GLP-1s, Brian Thomson killing loom giant at JPM Well being

Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. 

Kent Nishimura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

San Francisco, famed for its abundance of hoodie-clad tech workers, was overrun by thousands of executives in suits this week for JPMorgan‘s annual health-care conference.

Leaders from major health systems, venture capital firms and companies around the globe clustered in hotel lobbies to talk business and strategy for 2025. The sunny skies were a welcome reprieve from the downpours of years past, but other absences were harder to ignore.

This year’s conference, colloquially known as JPM, took place a month after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in New York City. The news was welcomed by Americans with numerous social media posts expressing resentment toward the health-care industry, with many sharing stories about their negative experiences with insurers. 

Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

Courtesy: UnitedHealth Group

More than 10 companies, including Cigna and Walgreens, subsequently pulled their appearances at JPM, according to CNBC’s analysis of the conference agenda. There was a noticeably large police presence at the conference’s main venue, the Westin St. Francis Hotel, and many companies beefed up security at their private events and parties. 

“The subterranean topic that I think people are talking about around the water and the cocktails is obviously what happened to the UnitedHealthcare CEO,” said Wei-Li Shao, president of metabolic health startup Omada. “What does that mean for health-care? What transformation should occur? And how do things get more responsible?” 

Thompson’s murder was a “stunning, sad event” that has served as a wake up call for the health-care industry, said Erik Wexler, CEO of the nonprofit health system Providence, which is made up of 51 hospitals and 1,000 clinics across seven states.

“Why are we on a separate pathway here? Why are we fighting?” Wexler said. “Our job is to do good for people who desperately need us at the most important time of their lives, whether you’re the payer or you’re the hospital.”

While Thompson’s death loomed large over the conference, there was also palpable excitement and buzz about 2025. There was no shortage of discussions about the potential benefits of artificial intelligence and the blockbuster weight loss drugs called GLP-1s, and investors seem cautiously optimistic that the digital health market could turn a corner.  

Containers of Ozempic and Wegovy seen at Children’s Hospital in Aurora, CO, Nov. 18, 2024. 

Kevin Mohatt | The Washington Post | Getty Images

“There are so many amazing things on the horizon for health-care,” said Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer.

“Drug companies and companies like ours, we try real hard to improve people’s lives, and we make a huge difference,” said Sayer, who knew Thompson well. “Be a little optimistic and give us a bit of a break, we’re all trying to do good stuff.”

Here are CNBC’s big takeaways from JPM 2025:

Generative AI stole the show

Generative AI was undoubtedly health-care’s “it girl” of 2024, and that seems unlikely to change in 2025. 

Health systems in the U.S. are struggling to contend with burnout, staffing shortages and razor thin margins, so companies are racing to develop AI tools that can streamline some of the industry’s more tedious administrative tasks. The subject was practically impossible to avoid at JPM. 

For instance, health-care payments company Waystar announced a new generative AI feature that aims to help doctors quickly fight insurance denials by automatically drafting appeal letters. Amazon Web Services and the venture firm General Catalyst announced a new partnership that aims to speed up the development and deployment of health-care AI tools. Health-care startup Abridge announced Mayo Clinic will roll out its AI-powered clinical documentation technology to around 2,000 clinicians across the entire enterprise.

“At the highest level, I don’t think it can be understated how much impact AI is already creating in health-care,” said Dr. Shiv Rao, founder and CEO of Abridge. “At least in our segment, the feedback that we get on a daily basis is just incredible, and the adoption rate demonstrates that this is a real thing.”

Nvidia, which makes the hardware that powers AI applications, was a particularly popular attendee at JPM this year. The company announced partnerships with several health-care organizations including the clinical research provider IQVIA, neurotech startup Synchron, genomics company Illumina and academic medical center Mayo Clinic. 

The NVIDIA logo is being displayed on a smartphone in this photo illustration in Brussels, Belgium, on June 10, 2024. (Photo Illustration by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

“We’re well over a billion dollar business between direct revenue and revenue with our partners,” said Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health-care. She added that Nvidia sees more room for growth for AI health-care applications.

Executives are bullish on GLP-1s 

At presentations and cocktail parties this week, CNBC spoke with executives who marveled about the benefits of the booming class of weight loss drugs known as GLP-1s. 

Novo Nordisk’s and Eli Lilly’s diabetes and obesity treatments have been wildly successful at helping patients lose weight in recent years. A May study found that patients taking Novo’s obesity drug Wegovy maintained an average of 10% weight loss for up to four years, for instance. 

Research shows that GLP-1s could also help treat cardiometabolic disease, kidney disease and addiction, among other conditions. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Lilly’s weight loss drug Zepbound as a treatment for sleep apnea in December. 

A combination image shows an injection pen of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug, and boxes of Wegovy, made by Novo Nordisk. 

Reuters

Some analysts estimate that anti-obesity medications could grow into a $100 billion industry by the end of the decade.

“These drugs are remarkable, and they’re not going away,” Dexcom’s Sayer said. 

Supply shortages are one of the big hurdles for companies in the market, as soaring demand has made it difficult for many patients to access the treatments. The drugs typically cost $1,000 per month without insurance, and coverage still varies for many Americans.

Even so, many health-care executives are optimistic that GLP-1s will meaningfully improve public health in the U.S.

“I have been joking, it’s been the two G’s, right? It’s like, GLP, GPT,” Omada CEO Sean Duffy said.

Uncertainty around the Trump administration

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks after a meeting with Republicans in Congress at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 8, 2025.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

Ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s Monday inauguration, executives at JPM had many unanswered questions about what his administration has in store for the health-care sector. 

Health-care was not a big focus for Trump on the campaign trail, which means his policy aims for the industry are murky. Additionally, he’s made some controversial cabinet picks since the election. 

Trump nominated vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, celebrity TV host Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and pancreatic surgeon Dr. Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration. All three nominees still need Senate confirmation. 

“Until we have a little bit more visibility into this administration that’s coming in in the U.S., the market is going to be volatile and somewhat more depressed,” Rebecca Stevenson, HSBC’s head of health-care investment banking for the Americas, told reporters during a roundtable. 

Owen Tripp, the CEO of the virtual care platform Included Health, said the Trump administration appears to be business friendly and has suggested it will push for increased access to care. 

“It’s not even so much who’s in the White House, but actually the fact that you’ve got a Republican Congress and Senate that have on principle aligned with expanding access and transparency,” Tripp said. “I think you’re going to see more transparency on drug pricing and health care pricing too, which is also hugely positive.”

Watch: UnitedHealthcare tragedy is a wakeup call for corporate America, says Wharton’s Americus Reed

DOJ sues Walgreens alleging prescriptions stuffed with out medical functions

In an aerial view, a customer enters a Walgreens store on Jan.4, 2024 in San Pablo, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

The Department of Justice said Friday that it sued pharmacy giant Walgreens for allegedly dispensing millions of unlawful prescriptions.

The DOJ said that Walgreens from August 2012 until the present “knowingly” filled those prescriptions, which “lacked a legitimate medical purpose, were not valid, and/or were not issued in the usual course of professional practice.” 

“This lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable for the many years that it failed to meet its obligations when dispensing dangerous opioids and other drugs,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the DOJ’s Civil Division.

Boynton said Walgreens pharmacists filled millions of prescriptions with “clear red flags that indicated the prescriptions were highly likely to be unlawful.”

The company “systematically pressured its pharmacists to fill prescriptions, including controlled substance prescriptions, without taking the time needed to confirm their validity,” Boynton said. “These practices allowed millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Walgreens stores.”

Some Walgreens patients died of overdose deaths shortly after getting invalid prescriptions filled at Walgreens, the DOJ alleges.

The 300-page lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Walgreens in a statement said, “We are asking the court to clarify the responsibilities of pharmacies and pharmacists and to protect against the government’s attempt to enforce arbitrary ‘rules’ that do not appear in any law or regulation and never went through any official rulemaking process.”

“We will not stand by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win situation, trying to comply with ‘rules’ that simply do not exist,” Walgreens said.

“Walgreens stands behind our pharmacists, dedicated healthcare professionals who live in the communities they serve, filling legitimate prescriptions for FDA-approved medications written by DEA-licensed prescribers in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

The suit alleges that although Walgreens issued written policies that reflected its understanding of legal obligations, the company took other actions which it knew prevented its pharmacists from complying with them.

“Walgreens prioritized profits over safety and compliance by implementing policies and practices that required pharmacists to fill prescriptions quickly and left pharmacists without enough time or resources to exercise their corresponding responsibility,” the suit said.

“One such metric was ‘Verify By Promise Time’ (VBPT), which expected a pharmacist to fill a prescription within 15 minutes for a ‘waiter’ (a customer waiting in the pharmacy store for the prescription),” the suit alleges.

“Walgreens also tracked pharmacists that dispensed a low rate of controlled substances through its ‘Non-dispensing Pharmacist Report,'” the suit said.

“Walgreens created this metric in part because it believed pharmacists who refused to fill controlled-substance prescriptions compromised Walgreens’s customer service.”

Vanguard fined greater than $100 million by SEC over violations involving goal date retirement funds

The logo for the Vanguard Group is shown on correspondence in Zelienople, Pa.

Keith Srakocic | AP

Asset management giant Vanguard has been fined more than $100 million to settle charges related to disclosures around target date investment funds, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday.

The alleged violations stem from a 2020 change where Vanguard lowered the minimum investment requirement for its institutional target date funds. The SEC order found that the change spurred redemptions as Vanguard customers moved from other target date funds into the institutional versions, creating taxable distributions for some of the remaining shareholders. The SEC said Vanguard failed to properly disclose the potential impact of the investment threshold changes on distributions.

“The order finds that, as a result, retail investors of the Investor TRFs who did not switch and continued to hold their fund shares in taxable accounts faced historically larger capital gains distributions and tax liabilities and were deprived of the potential compounding growth of their investments,” the SEC said in a press release.

The fine of $106.41 million will be distributed to harmed investors, the SEC said. Vanguard agreed to the fine without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings.

Vanguard is one of the world’s largest asset managers, reporting more than $10 trillion of global assets as of last November. The firm was founded by Jack Bogle in the 1970s and has a reputation as a low-cost, investor friendly firm.

“Vanguard is committed to supporting the more than 50 million everyday investors and retirement savers who entrust us with their savings. We’re pleased to have reached this settlement and look forward to continuing to serve our investors with world-class investment options,” Vanguard said in a statement.

Target date funds are a popular retirement vehicle designed to slowly shift from a growth-oriented portfolio to a conservative portfolio as the listed year approaches. Typically, this is done by replacing riskier stocks with higher exposure to income-generating bonds as the retirement date nears.

The fine highlights how investors can see large tax bills even when they themselves do not make any asset sales during a calendar year. When Vanguard dropped the minimum initial investment for its institutional target retirement funds to $5 million from $100 million in December 2020, it spurred retirement plan investors to cash out of the investor share class of these funds and swap into the institutional version, according to the SEC.

Vanguard then had to sell the underlying assets in the investor share class of the funds to meet the redemptions from departing investors, the SEC found. As a result, shareholders who stayed in the investor share class were subject to a large capital gains distribution – and a tax liability if they held the fund in a taxable brokerage account, according to the order.

Normally, target date funds remain in tax-deferred accounts like 401(k) plans or individual retirement accounts – which would avoid a tax hit from a large capital gains distribution.

The SEC’s order said Vanguard’s investor-series target funds saw $130 billion in redemptions from December 2020 to October 2021, up from $41 billion in the same period a year prior. Vanguard later merged the two series of funds together, which the SEC order said the company refrained from doing originally in part to preserve fee revenue.

The fine announced Friday is in addition to the $40 million Vanguard had agreed to pay to investors as part of a class action suit.

The timing of the target date fund changes is similar to another recent Vanguard legal run-in. In 2023, Vanguard was fined $800,000 by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority related to problems with account statements for money market funds in 2019 and 2020.

The alleged violations took place under former CEO Tim Buckley. The current CEO, Salim Ramji, joined Vanguard from BlackRock in 2024.

AI is contained in the operations, and behind CEO desk, at small companies

It’s no secret that large corporations are using generative artificial intelligence to get ahead — but many small businesses are finding ways to use this technology to their advantage, too.

To be clear, there’s still a large chunk (43%) of small businesses that have never even considered using gen AI in their operations, according to the 2024 State of Small Business survey of 1,300 respondents from small business software company Gusto. But nearly a third are experimenting with it while a quarter have already seen the upside, the survey found.

Nicholas Tremper, senior economist at Gusto, said the biggest benefit for small businesses using gen AI is getting ahead in the race for talent.

“Small businesses tell us that they continue to have difficulty hiring,” Tremper said. “Employees are looking for ways to use their skills most effectively in a business.”

Tremper said owners and employees are strapped for time and resources and wear many hats, but allowing workers to focus on the skills they want to use while gen AI takes the excess makes a workplace more attractive. That explains why gen AI-equipped small businesses are 45% more likely to fill open roles, Gusto reports.

Industries most impacted by labor shortages in the U.S. include education, health care, hospitality and professional services (which includes a wide swath, like legal services, landscaping, cleaning and waste disposal). Gusto has found that it’s some of these same industries where gen AI is most helpful. “These are businesses that are important to the local economies, but also important to the local culture,” he said.

Ric Nelson, founder and executive director of the non-profit disability advocacy organization Peer Power, based in Anchorage, Alaska, has a severe disability, cerebral palsy, which he contracted during an accident just after his birth. He wasn’t expected to survive, but now he has three degrees and runs a small business of his own, among other accomplishments.

In a written interview conducted with the help of generative AI, Nelson said, “Because it is difficult for me to type, AI makes it possible to put my information into articles and presentations much more effectively and quickly.”

He uses gen AI to proofread his work, help him submit highly complex grant proposals, and even wrote a book. Whereas Nelson used to have to provide short, often incomplete responses because of his disability, AI has enabled him to “share the full breadth of my ideas and vision,” he said.

“If a small business has a strong vision and strategy, it can now communicate just as strongly as a large corporation,” Nelson said. “It also opens up the means for people with disabilities to start more businesses, with more success, to earn their own money and have less need to rely entirely upon public assistance.”

Nelson now has an AI “clone” of himself created on Delphi. By uploading 422,000 documents into a database, people who work with him or receive consulting from him can chat with the clone about his opinions, ideas, and even his own experiences in life and business. Plus, Nelson will now have an audible voice that people can understand at a normal tempo, without the need of a voice-over or interpreter.

Todd Miller, president of Ohio-based Isaiah Industries, which manufactures specialty residential metal roofing and has about 50 team members, said in addition to using gen AI for content creation, website copywriting and podcast ideation and scriptwriting, his compant recently used the technology to generate a training video for contractors who sell its products. “We started out intending to just film the video but then decided that AI would save us some time, allowing us to get the training into the hands of our customers more quickly,” he said.

Earlier in 2024, Bennett Camarda and her husband, Bill, took over Limitless Fitness, a New Hampshire gym with more than 10 trainers and 150 active one-on-one clients. “We’re using AI to accelerate growth and scale our operations while keeping our clients at the center,” said Camarda.

Camarda said they have used ChatGPT Premium to write Excel formulas, which has helped them streamline contract operations from an hours-long process to one that takes minutes. “It’s even helped us revamp our brand strategy, refining our tone, voice, and messaging to better resonate with our evolving client base, from strength training for grandparents to optimizing performance for golfers,” Camarda said. That’s not to mention use cases like writing operations manuals or creating heatmaps to track their busiest times so they can add more training sessions where they’re most needed.

Despite the learning curve that comes with taking over a new business, Camarda said they’ve already nearly closed the -5% year-over-year revenue gap left from the previous owners, while bringing trainer and client engagement to an all-time high.

“Gen AI has freed up our time to invest in our community and focus on opening a second location, rather than being stuck in the day-to-day operational weeds,” she said.

A recent American Express survey found that small business owners adopting AI feel better positioned to grow and expand (50% of businesses that use AI plan to grow their workforce in 2025, compared to 36% of non-AI adopters).

“Small business owners are the chief everything officer,” Tremper said. “They’re hiring their early employees to help them build the business and wear just as many hats as they wear. Gen AI can not only take off hats from the business owner, but it does some of this for the employees as well and helps increase their productivity.”

While gen AI has no shortage of risks — like data security and hallucinations, for example — Tremper said small business owners are treading cautiously to avoid major pitfalls. “People are being very thoughtful about this technology and how to implement it in ways that make their business and workforce better,” he said.

Allison Holker Steps Out Amid Rift With Stephen “tWitch” Boss’ Household

Stephen “tWitch” Boss’ Mom Slams Allison Holker’s “Misleading and Hurtful Claims”

It looks like Allison Holker is shaking off recent criticism. 

The So You Think You Can Dance alum was in good spirits while stepping out in Los Angeles Jan. 16 after receiving backlash from members of her late husband Stephen “tWitch” Boss‘ inner circle for her upcoming memoir This Far, 

For the outing, Allison touched down at the Hollywood Burbank Airport rocking a pair of blue jeans, green-and-white sneakers, a classic white tee and a customized tan letterman jacket with cream-colored sleeves. To complete her casual ‘fit, the 36-year-old accessorized with a black handle bag and wore her blonde hair in long loose waves. 

And Allison—who shares kids Weslie, 16, Maddox, 8, and Zaia, 5, with Stephen—was all smiles for her arrival in sunny California. At one point, she flashed a wide grin while greeting her driver, who held a sign with her name on it as she exited the airport. 

Eli Lilly LLY cuts 2024 income outlook on weight reduction medicine

The Eli Lilly & Co. logo at the company’s Digital Health Innovation Hub facility in Singapore, on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. 

Ore Huiying | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Eli Lilly cut its revenue guidance on Tuesday as it said demand for its weight loss and diabetes drugs would not meet its lofty expectations.

The drugmaker’s shares closed more than 6% lower on Tuesday.

Eli Lilly said it now expects full-year 2024 revenue of about $45 billion. That’s lower than the $45.4 billion to $46 billion the company anticipated in October. The new outlook would still mark a 32% jump in revenue from the prior year.

Eli Lilly has been racing to meet soaring demand for its diabetes treatment Mounjaro and obesity drug Zepbound, investing billions to ramp up its manufacturing capacity of the company’s booming so-called incretin drugs. The efforts appear to be paying off: The Food and Drug Administration in December reaffirmed its decision to declare the U.S. shortage of tirzepatide — the active ingredient in both drugs — over.

In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said the company has “tons of supply coming online” and “that kind of growth will likely continue.”

He also noted that the company will add more manufacturing capacity and expects to produce at least 60% more sellable doses of its incretin drugs in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2024.

More CNBC health coverage

For the fourth quarter, Eli Lilly expects $13.5 billion in revenue. The total includes about $3.5 billion for Mounjaro and $1.9 billion for Zepbound.

Wall Street had expected fourth-quarter and full-year revenue of $13.94 billion and $45.49 billion, respectively, according to analysts surveyed by LSEG.

The outlook cut comes as Eli Lilly competes with Novo Nordisk and other, smaller rivals for share of the exploding weight loss and diabetes drug market. Eli Lilly is developing an obesity pill that would be more convenient for patients and easier to manufacture, and Ricks expects it to be approved as soon as early next year.

“While the U.S. incretin market grew 45% compared to the same quarter last year, our previous guidance had anticipated even faster acceleration of growth for the quarter. That, in addition to lower-than-expected channel inventory at year-end, contributed to our Q4 results,” Ricks said in a statement.

The drugmaker also said it expects sales of $58 billion to $61 billion in fiscal 2025.

Eli Lilly is expected to report full quarterly results on Feb. 6.

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One other Trump Scheme Crashes and Burns As Mike Johnson Says He’ll Want Democratic Debt Restrict Votes

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It was just a few days ago that Trump and Mike Johnson were going to put all of Trump’s priorities into “one big beautiful bill” including raising the debt limit.

Until today.

Here is how Politico described Johnson’s new comments on the debt limit at a live event:

Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday backed away from a plan to address the approaching federal debt cliff in a party-line reconciliation package, acknowledging several major challenges that may force Republicans to deal with the borrowing limit in bipartisan talks with Democrats.

Those obstacles include fractious House conservatives and ongoing strategic disputes with the Senate. Addressing the debt limit in reconciliation is not “completely foreclosed,” Johnson said at a POLITICO Live event, but he said House leaders were “looking at all options.”

“I’m not wed to any of them,” he said.

Trump and Johnson have already been warned that it would take major concessions for the Democrats to get on board with any plan to raise the debt limit because Democrats know that Trump wants to raise the debt limit so that he can cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.

The idea that Trump and Johnson could get Republicans to raise the debt limit without Democratic help was always a fantasy.

In real-world terms, what Johnson’s comments mean is that unless Republicans want to trash the economy by causing a default, they are going to have to make a deal with Democrats.

The Democrats have the power.

Trump’s tax cuts for the rich are floating face down in the water and might be pulled out and resuscitated within several months.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has confirmed that House Democrats will not be lifting a finger to help Trump carry out his agenda.

If Trump wants to raise the debt ceiling, it is going to cost him dearly.

Traditionally, Democrats have always put the good of the nation ahead of all else, but all they’ve gotten for putting the nation first has been a midterm election loss and losing everything in the 2024 election.

Democrats showed that they have had enough by not helping Republicans with the government funding bill. So far, Democrats keep hammering the economy and letting Republicans flounder.

Republicans still can’t govern, and Democrats need to make their pay for their ineptitude.

What do you think about Johnson needing Democratic votes? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Chuck E. Cheese makes comeback after chapter

Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company has spent $230 million renovated its stores.

Source: CEC Entertainment

Four years after exiting bankruptcy, Chuck E. Cheese is making a comeback, thanks to a dramatic makeover to introduce its games and pizza to a new generation.

In June 2020, just as some states began lifting their pandemic lockdowns, Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company CEC Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It emerged from bankruptcy months later with new leadership and freed from about $705 million in debt.

Even when Covid subsided, the company faced another existential threat: figuring out how to entertain children – and their paying parents – in the age of iPads and smartphones. The company has spent more than $300 million in recent years tackling that challenge — and the investment has started to pay off.

CEC Entertainment, which also includes Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings and Peter Piper Pizza, has seen eight straight months of same-store sales growth, according to CEO Dave McKillips. The company isn’t publicly traded, but it discloses its financial results to its bond investors.

CEC Entertainment’s annual revenue grew from $912 million in 2019 to roughly $1.2 billion in 2023, according to Reuters. And that’s with fewer open Chuck E. Cheese locations. The chain has 470 U.S. locations currently, down from 537 in 2019.

Sustaining the growth won’t be easy. Like all restaurants, the chain has to win over consumers who are eating out less often as costs rise. Chuck E. Cheese also has to draw the attention of children and parents in a fragmented media market.

Goodbye, animatronics

Since Atari founder Nolan Bushnell opened its first location in 1977 in San Jose, Chuck E. Cheese has grown to become a staple of many childhoods, known for its pizza, birthday parties and animatronic mouse mascot and band.

After exiting bankruptcy, Chuck E. Cheese and its stores underwent a makeover, giving today’s locations a very different look. Gone are the animatronics, SkyTube tunnels and physical tickets of yore. Instead, trampolines, a mobile app and floor-to-ceiling JumboTrons have replaced them.

Those changes came from McKillips, a former Six Flags executive. He joined the company in January 2020, just months before lockdowns would temporarily shutter all of its locations. By April 2021, the company raised $650 million in bonds, which it’s been spending on its restaurants.

“The company was capital-starved for many, many years. It had not been remodeled. It had not been touched,” he said.

Apollo Global Management took Chuck E. Cheese private in 2014. Five years later, CEC Entertainment tried to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. But the deal was scrapped without explanation.

The new cash prompted a frank look at the Chuck E. Cheese model – including its iconic animatronic band, featuring Charles Entertainment Cheese and his friends.

“We pulled out the animatronics. It was a hot debate for many legacy bands, but kids were consuming entertainment in such a different way, you know, growing up with screens and ever-changing bite-sized entertainment,” McKillips said.

The chain also redid its menu, upgrading to scratch-made pizzas. Kidz Bop became an official music partner. Other kid-friendly brands, like Paw Patrol, Marvel and Nickelodeon, became partners for its games.

And then came the trampolines.

“We found one glaring opportunity for us … active play,” McKillips said. He added that growth in the family entertainment category is largely coming from activity-based businesses, like trampoline parks and rock-climbing walls.

The company first tested the trampolines in Brooklyn and then in Miami, St. Louis and Orlando. As of December, 450 Chuck E. Cheese locations now have kid-sized trampolines. And unlike the SkyTubes or ball pits of the past, customers have to pay extra to use trampolines. (The ball pits disappeared from Chuck E. Cheese locations in 2011, while SkyTubes lasted roughly another decade.)

After the company spent $350 million to remodel Chuck E. Cheese locations, McKillips now says that process is finished.

“We needed to fix the product. The product is fixed,” he said.

Subscription spenders

Reintroducing customers to the brand — especially adults who only know the Chuck E. Cheese of their own childhoods — has been another focus.

“You come in around three years old, you leave around eight or nine and you don’t come back for 15 years. We had to go and speak to a whole new generation of kids, and we were off-air during Covid. We had to build all that,” McKillips said.

For example, Chuck E. Cheese’s birthday business, one of the company’s best marketing tools, struggled in the wake of the pandemic. Today, it’s back at pre-pandemic levels.

And as Chuck E. Cheese started seeing the pullback in consumer spending that hit many restaurants last year, from McDonald’s to Outback Steakhouse, the chain had to come up with a way to appeal to the value-oriented customer.

Over the summer, Chuck E. Cheese launched a two-month tiered subscription program that offered unlimited visits and discounts on food, drinks and games. The membership encouraged families to visit more often than the typical two or three annual visits. The subscription starts at $7.99 a month, with additional tiers at $11.99 and $29.99 that promise steeper discounts and more games played.

“In 2023, we sold 79,000 passes. This year, we sold close to 400,000 passes during the same time period,” McKillips said, referring to 2024. “This shows that the value consumer will seek and will spend if they’re getting great return on their spend.”

In the fall, the company followed up on the success of the passes with a 12-month membership and has already sold more than 100,000 of them.

An entertainment empire?

McKillips’ biggest dreams for the chain and its mascots lie outside of the four walls of its restaurants.

“There’s another cute mouse down in Orlando that does this pretty well, so I see us in the same way, but we’re just getting started right now,” McKillips said.

In addition to 30 licensing deals for everything from frozen pizzas to apparel, Chuck E. Cheese is also exploring different entertainment partnerships that would make its mouse mascot a starring character, according to McKillips.

And that’s not all. The company has looked into the possibility of a game show. It has a prolific YouTube channel, with videos focused on its characters, not its pizza or games.

Plus, Chuck E. Cheese himself has six albums available on streaming platforms, and his band plays live, choreographed concerts.

“My dream would be to have a feature movie,” McKillips said.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the company’s current debt load and its investment to remodel locations.

Mark Zuckerberg says Biden pushed Meta to take away posts on vaccines

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, Sept. 25, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan in a podcast published Friday that his company was pressured by the Biden administration to remove content on side effects of Covid vaccines.

Early in a conversation that lasted about three hours, Zuckerberg told Rogan that he’s generally “pretty pro rolling out vaccines” and that they are “more positive than negative.”

“But I think that while they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it,” Zuckerberg said.

A Biden administration representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The remarks come days after Meta said it would stop relying on third parties to check facts published on its widely used applications and instead turn to community notes, letting users add commentary regarding truthfulness. The strategy puts Meta more in line with X, whose owner, Elon Musk, has been advising President-elect Donald Trump and was a major backer of his campaign.

It’s also the latest in a string of announcements and comments following Trump’s election that appear targeted at appeasing the incoming president. Last week, Meta replaced its president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, with Joel Kaplan, the company’s current policy vice president and a former Republican Party staffer.

Meta was one of several large technology companies to announce that it was contributing $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, NBC News reported.

President Biden addressed Meta’s policy change on checking facts during a Friday press conference.

“The idea that a billionaire can buy something and say, by the way, from this point on, we’re not going to fact-check anything, and, you know, when you have millions of people going online, reading this stuff, it is — anyway, I think it’s really shameful,” Biden said.

Zuckerberg has expressed criticism in the past about the Biden administration’s handling of Covid-related content.

In a letter to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee in August, Zuckerberg said the administration “pressured” Meta to “censor” Covid-19 content, adding that he regretted some of the decisions the company made following those requests.

“And they pushed us super hard, to take down the things that were honestly were true,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “They basically pushed us and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down.”

Zuckerberg didn’t specify who from the White House made the requests, saying, “I wasn’t involved in those conversations directly.” But he said the company’s response was that it wasn’t going to take down content that “is kind of inarguably true.”

The Food and Drug Administration said in 2021 that headache, fatigue, muscle aches, nausea and fever were the most common side effects of Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid vaccine. Worldwide, Covid vaccines are credited with saving tens of millions of lives a year when the pandemic was raging.

On a separate matter, Zuckerberg said that the U.S. government hasn’t done enough to protect its technology industry, leaving too much power in the hands of regulators abroad. He said the European Union has fined technology companies more than $30 billion over the past 20 years.

“It’s one of the things that I’m optimistic about with President Trump, is I think he just wants America to win,” Zuckerberg said.

WATCH: Reed: Is Facebook a news platform or a vehicle for information?

Joe Biden Goes Viral For WILD “Hearth” Joke In the direction of Kamala Harris

Something must be in the air because the politicians have been cuttin’ UP all week! This time, President Joe Biden is the latest to go viral after he accidentally made an interesting remark about the California fires while speaking to Vice President Kamala Harris.

RELATED: Wayment! Social Media Sounds OFF After Video Shows Barack Obama & Donald Trump Chattin’ At Jimmy Carter’s Funeral

President Joe Biden Goes Viral For His “Fire” Joke Towards Kamala Harris

The Shade Room snagged footage from President Joe Biden’s meeting with senior officials to tackle the federal response to the Palisades wildfires in California, per Fox News. While sharing the federal government’s plan for the ongoing crisis, Biden turned it over to VP Kamala Harris and accidentally dropped a pun about the fires in the process.

The clip shows Joe Biden saying, “And Vice President, I know you’re directly affected, so [fire] away.” He quickly checks himself, saying, “No pun intended!” right after. Kamala Harris gives him the funniest look with a smirk but simply responds, “INDEED!” 

Biden’s lil’ slip-up and what he referred to as a “pun” quickly gained attention on social media especially since VP Kamala Harris is from Oakland, California. Social media users couldn’t help but find it hilarious, crackin’ up at Biden’s nonchalant attitude after making the remark.

Social Media Reacts

Whew! The Roommates blew up in The Shade Room’s comment section over President Biden’s statement. Some found it hilarious, while others couldn’t help but notice that Kamala Harris was clearly fed up with the nonsense. Check out some reactions below.

Instagram user @bonitarebel wrote, “Joe really been on one lately 😂😂😂” 

Instagram user @itzbeautifulgurl wrote, “When you put ya two week notice in at work and just dgaf 😂” 

While Instagram user @imanisanaaa wrote, “She looked at him like ‘ikyfl’😭😭” 

Then Instagram user @ms._tereisa wrote, “She finna ghost us so bad after the 20th 😂” 

Another Instagram user@alioop_0_o_runs wrote, “I know she just call Michelle everyday like ‘ gurrrrllll” 😂 and Michelle be like ‘chillleee’ 😂” 

Instagram user @jotykay wrote, “Now Joe there is a time and place 😂” 

While another Instagram user @courtneyykaylaa wrote, “🤣🤣🤣🤣 I’m truly gonna miss him being unintentionally funny af.” 

Then another Instagram user @j.bles wrote, “Y’all know that man ain’t mean nothin like that he just old 😂” 

Finally, Instagram user @ @marty_sandiego wrote, “Mannnnnnnnnnn she counting down the days! 10 more days @vp we sending you strength.”

RELATED: Too Soon? Donald Trump Trends Online After Putting President Joe Biden On Blast Following His Decision To Exit 2024 Election

What Do You Think Roomies?