole Foods gets a new CEO for the first time since its founding in 1980. Operating chief Jason Buechel steps into the lead role on Sept. 1, succeeding colorful, polarizing co-founder John Mackey, who was once described as a “right-wing hippie.”  “When you have the kind of culture clash that I imagined John Mackey and Amazon had, it’s really impressive that John stayed around in a leadership position as long as he did,” said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at advertising firm Publicis. “It surprised me.”

Amazon has 118+ private label brands, some that carry the Amazon name and others cleverly disguised without it. And it’s been accused of using its data prowess to make nearly identical versions of bestselling brand-name items, like Peak Design’s Everyday Sling Bag.   Amazon says it’s continuing to invest in its popular brands, despite rumors its scaling back on private label to appease regulators. Amazon may be pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable in private labeling, there's nothing illegal about copying brand-name products. It's a business practice that, in some capacity, is widely used by most major retailers.  Here’s how private labels work, and why experts say the high margin products like AmazonBasics batteries are going nowhere.

Virtual reality and sports seem like polar opposites. But the largest companies in Silicon Valley - including Mark Zuckerberg's former Facebook now Meta - are trying to change that, using virtual sports platforms to drive adoption and profit in this new world of the metaverse.

As supply chain chaos causes shipping delays this holiday season, experts say Amazon’s logistics empire and predictive analytics will allow it to avoid the worst of it. Amazon leased long-haul planes to get goods from China to the U.S. faster, and its been making its own containers and chartering private cargo vessels for years. Now retailers like Walmart, Home Depot, Target, IKEA and Costco are trying out the tactic, chartering smaller vessels to bring goods to less congested ports.

The Vietnamese EV brand VinFast is an unknown name from a country with a tiny auto industry. But the company has already opened six stores in California and has plans for many more. It also is building a $2 billion factory in North Carolina and is planning an IPO, though timing is uncertain. It has partnerships with leading industry firms, such as LG Chem, Gotion, Pininfarina, ZF. And it has recruited alumni from some of the world’s top automakers, including Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Hyundai, Porsche, Jaguar-Land Rover, Volkswagen, and others.

In July 2011, the oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso was drifting through the treacherous Gulf of Aden when a crew of pirates attacked and set her ablaze. When David Mockett, a maritime surveyor, inspected the vessel, he was left with more questions than answers. Soon after his inspection, Mockett was killed in a car bombing.

Just a couple of years ago, it seemed that space mining was inevitable. Analysts, tech visionaries and even renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson predicted that space mining was going to be big business. Space mining companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries backed by the likes of Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, cropped up to take advantage of the predicted payoff. After all, the holy grail of asteroids, known as 16 Psyche, had an estimated worth of $10,000 quadrillion. But fast forward to 2022, and humanity has yet to commercially mine even a single asteroid. CNBC spoke to two California startups, AstroForge and TransAstra, about how they are trying to make space mining a reality and the challenges they face.

Humanity consumes a half-trillion cups of coffee every year, yet coffee production is one of the most antiquated industries within agriculture. Now the livelihoods of 125 million people working in coffee are at risk as the crop struggles to cope with global warming.

At the turn of the century, cricket was struggling to attract audiences and its commercial future was in doubt. Now it boasts the second-most valuable sporting franchise globally, behind only the NFL. This is the story of how one country changed the fate of cricket.

Africa’s tech startups raised a record $5 billion in 2021 as investors piled into firms trying to fix the continent's thorniest problems. But money isn't flowing evenly.