👋 Good morning. If you’re planning to spend your Thanksgiving in Hawaii — have you heard of Tofurky? Hawaii is the most expensive state to host a Thanksgiving dinner for 10, with an average cost of $71.57 and the turkey alone setting shoppers back just shy of $30, according to data from MoneyLion. Perhaps plan a trip to Oklahoma, instead, which has the nation’s cheapest average meal at $49.59. Let’s be real… it’s all about the sides and desserts, anyway.
NEWS FLASH
👓 Sound and vision: San Diego startup Aynak is developing innovative smart glasses designed to improve your hearing rather than your eyesight. Created by former Qualcomm engineers, the eyeglasses amplify voices the wearer wants to hear, while filtering background noise and nearby chatter. A built-in camera scans faces and uses AI to determine what to listen to based on distance and user behavior. Following prototype testing, the company plans to seek FDA approval and sell the glasses for $700.
🔮 You’re so predictable: Startup 42AI emerged from stealth with $62.5m in funding to develop its “behavioral world model,” a system it claims can predict how traders will respond to volatile market conditions based on psychology rather than past trades. The model draws on customer data covering nearly 30m people and is already being used at 10 large brokerage firms, with a reported 98% accuracy rate — though that measures whether trading activity falls within a predicted range, not whether individual trades are called correctly.
🦴 Bone chilling: While doctors have traditionally relied on living donors for bone marrow to help cancer patients, startup Ossium Health innovated a way to transplant cryogenically frozen marrow. The technology has been successfully employed in 29 procedures, including its first pediatric patient. Ossium has raised $158m at a $300m valuation, and revenue is expected to reach $35m this year, up 75% YoY. The company plans to commercialize the tech for blood cancers next February and develop other stem cell therapies.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
- Clocking in: Businesses can now hire robots by the hour thanks to Tutor Intelligence, which announced a $75m Series B. Companies pay $14-$18 an hour per bot, or by item picked — though there's one catch: humans direct the work remotely for now.
- Must be this old to swipe: Apple is rolling out new age-rating rules for its App Store that require developers to disclose whether their apps include dating features, location sharing, or romantic AI chatbots or companions.
- Dust off the encyclopedias: K-12 schools will be allowed to disable Google’s AI tools starting next year, but there’s a catch. Schools that opt out entirely will lose access to Google Search itself.
- Bad vibes: A German security firm found that 159k+ apps built using Swedish vibe-coding startup Lovable exposed 1k+ passport numbers, payment details, and 200k private messages without needing any login credentials whatsoever.
BYE-BYE, BUSYWORK
Your CRM should already know
Most CRMs are just expensive filing cabinets. You log the call. You research the lead. You write the follow-up. You move the deal. Rinse, repeat, burn out.
HubSpot Smart CRM is designed to handle the busywork before you even open your laptop.
What runs quietly in the background:
- Calls: Logged and summarized the moment they end.
- Leads: Researched with a first outreach drafted, automatically.
- Deals: Next steps flagged before you have to ask.
- Workflows: Repetitive tasks automated — no code required.
It's not the CRM you have to manage. It's the one that may just manage itself.
THE BIG IDEA
%20copy%2012.png?width=600&height=293&name=Daily%20Templates%20-%202026%20Refresh%20(2)%20copy%2012.png)
How Ikea is reskilling employees instead of replacing them
Whether you're getting fancy with Enköping cabinets or at your wits' end assembling a Billy bookcase, Ikea is here for you — with a real live human on the line.
Rather than replace customer service teams with its AI chatbot, the Swedish furniture company reskilled ~8.5k employees, per Fortune.
As companies race to automate with AI, laying off scores of employees, Ikea's investment in humans is driving revenue — notable for a company that cut labor costs by making you build your own furniture.
Billie don't be a hero
In 2021, Ikea launched its customer service bot, Billie, to handle straightforward questions about store hours and order statuses:
- The bot assisted 47% of customers within two years.
- Now, Billie helps 74% of customers.
Rather than lay off workers whose jobs Billie had taken over, the company retrained call center employees to handle elaborate requests or as interior-design sales advisors.
The resolution and sales teams now operate from 24 call centers across 31 countries, and generate significant revenue:
- 15%-20% YoY growth in sales
- $1.37B in sales last fiscal year, up from $1.17B the year before
- 10m customers helped this past year
- 89% customer happiness score, up from 60% before Billie's rollout
Ikea's investment was partly driven by the pandemic. The company delayed e-commerce expansion, but when stores shuttered, it couldn't rely on its maze-like stores.
But call centers were suddenly overwhelmed. Billie could manage basic tasks, but more nuanced issues, like redesigning a kitchen, required humans.
Ikea spent two years retraining employees with in-person and online classes — a process that now takes five to six weeks. In addition to solving problems, employees also encourage additional purchases.
The company aims to let "values, not just productivity" shape how AI is implemented, per Fortune. The approach benefits morale — at a time when 40% of workers fear AI will make their job obsolete, up from 28% in 2024.
AI could displace 92m jobs by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum, which emphasizes that upskilling employees is a strategic investment.
Similarly, Torani, the 101-year-old syrup maker, considers how employees can use AI to tackle more valuable work, rather than asking how many positions can be eliminated.
So, if you're stressed about assembling that coffee table, pour yourself a Torani-infused beverage and give Ikea a call.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Now this is tasty: The delicious life of the world's best bagel consultant.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
%20(1)-1.png?width=600&height=93&name=Noteworthy%20Number%20template%20(10)%20(1)-1.png)
Number of cats employed by Aubuchon, America’s oldest family-owned hardware-store chain, across its ~150 US locations, per The Wall Street Journal. Originally recruited to stave off rats, today the four-legged workers mostly serve as store mascots, with many hardware shops promoting them on social media to draw customers into stores.
While losing “employee of the month” to a coworker who regularly sleeps on the job might seem unfair, they do their jobs better than you could: A 2025 study found that people tend to spend more money on products advertised by petfluencers than by humans.
HOW YOU HUSTLE
Y’all are always cooking up something neat. This is our weekly spotlight on a Hustle reader's ambitious venture.
Founder: Dana Greenlaw
Building: Sitio.camp — a single app for overlanders that combines campsite recommendations with community tools, replacing the dozen separate apps they currently need to find a place to sleep, contact a camp host, and connect with other travelers.
Edge: The founders are living the problem themselves — they’ve spent the past three years driving the longest road in the world, from Alaska toward the tip of South America.
One truly innovative thing: They’ve reimagined the border crossing process, letting users create step-by-step guides for fellow travelers to follow, taking some of the stress out of one of the hardest parts of the journey.
Working on something cool? Tell us here.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1960, Jane Goodall (RIP) observed a chimpanzee making and using a tool. The chimp, nicknamed David Greybeard, made a termite extractor with a stick.
📸 Wow: Some of the best shots from a global panoramic photo competition.
🐦 That’s cool: Learn about the world’s only correctional facility to have its own zoo.
🥓 Whoa: Why “seven degrees of Kevin Bacon” got the wrong guy.
🫏 Aww: Gentle patting or stealing brainpower?
SHOWER THOUGHT
There was probably a single worst day on earth that the whole planet experienced, and we just don't know about it. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley, Singdhi Sokpo, and Danny Jensen.
Editing by: Sara "One bolt short of a Billy bookcase" Friedman.
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.
Working on something big?
We've got a whole library of business-building resources for you.
Subscribe to HubSpot Media's other newsletters
Grow your business: Starter Story
Stay up-to-date on AI: Mindstream
How to use top AI tools: Futurepedia
Expert insights: Marketing Against the Grain
Sell better: The Science of Scaling