Sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose 4.8% in November on the month, the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday, to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 4.15 million units. Annually, sales rose 6.1% higher -- the largest year-over-year gain in three years and the third-highest rate of 2024. "Home sales momentum is building," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for NAR. "More buyers have entered the market as the economy continues to add jobs, housing inventory grows compared to a year ago, and consumers get used to a new normal of mortgage rates between 6% and 7%." The supply of homes for sales at the end of October totaled 1.33 million units, increasing 17.7% from last year and representing an estimated 3.8 month supply; a six-month supply is considered a balanced housing market between sellers and buyers. That tight supply continues to impact prices, with the median November sale price increasing 4.7% annually at $406,100.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is now available through phone calls and texts, the company announced Wednesday, marking artificial intelligence assistant's latest expansion into the consumer market beyond desktops and smartphones. By dialing 1-800-CHATGPT (1-800-242-8478) in the United States or messaging the number via WhatsApp (NASDAQ: META), users can access the chatbot's real-time conversational features. The company said U.S. callers will initially receive 15 minutes free per month. OpenAI's mission is to "make artificial general intelligence beneficial to all of humanity, and part of that is making it as accessible as possible to as many people as we can," said Kevin Weil, chief product officer at OpenAI, during a livestream on Wednesday. "Today, we're taking the next step and bringing ChatGPT to your telephone."

Grubhub will pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul over claims of unlawful practices that impacted restaurants, delivery drivers and customers, the federal agency announced Tuesday. "Our investigation found that Grubhub tricked its customers, deceived its drivers, and unfairly damaged the reputation and revenues of restaurants that did not partner with Grubhub -- all in order to drive scale and accelerate growth," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release. The company has had as many as 325,000 unaffiliated restaurants on its platform, according to the complaint, allegedly listing these restaurants to drive growth but caused customers to pay more in delivery fees, which impacted restaurant reputations. The complaint adds that Grubhub would alleged try to sell an unaffiliated restaurant a paid partnership instead of removing it from the platform when asked.

Chinese retail app Temu (NASDAQ: PDD) was the most downloaded free app in the United States for the second year in a row, according to Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) top 2024 App Store apps list released Monday. Rounding out the top of the list, Meta Platform's (NASDAQ: META) Threads came in second, while ByteDance's TikTok was the third most downloaded -- after holding the second spot last year and the top position in 2022. From there, OpenAI's ChatGpt was ranked at the fourth-most downloaded app, coming ahead of Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Search app at number five. Meta's apps Instagram and WhatsApp came in at number 6 and 7, respectively, following by ByteDance's CapCut, then YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Shein, Facebook, Telegram, Snapchat (NYSE: SNAP), Cash App (NYSE: SQ), Spotify (NYSE: SPOT), Max (NASDAQ: WBD), McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) and finally Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) at number 20.

ServiceTitan (NASDAQ: TTAN) shares popped over 40% in their debut on the Nasdaq on Thursday after the cloud software vendor raised about $625 million in its initial public offering. The company sold its shares at $71 each, which was above its expected range, and opened and closed at $101 per share, bringing its market capitalization to about $8.9 billion. ServiceTitan targets businesses in trades such as plumbing, landscaping and electrical work with management software for sales leads, recording calls, generating quotes and scheduling jobs -- the company has garnered about 8,000 customers with more than $10,000 in annualized billings as of January 31, 2024. The company is the most large venture backed (Bessemer Venture Partners, PG and Iconiq Growth are among its top shareholders) IPO since Rubik's (NYSE: RBRK) launch in April and Reddit's (NYSE: RDDT) debut in March.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced Wednesday that its testing the ability to share files between Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone and Windows 11 or Windows 10 PCs via its proprietary Phone Link app and Link to Windows app, first rolling out the tool to Windows Insiders. To share a file from an iPhone, users first need to select the file, tap the share icon, and then select "Link to Windows," where users can from there select the desired device to share the file with. To share from Windows to an iPhone, users need to select the file, right-click and then select "My Phone." Microsoft launched Phone Link for iOS last year, which allows iPhone users to access features like phone calls, iMessages, contacts, and other phone notifications directly on their Windows PC; the app had only previously been available to Android users.

General Motors (NYSE: GM) announced Tuesday it will no longer fund its commercial robotaxi business Cruise, and will instead combine the majority-owned Cruise (GM owns 90% of the subsidiary) and GM technical teams to "realign its autonomous driving strategy." GM plans to pursue "acquisition of the remaining shares," as it has agreements with other shareholders to raises its ownership stake to more than 97%. The Detroit automaker said in a statement that "the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market," as the reasons behind its decision. The change in the company's robotaxi strategy comes one year after one of its vehicles struck a pedestrian, leading to regulatory scrutiny and negative public perception. The robotaxi market has also expanded to include players like Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Waymo, Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Zoox, Chinese automakers Pony.ai and WeRide, and Tesla's (NASDAQ: TSLA) self-driving Cybercab concept.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday to block its ordered supervision of the tech company's peer-to-peer payments product, which is no longer offered in the United States. "This is a clear case of government overreach involving Google Pay peer-to-peer payments, which never raised risks and is no longer provided in the U.S., and we are challenging it in court," a Google spokesperson Jose Castañeda said in a statement, quoted by TechCrunch. The CFPB alleged in its order that Google's handling of its payment products may pose a risk to consumers, citing multiple complaints including money transfer errors. In its lawsuit, Google claims that CFPB made a legal error by setting an "exceedingly low bar" for what it counts as risks to consumers.

Dollar General (NYSE: DG) is joining its discount retailer peers like Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Temu (NASDAQ: PDD) in testing same-day delivery, with CEO Todd Vasos telling analysts during the company's earnings call Thursday that they "soft launched" the program in September. Dollar General not offers same-day delivery at about 75 locations through a third-party company, Vasos said, expecting to expand the offering to "thousands of stores." Vasos added that it launched its own program after partnering with DoorDash (NASDAQ: DASH), with deliveries available at about 16,000 stores. The new service, DG Delivery, is available in select stores through the retailer's app, offering home deliveries in as little as an hour. Vasos added during the call that same-day delivery is an opportunity to grow its advertising business, since customers are expected to engage more frequently with its app when placing orders.

Robinhood (NASDAQ: HOOD) CEO Vlad Tenev said Wednesday that the popular retail brokerage firm is exploring a possible expansion into sports betting. "We're keenly looking into that space. Nothing to announce just year, but it's so important to our customers and in culture that we're excited about it," Tenev said during the company's inaugural investor day, quoted by CNBC. Trading around sports events could be done on Robinhood through event contracts, similar to the ones used by the firm to allow U.S. users to trade the presidential election in early November. "We believe event contracts give people a tool to engage in real-time decision-making, unlocking a new asset class that democratizes access to events as they unfold," the company said in an early November statement. Shares of DraftKings (NASDAQ: DKNG), Flutter (NYSE: FLUT) and Penn Entertainment (NASDAQ: PENN) were also lower on the news.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is currently using Amazon Web Services' (NASDAQ: AMZN) custom artificial intelligence chips for its services, Benoit Dupin, senior director of machine learning and AI at Apple, said during Amazon's annual AWS re:Invent conference on Tuesday. "We have a strong relationship, and the infrastructure is both reliable and able to serve our customers worldwide," Dupin said. Dupin said Apple had used AWS from more than a decode for services including Apple Maps, Apple Music and Siri, and has used Amazon's Inferentia and Graviton chips for its search services. Dupin also signaled that Apple plans to use Amazon's Trainium2 chip to pretrain its own AI models, stating that "in early stages of evaluating Trainium2 we expect early numbers up to 50% improvement in efficiency with pretraining."

Disney's (NYSE: DIS) "Moana 2," Universal's (NASDAQ: CMCSA) "Wicked," and Paramount's (NASDAQ: PARA) "Gladiator II," brought in a Thanksgiving weekend record of $420 million at the box office as of Sunday, according to data from Comscore. "Moana 2," led the 5-day weekend with domestic ticket sales of $221 million, making it the highest grossing Thanksgiving weekend film of all time, while "Wicked" brought in an estimated $117.5 million sales and "Gladiator" pulled in $44 million in sales over the holiday period. "A perfect storm of Thanksgiving box office, powered by a trio of films from the musical, epic drama, and family film genres, has arrived at the most advantageous moment to reinvigorate the theatrical marketplace after a post-summer malaise," said Paul Dergarabedian senior media analyst at Comscore, in a report.

Thanksgiving shoppers spent $33.6 billion online globally, rising 6% annually, according to Salesforce, as the weekend-long shopping event begins. In the United States, sales rose 8% to $8.1 billion on Thursday, while Europe's market gained 10%. Salesforce said that 72% of all orders made on Thursday were through mobile devices, up 3% year-over-year, with mobile accounting for 80% of all online traffic -- in line with 2023. “Holiday shopping momentum is building throughout Cyber Week with online traffic and sales on the rise. After waiting all year for the best deals of the season, shoppers are finally ready to make their holiday purchases and are flocking to their favorite sites via their mobile devices,” said Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce, in a statement.

Mortgage applications rose 12% from the previous week and 52% higher than the same week last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's weekly report on Wednesday, as falling mortgage rates drove more homebuyers into the market. The average contract interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances decreased to 6.86% from 6.90%, the first time rates declined in two months. "With the growth in for-sale inventory and signs that the economy remains strong, buyers have remained in the market even though rates have increased recently. The increase in conventional purchase applications helped push the average purchase loan size to $439,200, its highest level in almost a month," said Joel Kan, an economist at MBA, in a statement.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Tuesday the approval of T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) and SpaceX's Starlink to provide internet access to remote areas, or "dead zones." This license is the first of its kind for the agency, allowing a wireless carrier to provide supplemental telecommunications coverage from space through a satellite operator. T-Mobile said that over 500,000 square miles of the United States are currently unreachable by cell towers due to factors like terrain and land use restrictions. "The FCC is actively promoting competition in the space economy by supporting more partnerships between terrestrial mobile carriers and satellite operators to deliver on a single network future that will put an end to mobile dead zones,” said FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement.