If Ferrero Rocher chocolates really fell from the sky, they’d be cannonballing into cornflakes right now. The renowned family-owned Italian candymaker, Ferrero, is busting into the cereal aisle with a $3.1 billion acquisition of Kellogg’s, it announced yesterday.

The chocolate company will pay 40% above Kellogg’s average share price from the past month—a higher-than-usual acquisition premium—to diversify its snack-heavy portfolio with Frosted Flakes, Kashi, and more than a dozen other boxed breakfast idols.

Investors likey: Kellogg’s shares surged Wednesday night on early reports of the acquisition, which is set to infuse its cereals with more resources for growth, executives from both companies said yesterday. The deal is a deep breath for Kellogg’s, which has struggled since it split off from the Kellogg Co. snack business (now known as Kellanova) in 2023.

It’s a crunchy time to get into the cereal biz

Ferrero is seeking more control of US food markets at a time when Americans are switching up at the grocery store. Kellogg’s lowered its sales forecast in May after noticing two not-so-good changes:

• Consumers, likely those with more disposable income, are swapping out sugary shelf items for healthier foods.
• Meanwhile, cash-strapped customers are trying to save a couple bucks by opting for cheaper, store-brand cereals.

Ferrero has other concerns. Amid an uncertain future for chocolate supplies (cocoa prices have skyrocketed since 2023 thanks to crop disease and extreme weather), the chocolatier has expanded its global reach beyond cocoa, most recently by buying the maker of Blue Bunny and Bomb Pops in 2022. Ferrero posted a 9% sales jump last year, aided by its US businesses.—ML

Delta gave the airline industry some hope. “Things aren’t that bad” was the main takeaway from Delta’s quarterly earnings report yesterday. The airline reinstated its annual forecast, which it had pulled in April as a result of economic uncertainty. The new outlook isn’t as rosy as it once was, but it was enough to push Delta’s stock up and give airlines some much-needed optimism (United, American, and Southwest all jumped yesterday, too). Delta CEO Ed Bastian said consumers have become “a little numb” to tariff talk and are booking travel for later in the year, rather than holding off entirely. United and American report their earnings next week with hopes of adding to the sector’s momentum.

‍ A judge blocked Trump from carrying out his ban on birthright citizenship. The judicial back-and-forth on the White House’s controversial order continued yesterday when a federal judge in New Hampshire issued a temporary halt to President Trump’s mission of ending birthright citizenship, even though the Supreme Court recently limited lower courts’ ability to issue such nationwide injunctions. The New Hampshire judge was able to carry out the injunction because the case brought to him was a class-action suit, for which the Supreme Court carved out an exception because they involve large groups of plaintiffs. This is undoubtedly not the last you will hear on the matter.

Musk says Grok is coming to Teslas by next week. Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot that had to be briefly shut down this week because it called itself “MechaHitler” as part of an antisemitic posting spree, will be available in Tesla vehicles by “next week at the latest,” the billionaire said yesterday. The news came shortly after xAI released Grok 4, the latest iteration of the chatbot that seemingly recommended a second Holocaust. Musk hopes integrating Grok into Teslas will help the company compete with automakers that already feature ChatGPT voice assistants, like Volkswagen.—AE

Katy Perry and novel drug production have something in common: Silicon Valley seems to think both belong in space. Varda, a Peter Thiel-backed space startup experimenting with manufacturing medicine in low-earth orbit, announced yesterday that it raised $187 million —bringing its total funding haul to $329 million.

Celestial pillmaker

Varda’s space capsules function as both autonomous orbital pharma production facilities and also vehicles that ferry pharma products back to Earth, offering a cheaper alternative to experiments on the International Space Station. Since its founding in 2021, the California-based company has completed three missions, each launched on SpaceX rockets.

Why make drugs in space?

• Some protein-based therapies rely on drugs with a hyper-specific crystal structure that can be refined only in a low-gravity environment.
• In 2024, Varda successfully created a superior version of the HIV drug ritonavir in space.

The company plans to ramp up its mission cadence and turn its capsules into space drug factories capable of mass production.

Pharma is reaching for the stars…Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb are experimenting with producing enhanced drugs in space. Meanwhile, the startup LambdaVision is harnessing the low-gravity environment in orbit to produce artificial retina implants for blind patients.—SK

Complaining about a $7 cup of coffee is old news. Weak harvests in Japan this spring and increased demand have drained matcha supply chains for OG fans of the green powder and cappuccino converts.

Most authentic matcha is from Japan, produced through a centuries-old process of grinding up tencha, a certain kind of shade-grown green tea leaves, into a fine powder. The country’s production of tencha hit 5,336 tons last year, a 2.7x jump from 10 years ago. Japan’s total green tea exports increased by 25% last year, mostly thanks to the growing popularity of matcha, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries.

• More Japanese farmers have switched to the crop to keep up with the demand driven by health-conscious Western consumers.
• Matcha boasts more caffeine than other green teas and added antioxidants.

But just as everyone started joining the hype…the Kyoto region, where nearly a quarter of Japan’s tencha production takes place, suffered record-breaking heat waves last summer. And matcha lovers are roasting hoarders and tourists who attempt to circumvent shop limits.

Looking ahead: Farmers in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand are scrambling to plant new fields to increase tencha yields, but freshly planted crops take five years to mature enough for harvest.—MM

Superman may routinely save humanity from all manner of evildoer, but the real question is: Can he create shareholder value?

Execs at Warner Bros. Discovery will be watching closely this weekend as Superman, the first movie in James Gunn’s rebooted DC Universe, hits theaters: It’s expected to rake in about $200 million at the global box office, Deadline reported.

• That’d be a win for the Brothers Warner and a vote of confidence from audiences in its new DC Comics film franchise after previous attempts failed to wow moviegoers or critics.
• This new Superman, with David Corenswet playing the titular Man of Steel, has earned an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, much better than the last three Supes films and roughly on par with Richard Donner’s 1978 classic.

It’s also a big moment for the superhero genre in general, which doesn’t put butts in seats like it used to. Especially if the movie makes its characters say things like, “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders…right before she died.”—AE

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