NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — The winged passenger ferry gliding over the surface of Narragansett Bay could be a new method of coastal transportation or a new kind of warship.

Its maker, Regent Craft, is betting on both.

Twelve quietly buzzing propellers line the 65-foot wingspan of Paladin, a sleek ship with an airplane’s nose. It looks nothing like the sailboats and fishing trawlers it speeds past through New England’s largest estuary.

“We had this vision five years ago for a seaglider — something that is as fast as an aircraft and as easy to drive as a boat,” said CEO Billy Thalheimer, jubilant after an hours-long test run of the new vessel.

On a cloudy August morning, Thalheimer sat in the Paladin’s cockpit and, for the first time, took control of his company’s prototype craft to test its hydrofoils. The electric-powered watercraft has three modes — float, foil and fly.

From the dock, it sets off like any motorized boat. Farther away from land, it rises up on hydrofoils — the same kind used by sailing ships that compete in America’s Cup. The foils enable it to travel more than 50 miles per hour — and about a person’s height — above the bay.

What makes this vessel so unusual is that it’s designed to soar about 30 feet above the water at up to 180 miles per hour — a feat that hasn’t quite happened yet, with the first trial flights off Rhode Island’s seacoast planned for the end of summer or early fall.

If successful, the Paladin will coast on a cushion of air over Rhode Island Sound, lifting with the same “ground effect” that pelicans, cormorants and other birds use to conserve energy as they swiftly glide over the sea. It could zoom to New York City — which takes at least three hours by train and longer on traffic-clogged freeways — in just an hour.

As it works to prove its seaworthiness to the U.S. Coast Guard and other regulators around the world, Regent is already lining up future customers for commercial ferry routes around Florida, Hawaii, Japan and the Persian Gulf.

Regent is also working with the U.S. Marines to repurpose the same vessels for island-hopping troops in the Pacific. Those vessels would likely trade electric battery power for jet fuel to cover longer journeys.

With backing from influential investors including Peter Thiel and Mark Cuban, Thalheimer says he’s trying to use new technology to revive the “comfort and refined nature” of 1930s-era flying boats that were popular in aviation’s golden age before they were eclipsed by commercial airlines.

This time, Thalheimer added, they’re safer, quieter and emission-free.

“I thought they made travel easier in a way that made total sense to me,” Cuban said by email this week. “It’s hard to travel around water for short distances. It’s expensive and a hassle. Regent can solve this problem and make that travel fun, easy and efficient.”

Co-founders and friends Thalheimer, a skilled sailor, and chief technology officer Mike Klinker, who grew up lobster fishing, met while both were freshmen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later worked together at Boeing. They started Regent in 2020.

They’ve already tested and flown a smaller model. But the much bigger, 12-passenger Paladin — prototype of a product line called Viceroy — began foil testing this summer after years of engineering research and development. A manufacturing facility is under construction nearby, with the vessels set to carry passengers by 2027.

The International Maritime Organization classifies “wing-in-ground-effect” vehicles such as Regent’s as ships, not aircraft. But a database of civilian ships kept by the London-based organization lists only six around the world, all of them built before it issued new safety guidance on such craft in 2018 following revisions sought by China, France and Russia.

The IMO says it treats them as marine vessels because they operate in the vicinity of other watercraft and must use the same rules for avoiding collisions. The Coast Guard takes a similar approach.

“You drive it like a boat,” Thalheimer said. “If there’s any traffic on the harbor, you’ll see it on the screen. If you see a boat, you’d go around it. We’re never flying over boats or anything like that.”

One of the biggest technical challenges in Regent’s design is the shift from foiling to flying. Hydrofoils are fast for a seafaring vessel, but far slower than the speeds needed to lift a conventional airplane from a runway.

That’s where air blown by the 12 propellers comes in, effectively tricking the wing into generating high lift at low speeds.

All of this has worked perfectly on the computer simulations at Regent’s headquarters in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. The next step is testing it over the water.

For decades, the only warship known to mimic such a ground-effect design was the Soviet Union’s hulking ekranoplan, which was built to fly under radar detection but never widely used. Recently, however, social media images of an apparent Chinese military ekranoplan have caught the attention of naval experts amid increasingly tense international disputes in the South China Sea.

Regent has capitalized on those concerns, pitching its gliders to the U.S. government as a new method for carrying troops and cargo across island chains in the Indo-Pacific region. It could also do clandestine intelligence collection, anti-submarine warfare and be a “mothership” for small drones, autonomous watercraft or medical evacuations, said Tom Huntley, head of Regent’s government relations and defense division.

They fly below radar and above sonar, which makes them “really hard to see,” Huntley said.

While the U.S. military has shown increasing interest, questions remain about their detectability, as well as their stability in various sea states and wind conditions, and their “cost at scale beyond a few prototypes and maintainability,” said retired U.S. Navy Capt. Paul S. Schmitt, an associate research professor at the Naval War College, across the bay in Newport, Rhode Island.

Schmitt, who has seen Paladin from afar while sailing, said he also has questions about what kind of military mission would fit Regent’s “relatively short range and small transport capacity.”

The possibilities that most excite Cuban and other Regent backers are commercial.

Driving Interstate 95 through all the cities that span Florida’s Atlantic Coast can take the better part of a day, which is one reason why Regent is pitching Miami as a hub for its coastal ferry trips.

The Viceroy seagliders can already carry more passengers than the typical seaplane or helicopter, but a growing number of electric hydrofoil startups, such as Sweden’s Candela and California-based Navier, are trying to stake out ferry routes around the world.

Thalheimer sees his vehicles as more of a complement than a competitor to electric hydrofoils that can’t travel as fast, since they will all use the same docks and charging infrastructure but could specialize in different trip lengths.

Walmart on Thursday raised its full-year earnings and sales outlook as its online business posted another quarter of double-digit gains, even as the company said costs are rising from higher tariffs.

The big-box retailer topped Wall Street’s quarterly sales estimates but fell short of earnings expectations, the first time it missed on quarterly earnings since May 2022. The company said it felt pressure on profits for the period, including from some one-time expenses, such as restructuring costs, pricier insurance claims and litigation settlements.

Walmart said it now expects net sales to grow 3.75% to 4.75% for the fiscal year, up from its previous expectations of 3% to 4%. It raised its adjusted earnings per share outlook slightly to $2.52 to $2.62, up from a prior range of $2.50 to $2.60 per share.

In an interview with CNBC, Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said the company is working hard to keep prices low — including speeding up imports from overseas and stepping up the number of Rollbacks, or limited-time discounts, in its stores.

“This is managed on an item-by-item and category-by-category basis,” he said. “There are certainly areas where we have fully absorbed the impact of higher tariff costs. There are other areas where we’ve had to pass some of those costs along.”

But he added “tariff-impacted costs are continuing to drift upwards.”

Even so, Rainey said Walmart hasn’t seen a change in customer spending. For example, sales of private label items, which typically cost less than national brands, were roughly flat year over year, he said.

“Everyone is looking to see if there are any creaks in the armor or anything that’s happening with the consumer, but it’s been very consistent,” he said. “They continue to be very resilient.”

Yet on the company’s earnings call, CEO Doug McMillon said middle- and lower-income households have been more sensitive to tariff-related price increases, particularly in discretionary categories.

“We see a corresponding moderation in units at the item level as customers switch to other items, or in some cases, categories,” he said.

Here’s what the big-box reported for the fiscal second quarter compared with what Wall Street expected, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Walmart shares fell about 2% in premarket trading Thursday.

Walmart’s net income jumped to $7.03 billion, or 88 cents per share, in the three-month period that ended July 31, compared with $4.50 billion, or 56 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue rose from $169.34 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Comparable sales for Walmart U.S. climbed 4.6% in the second quarter, excluding fuel, compared with the year-ago period, as both the grocery and health and wellness category saw strong growth. That was higher than the 4% increase that analysts expected. The industry metric, also called same-store sales, includes sales from stores and clubs open for at least a year.

At Sam’s Club, comparable sales jumped 5.9% excluding fuel, higher than the 5.2% that analysts anticipated.

E-commerce sales jumped 25% globally and 26% in the U.S., as both online purchases and advertising grew. In the U.S., Walmart said sales through store-fulfilled delivery of groceries and other items grew nearly 50% year over year, with one-third of those orders expedited. The company charges a fee for some of those faster deliveries, and others are included as a benefit of its subscription-based membership program, Walmart+.

Its global advertising business grew 46% year over year, including Vizio, the smart TV maker it acquired for $2.3 billion last year. Its U.S. advertising business, Walmart Connect, grew by 31%.

As Walmart’s online business drums up more revenue from home deliveries, advertising and commissions from sellers on its third-party marketplace, e-commerce has become a profitable business. The company marked a milestone in May — posting its first profitable quarter for its e-commerce business in the U.S. and globally.

Rainey said on Thursday that Walmart doubled its e-commerce profitability in the fiscal second quarter from the prior quarter.

In the U.S., shoppers both visited Walmart more and spent more on those trips during the quarter. Customer transactions rose 1.5% year over year and average ticket increased 3.1% for Walmart’s U.S. business.

As the largest U.S. retailer, Walmart offers a unique window into the financial health of American households. As higher duties have come in fits and starts — with some getting delayed and others going into effect earlier this month — Wall Street has tried to understand how those costs will ripple through the U.S. economy.

Walmart warned in May that it would have to raise some prices due to higher levies on imports, even with its size and scale. The company’s comments drew the ire of President Donald Trump, who said in a social media post that Walmart should “EAT THE TARIFFS.”

About a third of what Walmart sells in the U.S. comes from other parts of the world, with China, Mexico, Canada, Vietnam and India representing its largest markets for imports, Rainey said in May.

According to an analysis by CNBC of about 50 items sold by the retailer, some of those price changes have already hit shelves. Items that rose in price at Walmart over the summer included a frying pan, a pair of jeans and a car seat.

Rainey on Thursday declined to specify items or categories where Walmart had increased prices, saying the company is “trying to keep prices as low as we can.”

He said one of the company’s strategies has been bringing in inventory early, particularly for Sam’s Club as it gets ready for the second half of the fiscal year and its crucial holiday season. At the end of the quarter, inventory was up about 3.5% at Sam’s Club, Rainey said. It was up 2.2% for Walmart U.S.

On the company’s earnings call, McMillon said the impact of tariffs has been “gradual enough that any behavioral adjustments by the customer have been somewhat muted.”

“But as we replenish inventory at post-tariff price levels, we’ve continued to see our costs increase each week, which we expect will continue into the third and fourth quarters,” he said.

Yet even with higher costs from tariffs, Walmart has fared better than its retail competitors as it has leaned into its reputation for value, competed on faster deliveries to customers’ homes and attracted more business from higher-income households.

The Arkansas-based retailer’s performance has diverged sharply from rival Target, which posted another quarter of sales declines on Wednesday and named the new CEO who will be tasked with trying to turn around the company.

Walmart has gained from Target’s struggles. It has followed the Target playbook by launching more exclusive and trend-driven brands, including grocery brand BetterGoods and activewear brand Love & Sports. It has also expanded its third-party marketplace to include prestige beauty brands and more.

Sales of general merchandise, items outside of the grocery department, were a bright spot for Walmart in the fiscal second quarter, Rainey said. That category struggled during peak inflation in recent years, as consumers spent less on discretionary items because of rising grocery bills.

Comparable sales for general merchandise rose by a low-single-digit percentage and accelerated throughout the quarter, Rainey told CNBC. He added clothing and fashion sales “really shined for us.”

Apple clinched a major win Monday after the U.S. government announced that the U.K. had agreed to drop its demand for the company to provide a “back door” granting officials access to users’ encrypted data.

The iPhone maker won’t be alone to rejoice in the outcome.

The development came after extensive talks between Britain and the U.S., which had raised national security concerns over the request.

At the root of the row was end-to-end encryption, a technology which secures communications between two devices in a way that means not even the company providing a chat service can view any messages.

The story of Apple’s U.K. privacy battle started earlier this year, when it was reported that the British government had demanded access to the company’s encrypted cloud service via a technical “back door.”

Such a back door has long been contested by Apple. In 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to get Apple to create software that would enable it to unlock an iPhone it recovered from one of the shooters involved in the 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino, California.

Other companies have also had to fend off government attempts to undermine end-to-end encryption. For example, when Meta announced plans to encrypt all messages on its Facebook Messenger app, the move drew condemnation from the U.K. Home Office. Meta had already offered encryption on WhatsApp.

The Monday news could have broader implications for the debate around end-to-end encryption globally.

Governments and law enforcement agencies have long pushed for methods to break such encryption systems to assist with criminal investigations into terrorism and child sexual abuse.

However, tech companies have said that building an encryption back door would not only undermine user privacy, but also expose them to possible cyberattacks. Cybersecurity experts say that any back door built for a government would eventually be found and exploited by hackers.

U.S. national intelligence officials were also worried by the ramifications of Apple offering such a back door.

For Apple, the U.K.‘s concession over encryption could mean that the company can bring back its most secure service for users’ cloud data, Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which the company stopped offering to Brits in February.

It is not yet clear if Apple will reintroduce its ADP service to the U.K. market.

CNBC has reached out to Apple and the U.K. government for comment.

A ticket-reselling operation used a network of fake accounts to bypass Ticketmaster’s security protocols to grab hundreds of thousands of tickets to hugely popular tours for artists like Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen and then re-sold them for millions, federal regulators said Monday.

The Federal Trade Commission alleges the operation used illicit software that masked IP addresses, as well as repurposed credit cards and SIM phone cards, as part of the scheme. It was run through various guises, like TotalTickets.com, TotallyTix and Front Rose Tix, but was run by three key individuals, the agency said.

In total, the group is accused of buying 321,286 tickets to 3,261 live performances from June 2022 to December 2023, in bunches of 15 or more tickets to each event at a total cost of approximately $46.7 million and then reselling them for $52.4 million, netting approximately $5.7 million.

That includes $1.2 million from reselling tickets in 2023 for Taylor Swift’s record-breaking “The Eras Tour.” In one instance, the suspects used 49 different accounts to purchase 273 tickets for Swift’s March 2023 tour stop in Las Vegas, vastly exceeding Ticketmaster’s six-ticket limit, which they then sold for $120,000, the FTC alleges.

Another part of the alleged scheme involved using friends, family and paid strangers to open Ticketmaster accounts. The FTC says the defendants at one point printed up flyers in places like Baltimore claiming that participants could “make money doing verified van sign ups” in just “3 easy steps,” earning $5 for the account creation and $5 to $20 each time they received a Verified Fan presale code.

Ticketmaster came in for heavy criticism after fans complained of faulty technology and eye-watering prices for 2022 sales for Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen’s tours. The Verified Fan pre-sale for Swift’s tour crashed its site, which it blamed on “bot attacks” and bot fans who didn’t have invite codes. It was subsequently forced to postpone the sale date for the general public seeking tickets to Swift’s tour “due to demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”

In response, Swift alluded to broken “trust” with Ticketmaster, though she didn’t name it directly.

“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” she wrote in an Instagram message in 2022, adding: “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them multiple times if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.”

Springsteen said in a statement at the time that “ticket buying has gotten very confusing, not just for the fans, but for the artists also” but that most of his tickets are “totally affordable.”

In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order focused on curbing exploitative ticket reselling practices that raise costs for fans.

On Monday, FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said Trump’s order made clear ‘that unscrupulous middlemen who harm fans and jack up prices through anticompetitive methods will hear from us.”

“Today’s action puts brokers on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will police operations that unlawfully circumvent ticket sellers’ purchase limits, ensuring that consumers have an opportunity to buy tickets at fair prices,” he said in a statement.

Ticketmaster itself has remained under federal scrutiny for violating a prior agreement to curb what regulators said was anti-competitive behavior. In 2024, the Justice Department and FTC under President Joe Biden opened a lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company, LiveNation, that accused it of monopolizing the live events industry.

It was not immediately clear whether that suit is still active. In July, the parent company of the alleged operation charged Monday by the FTC, Key Investment Group, sued the agency to block its pending investigation into its sales practices, saying that ticket purchases on its site did not use automated software, or bots, and did not violate the 2016 Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act.

Representatives for the FTC and Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. Ticketmaster is not accused of wrongdoing in the latest suit. It did not respond to a request for comment.

Strangely, in the latest complaint, the FTC includes a slide from an internal Ticketmaster presentation from 2018 that suggests the company was weighing the economic impact of imposing stricter purchasing caps that would curb bots but potentially hurt its finances. On a page labeled “evaluating potential actions” a data table is shown under the heading “serious negative economic impact if we move to 8 ticket limit across the board.”

It also includes an email from one of the defendants in which he “owns up” to having exceeded the ticket-purchase limit for a May 2024 Bad Bunny show in Miami and offers to have the orders canceled, to which a Ticketmaster rep simply responds that “as long as the purchases were made using different accounts and cards, it’s within the guidelines.”

Efforts to reach the three defendants — Taylor Kurth, Elan Rozmaryn and Yair Rozmaryn — named in the suit announced Monday were unsuccessful. In 2018, Kurth signed a deal, or consent decree, with regulators in the state of Washington that committed him to not use software designed to circumvent companies’ security policies.

The FTC is seeking unspecified damages and civil penalties against the defendants.

CORRECTION (Aug. 19, 2025, 11:41 a.m. ET): An earlier version of this article incorrectly named a party suing the FTC and which investigation it was suing over. Key Investment Group, the parent of the alleged operation cited in the suit filed Monday by the FTC, sued the agency in July to halt an investigation into its practices. Ticketmaster and its parent, Live Nation, are not directly involved in that investigation or Key’s suit against the agency.

Best Buy is launching a third-party marketplace, as it tries to bulk up the variety of merchandise it offers and reverse slower sales.

Starting on Tuesday, shoppers who go to Best Buy’s website and app will see products and brands that weren’t available there before, including more tech-related accessories like custom video game controllers and some nontech items including seasonal decor and sports collectibles.

The company’s online marketplace riffs off those of other retailers, such as Amazon and Walmart, by relying on third-party sellers to stock, sell and ship inventory and taking a cut of their sales in the form of a commission.

“Everything we do is really centered around the customer and their technology needs, and we do see customers actually doing a lot of consumer electronics transactions through marketplaces,” Chief Customer, Product and Fulfillment Officer Jason Bonfig said. “And as a result of that, we need to make adjustments to be where the customer’s at.”

He said Best Buy noticed gaps in its assortment that the new platform will help it fill. For instance, Bonfig said the company didn’t carry batteries for some older cameras or cases for older smartphones. And it didn’t offer some items that complement Best Buy purchases, such as furniture that goes around a big-screen TV or cookware to use with a new kitchen appliance.

Along with adding those items, the marketplace makes it possible for smaller vendors with innovative products to sell on Best Buy’s website when they’re not yet big enough to make or distribute the volume needed for its stores, he added.

Best Buy’s marketplace launches at a time when its business could use a boost. Its annual sales have declined over the past three years as the company contends with a sluggish housing market, selective consumer spending and a decline in device replacements after a spike in tech purchases during the Covid pandemic.

The company cut its sales outlook in May and said it expects full-year revenue to range from $41.1 billion to $41.9 billion. That would be similar to Best Buy’s annual revenue of $41.5 billion in the most recent fiscal year, but below the numbers it posted in the years leading up to and during the pandemic.

Best Buy will share its most recent earnings results and sales forecast on Aug. 28.

Tariffs have complicated the backdrop for Best Buy, too, since the higher duties have added costs for consumer electronics vendors and distracted them from other priorities like research and development that leads to new and innovative products, said Jonathan Matuszewski, a retail analyst at Jefferies. He said Best Buy tends to win sales instead of big-box or online competitors when there’s a leap forward in technology.

With the platform’s launch, Best Buy joins other retailers that have jumped on the trend of introducing or expanding third-party marketplaces. Lowe’s and Nordstrom started marketplaces last year. Ulta Beauty plans to launch its own later this year. And Target said it will expand its existing marketplace, Target Plus.

On Best Buy’s earnings call in May, CEO Corie Barry described the third-party marketplace as one of the company’s strategic priorities for the year. She said that new profit stream “is even more important in this environment” and will provide greater flexibility with the range of items and price points.

Plus, she said the marketplace supports the company’s growing advertising business. Sellers can buy ads for their products, including by paying for better placement in search results.

Marketplaces and the advertising opportunities that come with them tend drive higher profits for retailers, said Justin MacFarlane, a managing director for the global retail group of AlixPartners. Sellers buy, stock and ship products instead of the retailer, and take on both the expense of buying inventory and the risk that they may have to mark down unwanted items, he said.

Yet the business model comes with risks, too, he said. For instance, sellers may not have the same standards as a retailer and it could anger a retailer’s customers if they send products in torn boxes, with missing pieces or days later than expected. And he said retailers can flood their websites with so many different categories, brands and products that they overwhelm customers with choices that seem irrelevant to their company’s identity.

“You get addicted to the growth and more is more until it’s not,” he said.

At launch, Best Buy’s marketplace will have about 500 sellers, Bonfig said. He said the company vetted applicants and whittled them down to the ones who can provide a high-quality customer experience. The sellers must match Best Buy’s return policy, he added.

Customers can return purchases either directly to the seller or to Best Buy stores, he said.