If you enjoy homemade pizza but don’t love the hassle that comes with it, an electric pizza oven may be the ideal upgrade. The Ninja Artisan Outdoor Pizza Oven is aimed at people who want delicious pizza nights without having to deal with things like propane or wood pellets, unlike many other pizza ovens.

I need to preface this review by admitting that I am no pizza connoisseur, but I ended up with quick, restaurant-style pizzas using the oven, largely thanks to its simplicity and easy-to-use design.

The oven plugs into a standard outdoor outlet and gets up to 700°F. It’s worth noting that although it’s electric, it’s not suitable for indoor use. 

It features five pizza settings: Neapolitan, New York, Thin Crust, Pan Pizza, and Custom that you can quickly toggle between. It comes with a pizza stone that can cook 12-inch pizzas. While I found that the 12-inch size was perfect for me and my husband, some may wish for the option to make bigger pizzas when feeding a larger crowd.

Since the oven has heating elements on both the top and bottom, pizzas cook evenly and consistently without needing to rotate the pie, manage a flame, or constantly babysit the cooking process, especially once you’ve gotten familiar with the different modes.

Just like the cooking process, setup was quite easy. All I had to do was remove the oven and pizza stone from the box and packaging, plug it in, and start the preheating process. 

I first tested the Neapolitan setting, which cranks the oven to its max temperature of 700°F and can cook a pizza in just three minutes. It took about 20 minutes for the oven to preheat, and it emitted a beeping sound to let me know it was ready. I had my first pizza ready on the pizza peel that Ninja sent me alongside the oven (sold separately), and I was able to easily shimmy it onto the pizza stone inside the oven. 

After that, you just need to push the “start” button to begin cooking the pizza and begin the timer. While the pizza is cooking, you can adjust the timer using the dial if you want to cook it for a custom amount of time. 

While I did keep an eye on the pizza through the small front window and internal light to make sure it didn’t burn, the three-minute cook time ended up being perfect, leaving me with a pizza that had an airy crust, puffed edges, and light charring. The airy crust is something I was never able to achieve when making homemade pizzas in my standard kitchen oven. 

For the subsequent Neapolitan pizzas that I made, I didn’t have to keep an eye on them and instead relied on the timer to beep and let me know when they were ready. 

It’s worth noting that if you’re looking for that authentic wood-fired flavor, you won’t get that with this oven. But if you’re happy with consistent, reliable results, then this oven is perfect for you. 

I also tried the New York setting, which sets a lower temperature than the Neapolitan mode and has a longer cook time. I used this setting for a topping-heavy pizza to get an even bake and more doneness in the middle. With this setting, I got less of a char on the crust, which is what I was looking for. 

As for cleaning the oven, it’s fairly straightforward and low maintenance since you don’t have to deal with soot from an open flame. The interior can be easily wiped down with a damp cloth to remove crumbs and any light messes. For the pizza stone itself, I scraped off debris after it cooled down, since you’re not supposed to use soap on a pizza stone because it’s porous and can absorb water and potentially crack or shatter when exposed to high heat.

What I like most about the pizza oven is that homemade pizza nights no longer feel like a weekend-only activity. Before, making pizza at home felt like too much of a project for a weekday, so I saved it for occasional weekends. But with how fast and simple the Ninja Artisan oven is to use, homemade pizza now feels like something I can quickly make after work without it feeling like a task.

I think the pizza oven is worth buying if you want to make restaurant-style pizza at home without the complexity of traditional pizza ovens.

The Ninja Artisan Pizza Oven costs $300 and comes in four colors: green and gold, blue and gold, black and gold, and dark gray.

Although TikTok is widely described as a social media giant, it’s been gradually moving beyond that category. Over time, the video app added TikTok Shop, a map for local discovery, robust search, games, and so much more. Now, it has recently added hotel booking capabilities and is pursuing a fintech license. 

It appears that TikTok is taking steps to evolve into what’s called a “super app,” a single platform where users can do much more than just watch and share videos, and actually handle a wide range of needs in one destination. 

The super app model is big in China with apps like WeChat, which is kind of like Facebook, WhatsApp, Apple Pay, and an app store all rolled into a singular platform. Of course, there’s the question of whether a super app model would work outside of China, but that doesn’t mean TikTok won’t try.

Instead of switching between apps, TikTok is working to become the app that people use for most of their digital activities. After taking its biggest leap with TikTok Shop, the company has applied the same playbook to recent developments. 

Hotel and attraction booking

Earlier this month, TikTok launched TikTok GO, a way for users to discover and book hotels, attractions, and experiences directly within its app in the U.S. TikTok GO surfaces lodging and things to do through videos, search, and location pages. When users find something they’re interested in, they can view details, check availability, and complete a booking. 

Instead of directing users to third-party websites after they come across a destination or recommendation in a video, TikTok has started positioning itself as a one-stop platform where viral travel content can drive bookings and revenue.

While people have already been using TikTok as a search engine and replacement for Google, this latest step puts TikTok in more direct competition with Google’s core businesses, Search and Google Maps, because it’s working to not only be the app where you discover places, but also the platform where you purchase that trip. 

Payments

A few weeks ago, Reuters reported that TikTok had applied to Brazil’s central bank for approval to operate as a financial technology company offering lending and payment services. 

The company is seeking two licenses. The first would allow it to provide prepaid accounts so users can store funds, receive money, and make payments. The second license would authorize it to operate as a direct credit provider, allowing it to lend its own capital or function as a platform that connects borrowers and lenders. 

The move marks a significant way that TikTok is branching out beyond a social media platform and into a digital ecosystem. By aiming to bring financial services into its app, TikTok is looking to increase user engagement, open new revenue streams, and position itself to compete with fintech startups and e-commerce platforms.

TikTok Shop

It’s widely known that one of TikTok’s biggest leaps beyond social media was the launch of TikTok Shop. TikTok began testing TikTok Shop in 2021 and launched it in the U.S. in 2023. Since then, the company has been able to successfully compete with Amazon, Shein, and other online marketplaces.

According to eMarketer, TikTok Shop grew its US sales by 407.0% in 2024 and another 108.0% in 2025 to reach $15.82 billion. As of last year, the company accounted for 18.2% of total social commerce in the US, with that number expected to reach 24.1% by 2027.

Additionally, TikTok began challenging digital marketplaces even further with the launch of TikTok Shop gift cards late last year. TikTok Shop has also recently expanded into luxury retail, after initially mainly being known for cheap goods.

Music

TikTok’s popularity has influenced the music industry and how people discover new music, and the company tried to capitalize on this by launching a streaming service called TikTok Music in 2023 to take on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, but ended up shutting it down a year later. 

The company said it would focus on driving music listening and continue partnering with music streaming services rather than competing with them. TikTok hasn’t completely abandoned its music ambitions, however, as the company recently introduced a feature that lets Apple Music subscribers play full songs in the app after discovering them on their “For You” feed.

Search and Maps

TikTok has launched a robust search experience that surfaces maps, local hashtags, and even reviews to help users discover trending restaurants, travel locations, shops, and local experiences. It has also added more detailed information about places and restaurants on dedicated pages, allowing users to quickly see things like opening hours, star ratings, price ranges, and more.

TikTok was already eating into Google’s Search business when it first launched, as it quickly surfaced videos featuring commentary and visuals of restaurant food and places. However, users may still have needed to turn to Google Search to find a place’s exact location or to read reviews. Over the past few years, however, TikTok has increasingly eliminated that need by integrating detailed information about places right within its app.

Microdramas

While TikTok is known for user-generated entertainment, the company has also begun embracing microdramas by launching an in-app Minis section and a dedicated standalone app for bite-sized TV shows that can be watched in a series of one-minute episodes. While TikTok already competes with streaming giants like Netflix for users’ attention, its move into scripted shows puts it in even more direct competition with them.

It’s worth noting that TikTok first took strides into entertainment with the launch of live-streaming and support for longer videos, a significant move away from its initial focus on 15-second videos. 

Games

TikTok has also launched a series of casual games in its app to get users to spend even more time on its platform and engage with others in DMs. The addition of games marked TikTok’s ongoing effort to go from a social media platform to an all-in-one entertainment platform where you can not only scroll through videos, but also challenge friends to easy-to-play games.

Glean, a company often described as the Google for enterprise, said it has reached $300 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a three-fold increase from the $100 million milestone it reached just 15 months ago.

While many AI startups are growing at a blistering pace, Glean’s progress is particularly remarkable. After years of essentially being the only player in the category, the seven-year-old startup is accelerating its growth as tech giants enter the enterprise AI search market with rival products.

“The first four or five years of our existence, we had no competition,” Glean CEO Arvind Jain told TechCrunch. “Given how important search is to make AI work in the enterprise, every single company in the world wants to be in this space.”

Tech heavyweights building Glean-like tools include Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Atlassian.

Jain maintains there’s value in being a first mover in the space, but that it’s also equally important to offer a better product.

What Glean does better than its competition, according to Jain, comes down to the deep understanding that its AI tools have of customers’ business needs. Glean’s AI achieves this knowledge — a concept captured by the new, popular term “context graph” — by connecting to and learning from enterprises’ internal software systems.

Jain claims that Glean’s context graph also helps enterprises cut AI computing costs.

“If you connect your AI to Glean, it gives you all the information that you need to do your work, and that results in AI consuming far fewer tokens compared to if you unleash AI onto your systems directly,” Jain said. That’s because with Glean, AI ends up performing fewer operations, he added.

At a time when many companies are blowing through their AI budgets, those token cost savings have become a major selling point for the company.

“One of the things you know our customers really like about Glean is the fact that we can reduce your AI bill significantly,” he said.

The company, which was last valued at $7.2 billion when it raised a $150 million Series F last June, offers various pricing structures to its customers, which include Databricks, Reddit, Pinterest, and Samsung.

According to Jain, Glean offers both a consumption-based model, where clients pay per use, and a hybrid model that combines a fixed monthly fee for active users with separate usage fees for model consumption.

Glean is definitely not the first company to do this, but it’s worth pointing out that the company’s $300 million milestone cannot be fully described as traditional ARR, because a consumption model by definition doesn’t have a strictly recurring component.

Pure consumption pricing models depend on fluctuating user activity rather than predictable subscription renewals, therefore a portion of Glean’s top line is more accurately described as an annualized revenue run rate.

Glean did not immediately respond to a request for comment; this post will be updated if the company replies.