China's Efforts to Curb Solar Glut Show Limited Impact, CEA Says
A raft of measures by the Chinese government and the nation's solar industry is yet to meaningfully reduce overcapacity, with the price of panels expected to remain low for most of 2025, according to a report.
'While efforts are likely to cool investments in new production capacity, this does not mean that a sharp market correction will be induced by the policy measures,' said Joseph Johnson, an associate director at consultancy Clean Energy Associates, which compiled the report.
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20 minutes ago
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Palona Launches Restaurant AI: New Technology and Team Dedicated to the Unique Needs of the Restaurant Industry
PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Palona AI, the company redefining customer engagement with emotionally intelligent AI sales agents, announced the launch of Restaurant AI, a purpose-built AI sales assistant tailored for the Pizza, Fast Casual, and QSR restaurant industry. The launch comes on the heels of a successful pilot with West Coast favorite pizza chain Pizza My Heart, Palona is now working with more than 20 restaurants and brands nationwide including Twenty Five Teishoku House, Kobunga, MOTO Pizza, CaliBBQ, and Pleasure Pizza Santa Cruz, among others. Palona's new restaurant-dedicated AI combines Palona's best-in-class conversational intelligence, complex customization handling, and multimodal memory system to solve one of the trickiest challenges in food sales: getting food orders right every time. Share Palona is also announcing two new major hires to lead the charge with Restaurant AI: Martin Briant, former President of North America for Me&U, a leader in guest experience and hospitality technology. Chris Stanton, former strategic sales executive for both Qualtrics and Tableau Software. Both have strong track records bringing technology to the mass market and years of experience serving the restaurant industry. Palona's new restaurant-dedicated AI combines Palona's best-in-class conversational intelligence, complex customization handling, and multimodal memory system to solve one of the trickiest challenges in food sales: getting food orders right every time, via voice or text, with the same charm and care as a seasoned staffer. New features dedicated to the unique needs of the restaurant industry include: Unified Voice and Text: Whether ordering or making reservations, customers receive the same on-brand, high-quality experience via voice or text Multi-lingual support: Speak to your customers in their language - English, Spanish, Chinese, and more languages seamlessly supported with no additional work required from restaurant partners. Voice Cloning, Accents, and Personality: Restaurant owners can clone their own voice or create the perfect voice to represent their brand - down to personality traits, regional dialects, accents, and vernacular. Accuracy: Proven accuracy even when handling the most complex orders and customer requests over voice and text. Order and payment confirmation eliminates erroneous orders placed to the kitchen. Upselling: Intuitive upselling at just the right moment in every conversation, leading to increased AOV. Escalation: Every Palona AI conversation is monitored by a managerial AI that helps quickly identify customer issues and escalate conversations to human representatives. Secure payment: Fully compliant payment that keeps customer information secure, including integration with existing payment systems. Loyalty and coupon support: Palona Restaurant AI not only connects to existing loyalty and coupon offers, but also dynamically introduces them to customer conversations to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales. 'With Restaurant AI, we're bringing Palona's powerful and delightful Agent experience to the most complex menu categories in food service,' said Maria Zhang, CEO and co-founder of Palona. 'Our pilot with Pizza My Heart showed us just how impactful an intelligent agent could be when it understands every nuance of a menu, remembers past orders, and engages customers like a real team member. Now, with more nationwide restaurant brands on board, we're scaling that service to a much broader audience.' Fast Casual and Quick Serve orders aren't simple—they're highly customized, frequently modified mid-conversation, and packed with regional variations and unique brand flair. Palona is trained to master this complexity, integrating real-time cart memory, conversational modifiers, and on-brand tone-of-voice specific to each restaurant. It supports voice and text interactions, offering customers a frictionless way to place their orders while engaging with an AI that feels like part of the crew. The technology also integrates seamlessly with all major POS systems, ensuring that no restaurant owner needs to do complex integrations in order to get their AI up and running quickly. The system is designed to be low risk and easy to pilot in just a few steps: upload your menu, customize your on-brand agent, and forward your phone calls - done. 'When I started CaliBBQ, I wanted to build a personal relationship with every one of my customers - it's part of what I love about owning a restaurant,' said Shawn Walchef, founder of CaliBBQ. 'As any business grows, it's so hard to scale that kind of relationship building, which is what makes Palona so powerful. Now, when a customer calls CaliBBQ, they're not talking to some call center in another country - they're talking to ShawnAI. I used Palona not only to match our customer service and our brand values, but to literally replicate my own voice. Whether it's one or one thousand customers, they have a conversation with me, using my own voice, giving them the best hospitality experience possible.' 'When I first heard my voice as our ordering AI, I honestly couldn't believe it,' said Lee Kindell, founder of MOTO Pizza. 'We live and breathe technology every day in our business but, at our heart, we're restauranteurs and care about the customer experience above all else. Palona's ability to provide such incredible service to every single customer, across multiple languages and all in my voice, is so above and beyond any AI solution I've seen in-market. It blew me away.' Palona has achieved industry-leading accuracy for its AI agents through innovative benchmarking and order simulation technology that continuously tests, evaluates, and improves the agent's performance. Palona's Restaurant AI leverages the most powerful AI capabilities, adapting to each restaurant's unique identity, including its tone, menu, and clientele. About Palona Palona AI builds emotionally intelligent, multimodal AI agents designed to help consumer-facing businesses grow, scale relationships, and stay on brand. The company's solutions are already transforming sales, ordering, and customer engagement for top brands like Wyze, MINDZERO, Pizza My Heart, CaliBBQ, Kobunga Grill, Pleasure Pizza, and MOTO Pizza. With the launch of Restaurant AI, Palona is now bringing its signature mix of EQ, personalization, and performance to one of the most beloved categories in food service.
CNBC
28 minutes ago
- CNBC
Oil rises on optimism about U.S.-China talks easing trade tensions
Oil prices climbed on Tuesday as investors awaited the outcome of U.S.-China trade talks and as Saudi Arabia's crude supply to China is set to dip slightly. Brent crude futures rose 16 cents, or 0.2%, to $67.20 a barrel by 0849 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was up 14 cents, or 0.2%, at $65.43. On Monday, Brent had risen to $67.19, the highest since April 28, buoyed by the prospect of a U.S.-China trade deal. U.S.-China trade talks were set to continue for a second day in London as top officials aimed to ease tensions that have expanded from tariffs to rare earth curbs, risking global supply chain disruptions and slower growth. "There's a sense of optimism around these trade talks, the market is waiting to see what this will produce and that is supporting prices," said Harry Tchilinguirian, group head of research at Onyx Capital Group. Prices have recovered as demand concerns have faded with the trade talks between Washington and Beijing and a favourable U.S. jobs report, while there are risks to North American supply due to wildfires in Canada, Goldman Sachs analysts said. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the talks with China were going well and he was "only getting good reports" from his team in London. A trade deal between the U.S. and China could support the global economic outlook and boost demand for commodities including oil. Saudi Arabia's state oil firm Saudi Aramco will ship about 47 million barrels to China in July, a tally of allocations to Chinese refiners showed, 1 million barrels less than June's allotted volume, Reuters reported. "The Saudi allocations could be an early sign that OPEC+'s unwind may not actually mean that much additional supply," Tchilinguirian said. "After all these unwinds, one would have thought that we would be getting more from the country that can produce more." OPEC+, which pumps about half of the world's oil and includes OPEC members and allies such as Russia, put forward plans for an increase of 411,000 barrels per day for July as it looks to wrestle back market share and punish over-producers. It is set to unwind production cuts for the fourth straight month. A Reuters survey found that OPEC oil output rose in May, although the increase was limited as Iraq pumped below target to compensate for earlier overproduction and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates made smaller hikes than allowed. "The prospect of further hikes in OPEC supply continues to hang over the market," Daniel Hynes, senior commodity strategist at ANZ, said in a note. Elsewhere, Iran said it would soon hand a counter-proposal for a nuclear deal to the U.S. in response to a U.S. offer that Tehran deems "unacceptable", while Trump made clear that the two sides remained at odds over whether the country would be allowed to continue enriching uranium on Iranian soil. Iran is the third-largest producer among members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and any easing of U.S. sanctions on Iran would allow it to export more oil, weighing on global crude prices.
