BEIJING, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Tesla’s (TSLA.O), opens new tab China-made electric vehicle sales rose 9.9% in November from a year earlier, as the U.S. automaker grapples with intense competition in China and Europe.
Sales of Model 3 and Model Y vehicles made at Tesla’s Shanghai factory, including exports to Europe and other markets, were up 41.0% from October, data from the China Passenger Car Association showed on Tuesday.
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The sales jump came as the EV specialist introduced a longer-range rear-wheel-drive variant of its best-selling Model Y in China last month, following the earlier launches of a longer-range Model 3 version and the six-seat Model Y L in the market.
The annual rise in November was the steepest in 14 months.
Tesla’s main business has been under pressure, notably from Chinese rivals, while Elon Musk shifts his focus to self-driving robotaxis and humanoid robotics.
EV newcomer Xiaomi (1810.HK), opens new tab has swiftly emerged as a Tesla challenger in China with the SU7 sedan and YU7 SUV, having exceeded its sales target of 350,000 vehicles for this year.
Tesla’s biggest Chinese rival BYD (002594.SZ), opens new tab, saw overseas shipments soar to a record high of over 130,000 vehicles last month. It has continued to outsell Tesla in Europe in recent months.
Locked in an intensifying battle in the domestic budget segment with rivals Geely (0175.HK), opens new tab and Leapmotor (9863.HK), opens new tab and others who kept hitting new sales records, BYD reported a drop in global sales for a third straight month in November.
Reporting by Qiaoyi Li, Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Tomasz Janowski
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Data centers have emerged as the foundational infrastructure powering artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and enterprise technology and are now essential to national digital strategies and private sector innovation. The AI boom has triggered an extraordinary surge in global data center development and is driving a fundamental redesign of facility architecture, site selection and investment strategy.
Despite ample opportunity in this space, the business environment for data center development is complex and dynamic, encompassing a range of legal considerations and requiring a holistic approach around strategic transactions, regulatory compliance and innovative solutions, with sustainability also a key theme.
Whether a developer, investor or operator, overview the current data center landscape and deep-dive into key issues covering:
The evolving financing and investment landscape
Tax considerations across the data center life cycle
Design and build as the cornerstone of data center development
Power as a critical input and strategic driver in data center planning
Data center operations, including managing customer contracts while addressing AI, data and cybersecurity risks, and trade and export control restrictions
Tech stocks linked to Bitcoin staged a modest comeback in overnight trading, although it wasn’t enough to wipe away the losses they suffered yesterday. The market remains on edge as Bitcoin has lost 21% over the last month. In recent days, it has stabilized at around $87K per coin and was up 0.72% today. Crypto trading platform Coinbase was down 4.76% yesterday but was up 1.37% in overnight trading, while Robinhood was down 4.09% yesterday and then crept up 0.63% this morning, premarket.
But the elephant in the digital asset room is Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the leading Bitcoin treasury company, whose stock market cap is now worth less than the Bitcoin it holds. It dropped 3.25% yesterday but was up 0.45% before the bell.
Strategy’s market cap was $50.6 billion at the time of writing and its 650,000 Bitcoins were worth $56.7 billion. The key metric for Strategy, however is its “mNAV” (multiple to net asset value), which is a ratio describing the company’s theoretical enterprise value (currently $65.2 billion) to its Bitcoin holdings. That ratio was 1.15 this morning, meaning its enterprise value is worth 15% more than its Bitcoin.
However, if the mNAV falls below 1, then Strategy faces a crisis: the reason for holding the stock vanishes, and no one will be likely to provide the company with more capital—a period of fierce selling could ensue.
The situation was made more tense after Strategy CEO Phong Le said on a podcast that the company would be willing to sell some of its Bitcoin in order to meet the dividend commitments on its debt and preferred shares. “Now, as we are looking at Bitcoin winter, as we see our mNAV compressing, my hope is our mNAV doesn’t go below one,” he said. “But if we do and we didn’t have other access to capital, we would sell Bitcoin.”
That statement was extraordinary because Saylor, the founder, has repeatedly said he would never sell. Strategy currently holds just over 3% of all Bitcoin. If it was forced to sell in order to raise cash, that too would likely start an avalanche. (The company did not immediately respond when contacted for comment.)
Traders betting on leveraged plays against Strategy have already been wiped out. Two exchange-traded funds, MSTX and MSTU, which offered double the returns of the underlying Strategy stock, have lost more than 80% of their value, according to Bloomberg. Together with a third, MSTP, they have lost $1.5 billion in value over the last month.
Strategy shares declined Tuesday after the company said it had created a a $1.44 billion “U.S. dollar reserve” to fund its dividends, and had enough cash to survive the next 12-24 months, according to the Financial Times.
Some crypto investment experts have a negative outlook. Patrick Horsman, chief investment officer at BNB Plus, another crypto treasury company, told the Wall Street Journal, “I think we could see Bitcoin get all the way back to $60,000 … We don’t think the pain is over.”
Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:
S&P 500 futures were up 0.24% this morning. The last session closed down 0.53%.
STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.35% in early trading.
The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.38% in early trading.
Nvidia-backed video generation startup Luma AI is joining a growing wave of U.S. tech companies launching operations in the U.K., with major plans for a London expansion revealed on Tuesday.
The Palo Alto-headquartered startup will look to hire around 200 employees — making up around 40% of its workforce — at its new London base by early 2027, across research, engineering, partnerships and strategic development.
The expansion comes two weeks on from Luma announcing a $900 million funding round led by Saudi Public Investment Fund-owned AI company Humain, which saw it hit a valuation upwards of $4 billion. The startup previously received backing from Nvidia.
Luma is building “world models,” a class of AI models that are able to learn from video, audio and images, alongside text, and which large language models (LLMs) like those powering OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini use.
The startup is currently targeting marketing, advertising, media and entertainment sectors with its video models, which it sells via an application programming interface (API) and as part of a content creation suite.
“With this Series C raise and the upcoming build-out of global compute infrastructure, we have the capital and capacity to bring world-scale AI to creatives everywhere,” said Amit Jain, CEO and co-founder of Luma AI. “Launching across Europe and the Middle East is the logical next step in putting this power directly in the hands of storytellers, agencies and brands globally.”
The U.K. is the starting point of the expansion because of its access to talent, Jain told CNBC.
“London has some of the best people when it comes to research, given the universities here and institutions like DeepMind,” he said. “We also consider London to be the entry point to the European market.”
AI generated image created by Luma’s Ray3 model (Luma AI)
Luma AI
Luma is the latest in a wave of North American AI labs doubling down on the U.K. and Europe as they look to take advantage of talent pools and revenue opportunities.
In November, San Francisco-based Anthropic announced plans to open offices in Paris and Munich, months on from kicking off a hiring spree in London and Dublin. Canadian AI startup Cohere said it would open a Paris office to become its EMEA headquarters in September and OpenAI announced a new office in Munich in February.
While world models may not yet be as developed as LLMs, some researchers say they are as, if not more,crucial in the pursuit of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI).
“These kinds of visual models are about a year to a year-and-a-half behind language models right now,” said Jain.
But world models will become the “natural interface” for AI for most day-to-day use in time, he predicted, pointing to the amount of time people spend watching video content each day.
Tech giants including Google, Meta and Nvidia are all developing world models for a range of use cases.
Luma released its latest model, Ray3, in September, which Jain told CNBC benchmarks higher than OpenAI’s Sora and at similar levels to Google’s Veo 3.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has expanded its Nvidia AI Computing by HPE portfolio with new offerings designed to enable secure, scalable AI factories and advanced data centre networking.
The expansion includes the opening of an AI Factory Lab in Grenoble, France. This facility is intended to allow enterprises to test and validate workloads on a sovereign, air-cooled infrastructure operating entirely within the European Union (EU).
The lab supports compliance with EU data sovereignty requirements and is available for global customers seeking to evaluate their AI deployments in a regionally compliant setting.
The Grenoble lab is equipped with HPE servers, HPE Juniper Networking PTX and MX Series routers, Nvidia accelerated computing hardware, Nvidia Spectrum-X Ethernet networking, HPE Alletra storage, and the government-ready version of Nvidia AI Enterprise software.
This allows customers to assess performance on EU-based infrastructure, addressing regulatory compliance for distributed AI workloads.
The Grenoble-based AI Factory Lab is scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2026.
HPE also announced its collaboration with Carbon3.ai to establish the Private AI Lab in London.
This environment uses the HPE Private Cloud AI platform, the Nvidia AI Enterprise suite, and Nvidia hardware to support enterprise adoption of AI applications in the UK.
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said: “We’re transforming the data centre into an AI factory — a manufacturing plant for the new industrial revolution — and by deploying the full stack of NVIDIA accelerated computing and Spectrum-X Ethernet networking with HPE, we’re creating the template for sovereign AI.
“The new AI Factory Lab provides a foundry where customers can turn data into value, securely and at scale.”
In response to requirements around operational sovereignty in Europe, HPE Private Cloud AI now offers additional graphics processing unit (GPU) configurations using NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition and Hopper GPUs.
Integration of STIG-hardened and FIPS-enabled Nvidia AI Enterprise in isolated environments supports security for compliance-driven workflows.
The platform adopts Nvidia Multi-instance GPU (MIG) technology to provide fractionalisation capabilities aimed at optimising resource utilisation.
New Datacenter Ops Agents from World Wide Technology (WWT), Nvidia, and HPE are being introduced to automate management tasks across agentic AI and hybrid cloud environments.
HPE’s sovereign AI factory solutions are now delivered with system architectures designed for country-specific regulatory compliance. These reference designs incorporate security controls necessary for audit support and regulated industry alignment.
For datacentre networking, HPE has integrated the Nvidia Spectrum-X Ethernet platform with BlueField-3 data processing units (DPUs), extending high-performance connectivity both within and between datacentres and clouds.
These networking capabilities are further expanded using HPE Juniper Networking’s MX and PTX routing platforms for low-latency connections across geographically distributed clusters.
On the storage side, HPE will deliver the Alletra Storage MP X10000 Data Intelligence Nodes as of January 2026.
This storage architecture introduces inline analytics by embedding Nvidia accelerated computing directly within the data path.
Running the Nvidia AI Enterprise stack according to the reference design for the Nvidia AI Data Platform, these nodes analyse incoming data in real time to support automated pattern inference for downstream AI pipelines.
HPE has introduced the Nvidia GB200 NVL4, now available for enterprise deployment. Each system integrates two Grace CPUs and four Blackwell GPUs per node, supporting up to 136 GPUs per rack.
On security integration, CrowdStrike has been named the endpoint protection provider for HPE Private Cloud AI deployments across hybrid environments.
This builds on CrowdStrike’s existing partnerships with both HPE and Nvidia around securing accelerated large language model applications.
HPE president and CEO Antonio Neri said: “HPE and Nvidia continue to provide the foundation for secure AI factories at any scale, with new innovations that deliver a greater range of performance for more diverse workloads than ever before.”
Fortanix technology will also be applied alongside Nvidia Confidential Computing on HPE Private Cloud AI platforms to secure agentic workloads in highly regulated or sovereign use cases.
Sovereign AI factory architectures are also available now, while orders for the Alletra Storage MP X10000 Data Intelligence Nodes will begin in January 2026.
“HPE expands Nvidia AI portfolio” was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand.
The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Good morning. Enterprise and global AI spending is widely expected to climb in 2026, driven by expanding AI infrastructure and the broader adoption of AI software and devices. Rather than being concentrated only among top tech giants, investment is increasingly coming from a wider base of enterprises.
Gartner forecasts global AI spending to exceed $2 trillion in 2026, led by the integration of AI into products such as smartphones, PCs, and other underlying infrastructure. Regional economic conditions, regulatory environments, and access to skilled talent will influence how quickly individual companies scale their initiatives. Not every company will commit to large hardware upgrades or wide deployment at the same pace.
To understand how the market is shaping up, I asked Dan Ives, a managing director and senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities, for his view. “We believe 2026 will be the year of AI monetization as the infrastructure leads to the use cases for enterprises and consumers,” Ives told me. “This is just the beginning, and we expect a bullish 2026 for tech and the AI Revolution.”
Wedbush analysts wrote in a Monday morning note that they are seeing AI-related business ramp up faster recently, and that this momentum should carry into 2026 as end-user enterprises fast-track deployments. The analysts also reject the idea that the market is showing signs of an AI bubble, emphasizing instead that adoption remains in the very early stages as CIOs and business leaders determine where AI can deliver meaningful value in their organizations.
Deloitte’s recent report similarly anticipates continued and rising AI spending in sectors such as tech, media, and telecom, but emphasizes that the focus will shift from experimentation to execution. “New foundational models, or even shiny new enterprise agentic applications, continue to impress—but translating those beyond pilots and trials requires work that’s typically considered less exciting, like data hygiene, integration into existing workflows, governance, new pricing models, and regulatory compliance,” according to the report.
These forecasts point to a common inflection point: 2026 will be less about dazzling new AI models and more about turning existing capabilities into measurable business results.
SherylEstrada sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
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Fortune 500 Power Moves
Amanda Brimmer was appointed CFO of leasing advisory and head of corporate development at JLL (No. 188), a global commercial real estate and investment management company. Reporting to JLL CFO Kelly Howe, Brimmer will partner with business leaders globally to drive financial growth and performance. Brimmer brings more than two decades of experience from Boston Consulting Group, where she most recently served as managing director and senior partner.
Galagher Jeff was appointed EVP and CFO of ARKO Corp. (No. 488), one of the largest convenience store operators and fuel wholesalers in the U.S., effective Dec. 1. Jeff most recently served as EVP and CFO for Murphy USA, Inc. Before that, he spent nearly 15 years in senior and executive finance roles with retailers, including Dollar Tree Stores, Inc., Advance Auto Parts, Inc. and Walmart Stores, Inc., in addition to a decade-long career in finance and strategy consulting at organizations including KPMG and Ernst & Young.
Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.
More notable moves
Nick Tressler was appointed CFO of Vistagen (Nasdaq: VTGN), a late clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, effective Dec. 1. Tressler brings over 20 years of financial leadership experience. Most recently, he served as CFO of DYNEX Technologies, and before that, he was the CFO at American Gene Technologies, International, and Senseonics Holdings, Inc. Tressler has also held senior finance roles at several biopharmaceutical companies.
Charlie Dowling was appointed CFO of Revive Infrastructure Group, a utility infrastructure services provider. Dowling brings to the company more than 30 years of experience. He began his career in public accounting with Arthur Andersen, and later advanced through senior financial leadership roles across the construction, manufacturing, and industrial sectors.
Big Deal
E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley’s monthly analysis found that in November the firm’s clients were net buyers in 10 of 11 S&P 500 sectors—and all signs pointed to them buying the tech dip, especially in some of the market’s megacap AI leaders, according to Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing. The top-three sectors for net buying activity were consumer discretionary (+13.41%), utilities (+7.35%), and communication services (+4.9%). Tech was close behind at +4.65%.
“A good deal of the activity in the utilities sector again appeared to be driven by ‘risk-on’ buying in the alt-energy space rather than defensive purchases of traditional utility stocks,” Larkin noted. “And for the second month in a row, clients rotated away from strength in the health care sector.”
Courtesy of E*TRADE
Going deeper
“How AI’s persuasion style mirrors humans” is the latest episode of Wharton’s Ripple Effect podcast. Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick discusses how AI systems respond to Robert Cialdini’s principles of persuasion, such as authority, reciprocity, and commitment. The episode explores why certain nudges make guardrails more flexible, how larger models show stronger resistance to influence, and how insights from social psychology reveal the emerging “para-human” nature of AI.
Overheard
“My belief in the power of connection has shaped much of my personal life and professional career.”
—DavidRisher, chief executive officer of Lyft, writes in a Fortune opinion piece titled, “Lyft CEO: This Giving Tuesday, I’m matching every rider’s donation.”
Vend Marketplaces (OB:VENDA) has repurchased NOK 441 million in outstanding bonds across two major bond issues. This move can reshape its financial position. This large-scale buyback signals management’s focus on streamlining balance sheet commitments.
See our latest analysis for Vend Marketplaces.
The recent bond repurchase comes as Vend Marketplaces’ shares have whipsawed throughout the year, ultimately delivering a 1-year total shareholder return of -1.9%. While the share price has rebounded over the last month, momentum looks mixed following a notable drop in the previous quarter. The long-term three-year total return still stands out at over 186%.
If you’re curious what else could be on the move as companies optimize their finances, broaden your search and discover fast growing stocks with high insider ownership
With shares treading water this year and the stock still trading below analyst price targets, investors now face a key question: is Vend Marketplaces undervalued after its debt reduction, or is the market already pricing in future growth?
Vend Marketplaces’ shares are trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 10.5x, noticeably below both the peer group and industry averages. At the last close price of NOK 358, this suggests that the market is pricing in more modest prospects for the business compared to peers.
The price-to-earnings (PE) ratio reflects how much investors are willing to pay for each unit of the company’s earnings. For a digital marketplace group like Vend, which has shown substantial earnings growth, a lower PE could either signal market skepticism about sustainability or represent potential value if profits hold up.
Comparatively, the broader global Interactive Media and Services industry trades at 22.7x earnings, while Vend’s peers average even higher at 27.5x. This wide discount stands out and implies the market has not fully credited recent earnings strength. If fundamentals persist, the PE could rise to those levels.
See what the numbers say about this price — find out in our valuation breakdown.
Result: Price-to-Earnings of 10.5x (UNDERVALUED)
However, weak annual net income growth and modest revenue trends could challenge the case for Vend Marketplaces being materially undervalued.
Find out about the key risks to this Vend Marketplaces narrative.
While the current earnings-based valuation points to a possible bargain, our DCF model challenges that view. The SWS DCF model estimates Vend Marketplaces’ fair value at NOK 303.47. With shares trading at NOK 358, the stock could be overvalued.
Look into how the SWS DCF model arrives at its fair value.
VENDA Discounted Cash Flow as at Dec 2025
Simply Wall St performs a discounted cash flow (DCF) on every stock in the world every day (check out Vend Marketplaces for example). We show the entire calculation in full. You can track the result in your watchlist or portfolio and be alerted when this changes, or use our stock screener to discover 927 undervalued stocks based on their cash flows. If you save a screener we even alert you when new companies match – so you never miss a potential opportunity.
If you want to dig into the details yourself, take a few minutes to explore the numbers and build your own perspective. Do it your way
A great starting point for your Vend Marketplaces research is our analysis highlighting 2 key rewards and 2 important warning signs that could impact your investment decision.
Don’t let opportunity pass you by. Active investors are always looking for the next big thing. Use the Simply Wall Street Screener to target standout opportunities and move ahead of the curve today.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Companies discussed in this article include VENDA.OL.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com
2000Thousands of Starbucks baristas are on strike across the US, warning the world’s largest coffee chain to brace for the “longest and biggest” bout of industrial action in its history.
Barely a year after Brian Niccol, the Starbucks CEO, tried to draw a line under bitter divisions between its management and unionized workers, pledging to “engage constructively” with them, the American coffee giant is now grappling with an escalating strike during its lucrative holiday trading season.
About 2,500 workers are striking across 85 cities and 120 stores – and urging customers to steer clear. Starbucks claims less than 1% of its coffee houses have experienced disruption due to the industrial action.
But the union, Starbucks Workers United, which represents 11,000 baristas at more than 550 stores, is threatening to escalate the strike far beyond its current footprint unless executives make concessions during contract negotiations.
Four years after the first Starbucks-owned US store voted to form a union, defying intense resistance from the company, relations between both sides have deteriorated.
“It’s still shocking to me to wake up and have them every day still fighting us the way that they’re fighting us,” Michelle Eisen, spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United, told the Guardian. “Because we have proven time and time again that we’re not going anywhere.”
For decades, Starbucks, founded in the 1970s, and taken over in the 1980s by Howard Schultz, who built it into the global coffee colossus it is today, successfully fought off unionization.
The chain dubbed its workers “partners”, and promoted a package of “industry-leading” benefits, including healthcare coverage and education costs.
“I’m not an anti-union person. I am pro-Starbucks, pro-partner, pro-Starbucks culture,” Schultz told employees in 2022. “We didn’t get here by having a union.”
Baristas and supporters picket outside a Starbucks in New York last month. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
By then, however, cracks had already started to appear in the dam. The previous year baristas at a store in Buffalo, New York, voted 19-8 in favor of unionizing – setting the stage for hundreds of outlets across the US to follow suit.
Michelle Eisen started working at the Buffalo store in August 2010, to supplement her job as a production stage manager, in between theater shows.
She was a longtime Starbucks customer, and trusted its reputation for treating workers well. And for years, Eisen felt valued as an employee, receiving regular wage increases and working around her production schedule.
But things started to change in about 2016, according to Eisen. “We saw our benefits costs go up significantly. Those twice a year raises went away completely,” she said in an interview. “All of a sudden, we were getting one cost of living raise at the beginning of the calendar year, which, most of the time, was significantly less than the raises previous to that. And that’s really when we started to see the staffing levels slowly start to decline in these stores.”
Four years later, things “really, really, really came to a head”, Eisen said.
Starbucks stores stayed open when Covid hit in 2020. Baristas startled to encounter increasingly aggressive and confrontational customers, and some workers felt their pay was too low for what they believed had become more intense work in deteriorating conditions.
Eisen, whose theater job was shut down due to the pandemic, took on as many hours as she could at Starbucks, but still struggled to make ends meet. After 11 years at the company, she was only making a few cents more an hour than a new hire. In 2021, she considered quitting.
But then she started speaking with co-workers about organizing a union. A group of about 50 Starbucks baristas in the Buffalo area went public with their plan in August 2021.
“To me, it was a no-brainer,” said Eisen. “Because it gave an opportunity to try to address some of these problems, and fix them from the inside. And I was hoping, beyond hope, that it would work, we would be successful, and I wouldn’t have to leave. Because I didn’t want to.”
Starbucks executives did not see the move as a no-brainer. Managers and corporate executives, including the chain’s then North American president, Rossann Williams, and Schultz, descended on Buffalo in a bid to try to stop the effort to unionize.
“No partner [employee] has ever needed to have a representative seek to obtain things we all have as partners at Starbucks,” Schultz wrote in a letter to workers. “And I am saddened and concerned to hear anyone thinks that is needed now.”
“They waged an absolutely vicious union-busting campaign,” claimed Eisen. “They still are, but it started there in Buffalo, from the very beginning. And against all odds, in spite of that, my store was able to win their union election on December 9, 2021 and became the first [unionized] store. And then it was kind of a whirlwind.”
Since that first victory, mobilizing workers have won over 650 union elections, and lost about 120.
The chain has since moved to closed 59 unionized stores, according to Starbucks Workers United. Others are still awaiting for results to be certified.
As as a wave of mobilization started to sweep the firm’s ranks in early 2022, its top tier was overhauled. Three months after the Buffalo vote, Starbucks abruptly announced its CEO Kevin Johnson was standing down, and Schultz, its veteran boss, would return for a third stint in charge.
Shares in Starbucks were under pressure, costs were rising as Covid continued to disrupt supply chains, and – while the firm continued to generate billions of dollars in sales every quarter – customers were spending less time inside its stores.
Starbucks stock price has fluctuated across three different CEOs
Schultz was tasked with turning around a business many on Wall Street felt was losing its way. Many of his freshly unionized baristas agreed. But Schultz declined to work with Starbucks Workers United, declaring he would never embrace the union, and offering new benefits and pay increases to non-union workers.
“It was just infuriating that we were being bullied in this way, and made to feel like we were doing something wrong, because we were trying to hold the company accountable and trying to make them better,” said Eisen.
A new CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, was tapped later that year. Unionized baristas started to take action, including by demonstrating on the chain’s “red cup day” holiday in November 2022 and 2023.
Relations slowly improved. In early 2024, Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United agreed a new framework for collective bargaining agreements, sparking hope of a first union contract by the end of that year. Workers at unionized stores were granted the benefits that had been given to non-union workers in 2022.
But the chain’s business woes appeared to worsen, with competition mounting and footfall declining. Narasimhan was ousted after 16 months as CEO last year, and replaced by Brian Niccol, the Chipotle boss.
Bargaining stuttered to a halt following Niccol’s arrival, according to the union. “The company picked right back up where they left off at the end of 2023, when it came to violating workers rights,” said Eisen. “And we still don’t have a contract.”
A Starbucks outlet in New York. Photograph: Adam Gray/Getty Images
Niccol moved fast in a bid to turn around the chain, launching a “Back to Starbucks” campaign, aimed at reversing declining sales. He faced criticism after it emerged he would commute from his home in Newport Beach, California, to the firm’s Seattle headquarters, rather than relocate.
Progress at the bargaining table, meanwhile, stalled. Niccol remained mum on the union, and its pursuit of a first union contract.
“The changing of CEOs within the last five years alone has kind of shown that this company has a lot it’s still figuring out,” Zarian Antonio Pouncy, who has worked for 11 years as a barista in Las Vegas, told the Guardian. His store unionized in late 2023.
Pouncy said: “Instead of listening to the partners – listening to those on the forefront, dealing with the business every day – they’re relying too much on leadership in their opinion, and AI, algorithms and numbers, to kind of show them how business works.”
Julie Su has been watching closely. As US deputy secretary of labor, and acting labor secretary, between 2021 and 2025, she helped oversee the Biden administration’s efforts to reinvigorate the US labor movement — as thousands of Starbucks baristas voted to unionize.
“When workers choose a union, they deserve a contract,” Su told the Guardian. “Too often, it takes a long time to get one because the employer uses delay as a weapon.
“The time to a first contract is used to punish workers for unionizing, to undermine the effort, or to send a message that there is no benefit to joining a union because nothing changes at work for years. Usually all of the above. This is unacceptable.”
On average, it takes about 15 months for a union to secure a first contract with an employer, often due to delays and obstruction by management. At Starbucks, nearly 48 months have passed since the Buffalo store voted to unionize.
“The other way this operates as a specific tool for union-busting in the case of a company like Starbucks is the company tries to wait out its employees, hoping that they leave before a contract is reached,” added Su.
In this 2021 picture, Starbucks employees in Buffalo celebrate after winning their union election to become the first unionized store in the US. Photograph: Joshua Bessex/AP
Starbucks Workers United has filed hundreds of unfair labor practice (ULP) charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Dozens of union leaders have been fired, and alleged retaliation for their union support. Starbucks denied this in all cases, although several workers won reinstatements.
Tensions simmered. Starbucks Workers United claimed baristas at several hundred stores walked off the job last December. And in April, union delegates voted to reject a contract proposal from the company which would have guaranteed annual raises of at least 2%, dismissing the increase as “not good enough”.
On 13 November – “Red Cup Day’, inside the Starbucks empire – more than a thousand US workers walked off the job, demanding the chain present a “fair” contract. The chain played down the strike’s impact.
The union escalated. A week later, the action was expanded to 65 cities and 95 stores, with 2,000 workers on strike. Starbucks Workers United also staged a blockade of Starbucks’ largest distribution center on the US east coast, in York, Pennsylvania.
On 24 November, Starbucks workers rallied outside of the company’s corporate office in Newport Beach, Niccol’s part-time base, to demand the company finish the contract.
On 28 November, the strike was expanded further. About 2,500 baristas across 120 stores are now involved, according to the union.
“The company has been stonewalling us,” said Diego Franco, a Starbucks barista for six years in Chicago. “My store chose to go out on Red Cup Day, the busiest sales day for the company, because we were frankly fed up.
“You can’t expect us to continue to come into work, to continue to push policies and procedures that don’t actually fix any of the problems that we face at work – not just for my co-workers, but for the customers and our regulars. I would much rather stand outside in the cold and be on strike than know that I’m showing up to work where I’m constantly being disrespected by our CEO, and by upper management.”
Contacted for comment, Starbucks played down the impact of the strike so far, and claimed to have seen record holiday sales so far this year.
“As we’ve said, 99% of our 17,000 US locations remain open and welcoming customers – including many the union publicly stated would strike but never closed or have since reopened,” said Jaci Anderson, a spokesperson for Starbucks. “Regardless of the union’s plans, we do not anticipate any meaningful disruption.
“When the union is ready to return to the bargaining table, we’re ready to talk. The facts are clear: Starbucks offers the best job in retail, with pay and benefits averaging $30 per hour for hourly partners. People choose to work here and stay here – our turnover is less than half the industry average, and we receive more than a million job applications every year.”
A person holds a placard as Starbucks workers go on strike. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
A growing number of progressive political leaders are unpersuaded by such reassurances. Over 100 members of Congress signed letters demanding Starbucks return to negotiations with the union and finish the contract.
“While workers are on strike, I won’t be buying any Starbucks, and I’m asking you to join us,” New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani wrote on social media. His transition co-chair, Lina Khan, and incoming first deputy mayor Dean Fuleihan have stood on picket lines. Mamdani appeared on a picket line with Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday.
Seattle mayor-elect Katie Wilson appeared on a Starbucks picket line hours after her acceptance speech, where she told workers and supporters: “Baristas are the heart and soul of this company, and they deserve better than empty promises and corporate union-busting.”
Eisen left Starbucks in May, after 15 years. She currently serves as the principal spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United.
She said: “This company is being run into the ground, and these unionized workers are the only ones standing up and saying, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Our cafes are not places that people want to come spend time any more. They don’t want to come in and spend their money here because of the way you are running this business. You have to start investing in us if you want to see this company turned around.’
“Workers are done, and they’re going to continue to escalate.
“They’re going to continue to be on the unfair labor practice strike, and they are prepared to make this the longest and biggest strike in company history if the company doesn’t return to resolve these remaining issues.”
