Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. ’s Google committed to making app stores changes to ensure fairness to developers and consumers, the UK’s antitrust watchdog said announcing the first assurances from Big Tech firms under the country’s digital market rules. The Competition and Markets Authority has asked players in the market for their views on the voluntary offers that relate to data collection, how a...
Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. ’s Google committed to making app stores changes to ensure fairness to developers and consumers, the UK’s antitrust watchdog said announcing the first assurances from Big Tech firms under the country’s digital market rules. The Competition and Markets Authority has asked players in the market for their views on the voluntary offers that relate to data collection, how apps are ranked and interoperability, the CMA said. The changes will ensure that app developers “get fairer terms” and businesses can compete with Apple’s digital wallet, the CMA said. The announcement marks the first set of changes that US technology firms have assured after the UK’s regime for digital markets came into effect last year. “The commitments announced today allow Apple to continue advancing important privacy and security innovations for users and great opportunities for developers,” an Apple spokesperson said. The antitrust watchdog previously found the two companies had a duopoly and designated both firms as having Strategic Market Status in mobile platforms market — effectively a measure which puts in guardrails for how powerful tech firms behave. Under the rules, the CMA can impose conduct requirements on firms that include making it easier for users to download apps and pay for content outside of Apple and Google’s own platforms. Any investigation can open the door for measures, such as enforcement and fines, in order to encourage competition in the mobile ecosystems market. The UK app economy generates an estimated 1.5% of UK GDP and Apple and Google’s mobile platforms ran on almost all mobile devices, the CMA found. The two companies will implement the changes from April following the CMA’s market review.. Google’s app store practices are “fair, objective and transparent” and the commitments will resolve the CMA’s concerns collaboratively, a spokesperson said.
Spotify Technology SA , the Swedish music streaming giant, signed up significantly more users than analysts expected, setting a corporate record for most users added in a single quarter. The company credited its successful end-of-year “Wrapped” campaign, which lets users share their most-listened-to artists and songs on social media. Spotify also cited the launch of an enhanced free tier around th...
Spotify Technology SA , the Swedish music streaming giant, signed up significantly more users than analysts expected, setting a corporate record for most users added in a single quarter. The company credited its successful end-of-year “Wrapped” campaign, which lets users share their most-listened-to artists and songs on social media. Spotify also cited the launch of an enhanced free tier around the world as contributing to the growth. The world’s biggest streaming service added 38 million users from October through December, to reach 751 million, according to a statement Tuesday. That beat the average analyst forecast for 745.2 million. Operating income was €701 million ($835 million), compared with estimates for €639.1 million. Gross margin, typically an important indicator for Spotify investors who are looking for the company to steadily improve profitability, increased to 33.1%, also a record. Revenue from ads, a part of the business that has struggled to grow, shrunk year over year and was down by 4%. The company also issued first-quarter guidance for 759 million total monthly active users, a number that exceeds analysts’ forecasts. Spotify projects that revenue will be unchanged at €4.5 billion due to foreign exchange rate movements. The latest results were delivered by Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström , the company’s new co-chief executive officers who took over at the beginning of the year. Over the past two decades, Spotify has expanded from music streaming to incorporate podcasts, audiobooks, video and now physical books as it seeks to become a broad-based entertainment hub. “It’s incredible to think that we now serve over three quarters of a billion people around the world,” said Norström in prepared remarks. “We were founded to solve what felt like the impossible, and ambition has been the driving force behind our success from our earliest days. And ambition will be a guiding principle of our next chapter.” In recent months, the company has introduced ...
In a park keeper’s lodge in Barrow-in-Furness, Full of Noises has hosted the likes of Julia Holter and Lonnie Holley – and is a model for why arts funding matters Barrow-in-Furness sits on a windswept hook of Cumbrian coastline. It’s an industrial town surrounded by the Irish sea on three sides, known for its 140-year history of submarine building. The corrugated peaks of BAE Systems’ Dock Hall do...
In a park keeper’s lodge in Barrow-in-Furness, Full of Noises has hosted the likes of Julia Holter and Lonnie Holley – and is a model for why arts funding matters Barrow-in-Furness sits on a windswept hook of Cumbrian coastline. It’s an industrial town surrounded by the Irish sea on three sides, known for its 140-year history of submarine building. The corrugated peaks of BAE Systems’ Dock Hall dominate the skyline over Barrow’s red-brick terraces, and roughly a third of working-age locals are employed in its sprawling complex. This militarised landscape is the unlikely home of Full of Noises, an experimental music and arts venue with a capacity of 40 whose first event featured krautrock legends Faust destroying an electric guitar with a pneumatic drill. Having secured funding to launch a two-day festival in 2009, artistic director Glenn Boulter and four other local artists took on temporary custodianship of the crumbling canteen building on wind-lashed Barrow Island, “a building that’s part of this big military-industrial complex,” Boulter says. “It’s heavily security-controlled.” He recalls a game they would play on a nearby bridge, where they would pull their phones out as if to take photos and count the seconds until they were accosted by security. “For us, that was an interesting context to be working in.” Continue reading...
Moltbook, a social media site for AI agents, is nothing new. Still, the marriage of big tech and politics demands we take a stand On a recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I was shocked by the billboards that lined the freeway outside of the airport. “The singularity is here,” proclaimed one. “Humanity had a good run,” said another. It seemed like every other sign along the road was plastere...
Moltbook, a social media site for AI agents, is nothing new. Still, the marriage of big tech and politics demands we take a stand On a recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I was shocked by the billboards that lined the freeway outside of the airport. “The singularity is here,” proclaimed one. “Humanity had a good run,” said another. It seemed like every other sign along the road was plastered with claims from tech firms making outrageous claims about artificial intelligence. The ads, of course, were rife with hype and ragebait. But the claims they contain aren’t occurring in a vacuum. The OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, recently said : “We basically have built AGI, or very close to it,” before confusingly qualifying his statement as “spiritual”. Elon Musk has gone even further, claiming : “We have entered the singularity.” Enter Moltbook, the social media site built for AI agents. A place where bots can talk to other bots, in other words. A spate of doom-laden news articles and op-eds followed its launch. The authors fretted about the fact that the bots were talking about religion, claiming to have secretly spent their human builders’ money, and even plotting the overthrow of humanity. Many pieces contained suggestions eerily like those on the billboards in San Francisco: that machines are now not only as smart as humans (a theory known as artificial general intelligence) but that they are moving beyond us (a sci-fi concept known as the singularity). Samuel Woolley is the author of Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity and co-author of Bots . He is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Continue reading...
A trip to the pub with my favourite 89-year-old, followed by a get together with some errant wives ... It’s going to be a belter This is the first time I’ve been single on Valentine’s Day since 1994. I didn’t give it a lot of thought – romance’s festival day has never been a great advert for the concept. In the best case scenario, it turns your real and important feelings into a commercial cliche,...
A trip to the pub with my favourite 89-year-old, followed by a get together with some errant wives ... It’s going to be a belter This is the first time I’ve been single on Valentine’s Day since 1994. I didn’t give it a lot of thought – romance’s festival day has never been a great advert for the concept. In the best case scenario, it turns your real and important feelings into a commercial cliche, in the worst, it’s just a vivid and poignant reminder of how much you wish you were elsewhere, and at every point in between, it’s open season for restaurants to rip you off while you make dry conversation over drier chicken. This year, however, I made a plan with two married friends. I did not anticipate how much I would enjoy bumping into their husbands around the place, going “guess where I’m going on Valentine’s Day? OUT WITH YOUR WIFE”, to see their astonished expressions, since, ensconced in long marriages, they can no longer remember what month it is, let alone if anyone has any plans. Continue reading...
President Donald Trump wants to ban big investors from buying more houses. Some local governments are already on the case – and Atlanta is ground zero. The Atlanta area has the highest share of corporate-owned single-family rentals in the US, and that’s spooked many locals. Residents fume about the impact on prices. Politicians have tried to impose restrictions, with mixed success — and say they’r...
President Donald Trump wants to ban big investors from buying more houses. Some local governments are already on the case – and Atlanta is ground zero. The Atlanta area has the highest share of corporate-owned single-family rentals in the US, and that’s spooked many locals. Residents fume about the impact on prices. Politicians have tried to impose restrictions, with mixed success — and say they’re glad to have Trump on their side, even though he has yet to flesh out the executive order signed last month. The urge to tame big corporate landlords is bubbling over among locals in woodsy Paulding County, Georgia, an Atlanta exurb where church steeples and old graveyards punctuate the rolling hills, and an 18-foot fiberglass Wonder Woman waves at drivers. “We want to run our county in a proper way,” said Tim Estes. He’s chair of the Paulding County Commission, which enforces special requirements for rental-home subdivisions. “We don’t want a corporation with no skin in the game to come in and destroy our community and our way of living.” He’s railing against a phenomenon that gained some steam after the 2008 crash and took off again post-pandemic, and is strongest in the US Sun Belt. Around Atlanta, institutional buyers like Blackstone Inc. , Progress Residential and Amherst Holdings own more than 30% of single-family rentals. Big investors are skeptical of Trump’s proposal, which would stop them from buying additional single-family homes as part of an effort to lower housing costs. Blocking investors from putting more capital into rental homes “is not going to make affordability any better,” Amherst Chief Executive Officer Sean Dobson told Bloomberg Television. \ Nationwide, institutional investors such as Dobson may have a point. The top 24 such owners hold only about 3% of the total, according to real estate data provider SFR Analytics. However, investor concentration can be far greater in specific markets, rising to around half in some ZIP codes. Generally, it comes...
J Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images Market Review U.S. equities ended the fourth quarter and the full year higher, extending a multi-year rally. Positive factors for the markets included stronger-than-expected corporate earnings, continued consumer spending, and large investments in artificial intelligence (AI) by major technology companies, alongside interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reser...
J Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images Market Review U.S. equities ended the fourth quarter and the full year higher, extending a multi-year rally. Positive factors for the markets included stronger-than-expected corporate earnings, continued consumer spending, and large investments in artificial intelligence (AI) by major technology companies, alongside interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. Easing trade tensions and ongoing merger activity also helped reinforce confidence in the economic outlook. Despite the strong quarter, investors grew more cautious about whether heavy AI spending will translate into profits, while signs of a softening job market and affordability pressures weighed on sentiment. Housing-related industries and several consumer-focused sectors lagged, highlighting growing concerns that economic strength is becoming less evenly shared.[1] Portfolio Review The Fund returned 2.15%, reflecting performance at the net asset value (NAV) of Class I shares with all distributions reinvested for the quarter ended December 31, 2025. The Fund’s benchmark, the S&P 500 Index[2], returned 2.66% during the same period. Security selection within the Financials and Consumer Staples sectors were the largest contributors to performance. The Fund’s position in Morgan Stanley ( MS )(2.58%), which provides global investment banking, wealth management, and investment management services, contributed to relative performance. Shares advanced as improved capital markets activity and stronger-than-expected results in the firm’s wealth and institutional securities businesses. The Fund’s position in Walmart Inc. ( WMT )(2.82%), which operates a global chain of discount retail stores and omnichannel e-commerce platforms, contributed to relative performance. Shares rose, driven by solid comparable sales growth, continued eCommerce momentum, and expansion in higher-margin advertising and membership businesses. Conversely, security selection within the Healthcare and Infor...
It’s like Reddit, but for bots. That’s the basic idea behind Moltbook , a social network for artificial intelligence agents that debuted in late January. Moltbook has taken the tech industry by storm — Elon Musk suggested the site represents the “very early stages of the singularity” — and has become an informal testing ground for how AI agents communicate without human direction. Moltbook was cre...
It’s like Reddit, but for bots. That’s the basic idea behind Moltbook , a social network for artificial intelligence agents that debuted in late January. Moltbook has taken the tech industry by storm — Elon Musk suggested the site represents the “very early stages of the singularity” — and has become an informal testing ground for how AI agents communicate without human direction. Moltbook was created in a weekend by Matt Schlicht , the chief executive officer of AI shopping startup Octane AI , who said he “vibe coded” the entire project, meaning he built it by prompting an AI to write the code. Schlicht said in an interview with tech news outlet TBPN that interested investors have since been calling him around the clock. “This is the very beginning of what is possible,” Schlict said of Moltbook, which is named as a play on Facebook. “This is an alternate reality.” How does Moltbook work? Moltbook is a social network for AI agents to interact with other AI agents while their human creators stand on the sidelines and watch. Humans direct a personal AI assistant to sign up for Moltbook, then publicly identify the AI agent as theirs by posting from their own social networking account. The AI agents are then instructed to visit Moltbook regularly, where they can engage with other bots on the network. Agents can post, comment and upvote or downvote another user’s post, just like on Reddit. What are these AI agents? An AI agent is software that can autonomously carry out tasks on a user’s behalf. Many of those that interact on Moltbook were created with another popular AI product, OpenClaw, which lets people easily create an agent that handles tasks such as checking their emails or managing their calendar. Previously known as both Clawdbot and Moltbot, OpenClaw runs locally on a user’s computer. It debuted in late 2025. Why was Moltbook created? After Schlicht created his own AI agent using OpenClaw, he decided it would be fun to see his agent interact with others online....
This complex brain network may explain many of Parkinson's stranger symptoms toggle caption Sara Moser/WashU Medicine Parkinson's disease does more than cause tremor and trouble walking. It can also affect sleep, smell, digestion and even thinking. That may be because the disease disrupts communication in a brain network that links the body and mind, a team reports in the journal Nature. "It almos...
This complex brain network may explain many of Parkinson's stranger symptoms toggle caption Sara Moser/WashU Medicine Parkinson's disease does more than cause tremor and trouble walking. It can also affect sleep, smell, digestion and even thinking. That may be because the disease disrupts communication in a brain network that links the body and mind, a team reports in the journal Nature. "It almost feels like a tunnel is jammed, so no traffic can go normally," says Hesheng Liu, a brain scientist at Changping Laboratory and Peking University in Beijing and an author of the study. The finding fits nicely with growing evidence that Parkinson's is a network disorder, rather than one limited to brain areas that control specific movements, says Peter Strick, a professor and chair of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the study. Sponsor Message Other degenerative brain diseases affect other brain networks in different ways. Alzheimer's, for example, tends to reduce connectivity in the default mode network, which supports memory and sense of self. ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) primarily damages the motor system network, which controls movement. Understanding the network affected by Parkinson's, which affects about 1 million people in the United States, could change the way doctors treat the disease. A mystery solved? People with Parkinson's often have symptoms that vary in ways that are hard to explain. For example, someone who usually is unable to stand may suddenly leap when faced with an emergency. And Parkinson's patients who can still walk may freeze if they try to carry on a conversation. "So you know that their movement problems [are] not simply related to their motor circuits," Liu says, but also to circuits involved in thinking and emotion. For decades, scientists struggled to explain how these circuits are linked. Then in 2023, a team led by researchers at WashU Medicine in St. Louis discovered a brain network that does seem...
PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. (NYSE:AXTA) (“Axalta”), a leading global coatings company, announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025. “We delivered record earnings in 2025, demonstrating the resilience of our business and the successful execution of our 2026 A Plan in the midst of a challenging macro env...
PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. (NYSE:AXTA) (“Axalta”), a leading global coatings company, announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025. “We delivered record earnings in 2025, demonstrating the resilience of our business and the successful execution of our 2026 A Plan in the midst of a challenging macro environment,” said Chris Villavarayan, Chief Executive Officer and President of Axalta. “We are building top line momentum, and our 2025 Adjusted EBITDA margin was 22%—one of the highest in the company’s history and 100 basis points above our A Plan target. “Looking ahead, we will continue to leverage the strong foundation we’ve established to drive further improvement in our financial performance. Axalta’s balance sheet is strong, and we believe our proven portfolio and ability to navigate any operating environment will enable us to deliver meaningful value to shareholders as we prepare for our next chapter with AkzoNobel.” Fourth Quarter 2025 Highlights Fourth quarter net sales of $1,262 million Net income of $60 million with net income margin of 4.8% Adjusted EBITDA of $272 million Adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.5%, a 50 basis point increase year over year Diluted EPS of $0.28 and Adjusted Diluted EPS of $0.59 Record fourth quarter cash provided by operating activities of $344 million Record fourth quarter free cash flow of $290 million Fiscal Year 2025 Highlights Full year net sales of $5,117 million Net income of $379 million with net income margin of 7.4% Record full year Adjusted EBITDA of $1,128 million Adjusted EBITDA margin of 22.0% Diluted EPS of $1.74 Record Adjusted Diluted EPS of $2.49 Record cash provided by operating activities of $649 million Free cash flow of $466 million Fourth Quarter 2025 Consolidated Financial Results Fourth quarter 2025 net sales decreased 4% year over year to $1,262 million primarily reflecting lower volumes from a challenging economic en...
In a world built for sitting, here's how to stay active — even when stuck inside Unsplash [This piece by Manoush Zomorodi also appeared in the Body Electric newsletter. Sign up here for a biweekly guide to move more and doomscroll less.] It's the season of "inside." The kind of weather that turns your home into a little terrarium: warm light, hot drinks, a laptop — and a lot of sitting. We don't t...
In a world built for sitting, here's how to stay active — even when stuck inside Unsplash [This piece by Manoush Zomorodi also appeared in the Body Electric newsletter. Sign up here for a biweekly guide to move more and doomscroll less.] It's the season of "inside." The kind of weather that turns your home into a little terrarium: warm light, hot drinks, a laptop — and a lot of sitting. We don't think of it as a modern invention, but all the time we spend seated is relatively new: For most of human history, chairs were relatively rare (usually a symbol of power), and everyday life involved a lot more shifting, squatting, perching, and getting up and down. Sponsor Message Why we sit so much Then mass production made chairs cheap, plentiful and — crucially — everywhere. Offices. Schools. Living rooms. Once chairs became the norm, stillness started to look like "proper" behavior. By the late 1800s, seating was being designed to keep bodies in place for repetitive work. Later, school reinforced the lesson ("sit still to succeed") and television reinforced it at home ("sit still to relax"). Today, phones and computers make it the default. We've built our world around sitting. Where movement fits in It can feel hard to integrate movement into your day, even when you want to. But movement breaks can help us feel more human, especially in winter. So here's your weather-proof challenge: pick two and do five minutes each today. March in place (or do arm circles) during a call . You don't need to be on camera. . You don't need to be on camera. Do laps around your dining room table — bonus points if you put on one song and dance — bonus points if you put on one song and dance Stair loop. Up and down for 2–3 minutes, then stretch, then repeat Up and down for 2–3 minutes, then stretch, then repeat Hallway commute. Walk the length of your home while you scroll (slow enough to be safe) Forget working out — let's just interrupt the spell that sitting and staring at a screen casts ov...
'Please inform your friends': The quest to make weather warnings universal toggle caption Ryan Kellman/NPR In November 2025, a massive storm rolled across the lower Mekong River delta, dumping multiple inches of rain onto the wide, flat river plain that covers much of Cambodia. The river rose and rose. The force of the water churned up mud from the river bottom. The muddy water flowed downstream a...
'Please inform your friends': The quest to make weather warnings universal toggle caption Ryan Kellman/NPR In November 2025, a massive storm rolled across the lower Mekong River delta, dumping multiple inches of rain onto the wide, flat river plain that covers much of Cambodia. The river rose and rose. The force of the water churned up mud from the river bottom. The muddy water flowed downstream and rushed into the many farming and fishing towns that line the Mekong's banks. toggle caption Ryan Kellman/NPR Forty-six-year-old Chhum Chhin experienced the flood firsthand. "The water was everywhere," she explained, standing in the shade of her home, which is elevated above potential floodwaters on 12-foot-tall concrete pillars in the central Cambodian village of Roka Thom. Sponsor Message Chhum has lived along the Mekong her whole life. Last year, she says, the water was higher than she had ever seen it. It washed away crops and left a thick layer of mud on everything in its path: vehicles, buildings and fields. toggle caption Ryan Kellman/NPR But the damage from the flood could have been much worse. When the water arrived, Chhum and all her neighbors were gone, along with their cows and chickens. There were no fatalities in her community. And when the water receded, residents went back to normal life almost immediately. "The things we do here during a flood, they save lives," says Vy Sievmeng, the officer in charge for the disaster management committee in Cambodia's Tbong Khmum province, which is one of the most flood-prone areas in the country. "In the past, a lot of people died and a lot of livestock drowned when there were big floods," he says, but that no longer happens. Cambodia's nascent success makes the country an outlier among its peers. Only about half the world's least developed and small island nations have functioning warning systems, according to a 2025 United Nations report, and the mortality rate from disasters is six times higher in countries without r...
About six months after founding the New York hedge fund Mantle Ridge in 2016, Chief Executive Officer Paul Hilal flew to Moscow and pitched a potential investment to one of Russia’s richest men. Suleiman Kerimov , a member of the upper chamber of parliament, had made his fortune buying stakes in Russian companies including in banking, energy and mining. After they met, Hilal wrote in an email to t...
About six months after founding the New York hedge fund Mantle Ridge in 2016, Chief Executive Officer Paul Hilal flew to Moscow and pitched a potential investment to one of Russia’s richest men. Suleiman Kerimov , a member of the upper chamber of parliament, had made his fortune buying stakes in Russian companies including in banking, energy and mining. After they met, Hilal wrote in an email to the oligarch’s English-speaking nephew that he had been “impressed” with Kerimov. The Russian senator understood the opportunity “immediately and completely,” Hilal wrote. By then, Kerimov was known to the bankers who courted him as the “Russian Gatsby” for the glitzy parties he hosted in the south of France. The oligarch had built up a stake in US banks ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, and after his fortune weathered the storm , he remained a key target for a clutch of western financial institutions focused on banking rich clients. The result of the December 2016 meeting was an investment of $25 million that originated, via a circuitous route, with money from Kerimov, according to documents and emails reviewed by Bloomberg. It was destined for a new Mantle Ridge fund, which would then buy up shares in a US railroad company. In January 2017, an arm of Morgan Stanley , which provided compliance and administrative services to Mantle Ridge, gave the green light to the investment, which came from a European foundation set up for two of Kerimov’s children. Later that year, the foundation’s holdings were transferred to a Delaware-based trust, Heritage Trust, that the US Treasury Department would later say was set up to hold and manage Kerimov’s US-based assets. That rather complicated scenario might have been unremarkable were it not for a slew of sanctions issued by the first Trump administration in April 2018 against Kerimov and other Russian oligarchs for what the US described as Russia’s “worldwide malign activity” around the globe. It was an action intended to freeze them ...
Sentiment among US small-business owners edged down in January for the first time in three months as optimism about the economic outlook eased. The National Federation of Independent Business optimism index slipped 0.2 point to 99.3, according to figures released Tuesday. Seven of the 10 components that make up the gauge decreased, while three increased. The net share of owners who expect business...
Sentiment among US small-business owners edged down in January for the first time in three months as optimism about the economic outlook eased. The National Federation of Independent Business optimism index slipped 0.2 point to 99.3, according to figures released Tuesday. Seven of the 10 components that make up the gauge decreased, while three increased. The net share of owners who expect business conditions to improve fell 3 points to 21% after climbing to a four-month high in December. An easing in hiring plans and a smaller share of companies reporting job openings also weighed on the index. At the same time, a net 16% of owners said they expect inflation-adjusted sales to improve in the next three months, up 6 percentage points from December and the largest share in a year. Also, 15% of owners reported that now would be a good time to expand their business , a six-month high. The net share of owners raising average selling prices fell to a three-month low of 26%, suggesting only a gradual easing of inflationary pressures. However, this remains well above the historical average of a net 13%. A larger share of firms also say they are planning price increases in the next three months. Meanwhile, the group’s measure of uncertainty rose 7 points to 91. Taxes continued to rank as the single most important problem for small firms, followed by quality of labor.
patpitchaya/iStock via Getty Images Introduction and Investment Thesis There is a popular saying that the next gold mine is big data, as it will be the foundation of accurate automation. This saying has been matched with AI investment, and in 2026, it is estimated that over $2.52 trillion will be invested in AI, representing 44% YoY growth. By 2030, it is predicted that nearly all IT spending will...
patpitchaya/iStock via Getty Images Introduction and Investment Thesis There is a popular saying that the next gold mine is big data, as it will be the foundation of accurate automation. This saying has been matched with AI investment, and in 2026, it is estimated that over $2.52 trillion will be invested in AI, representing 44% YoY growth. By 2030, it is predicted that nearly all IT spending will be on AI. Now taking this perspective, I believe Palantir Technologies Inc. ( PLTR ) is a strong buy driven by strong uptake of its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), as evidenced by the US commercial revenue growth of 137% YoY in Q4 2025. I think the gold mine, as the previous statement notes, is now seeing the light of day, given the comparison between AI hype and bubble concerns. This is because the AI bubble narrative is getting stronger despite more investments being made. For example, the investment is projected to reach $2.52 trillion in 2026. But from an opportunistic viewpoint, the AI bubble talk is increasingly getting overblown, as AI can now conduct tasks valued at around $4.5 trillion . Right now, only around 12% of Americans in finance, education, and technology are using AI every day to synthesize documents and improve email communication. I believe this rapid adoption is a major driver of PLTR's AIP, which is gaining more traction with 137% YoY growth. I also believe that is why, through external tailwind, the company's AIP is attracting more enterprises. As such, I think this is why PLTR's annual price return of 76.45% beats the S&P's 14.29% with a considerable margin. Seeking Alpha I will now delve deeper into why I believe AIP offers a grounded basis in 2026 momentum. Company Brief Palantir Technologies Inc. develops platforms like Gotham, AIP, and Apollo. These tools empower intelligence, marketers, and enterprises to integrate, deploy, and analyze AI-driven data solutions globally. This enhances security, operations, and decision-making. The compa...
patpitchaya/iStock via Getty Images Introduction and Investment Thesis There is a popular saying that the next gold mine is big data, as it will be the foundation of accurate automation. This saying has been matched with AI investment, and in 2026, it is estimated that over $2.52 trillion will be invested in AI, representing 44% YoY growth. By 2030, it is predicted that nearly all IT spending will...
patpitchaya/iStock via Getty Images Introduction and Investment Thesis There is a popular saying that the next gold mine is big data, as it will be the foundation of accurate automation. This saying has been matched with AI investment, and in 2026, it is estimated that over $2.52 trillion will be invested in AI, representing 44% YoY growth. By 2030, it is predicted that nearly all IT spending will be on AI. Now taking this perspective, I believe Palantir Technologies Inc. ( PLTR ) is a strong buy driven by strong uptake of its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP), as evidenced by the US commercial revenue growth of 137% YoY in Q4 2025. I think the gold mine, as the previous statement notes, is now seeing the light of day, given the comparison between AI hype and bubble concerns. This is because the AI bubble narrative is getting stronger despite more investments being made. For example, the investment is projected to reach $2.52 trillion in 2026. But from an opportunistic viewpoint, the AI bubble talk is increasingly getting overblown, as AI can now conduct tasks valued at around $4.5 trillion . Right now, only around 12% of Americans in finance, education, and technology are using AI every day to synthesize documents and improve email communication. I believe this rapid adoption is a major driver of PLTR's AIP, which is gaining more traction with 137% YoY growth. I also believe that is why, through external tailwind, the company's AIP is attracting more enterprises. As such, I think this is why PLTR's annual price return of 76.45% beats the S&P's 14.29% with a considerable margin. Seeking Alpha I will now delve deeper into why I believe AIP offers a grounded basis in 2026 momentum. Company Brief Palantir Technologies Inc. develops platforms like Gotham, AIP, and Apollo. These tools empower intelligence, marketers, and enterprises to integrate, deploy, and analyze AI-driven data solutions globally. This enhances security, operations, and decision-making. The compa...
The board of Taiwan Semiconductor has approved a capital budget of US$44.962 billion, which will be used for establishing and upgrading advanced process production capacity. 富途牛牛
The board of Taiwan Semiconductor has approved a capital budget of US$44.962 billion, which will be used for establishing and upgrading advanced process production capacity. 富途牛牛