Tag: Tech

White House Cuts Ties With Anthropic After Pentagon Flags Security Risk
President Donald Trump said Friday that he was ordering every U.S. government agency to “immediately cease” using technology from the artificial intelligence company Anthropic.
Trump in a Truth Social post said there would be a six-month phase-out for agencies such as the Defense Department, which “are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels.”
Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth, soon after Trump’s order, said on X that he was ordering the Pentagon to “designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security” after the A I startup refused to comply with demands about the use of its technology.
Anthropic, which signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon in July, wanted assurances that its AI models would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance of Americans.
The Pentagon, which strongly resisted that request, set a deadline of 5:01 p.m. ET Friday for Anthropic to agree to its demands that the U.S. military be allowed to use the technology for all lawful purposes.
That deadline passed without an agreement.
“Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles,” Hegseth said in a statement on X.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.

cc: @AnthropicAI @DarioAmodei pic.twitter.com/FLCByLHF73
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) February 27, 2026

“Their relationship with the United States Armed Forces and the Federal Government has therefore been permanently altered.”
“Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service,” the Defense secretary said.
“America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.”
Trump, in his Truth Social post, wrote, “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution.”
“Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”
“Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology,” Trump wrote.
“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!”
Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who is vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, condemned Trump’s action.
“The president’s directive to halt the use of a leading American AI company across the federal government, combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations,” Warner said in a statement.
“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s efforts to intimidate and disparage a leading American company — potentially as the pretext to steer contracts to a preferred vendor whose model a number of federal agencies have already identified as a reliability, safety, and security threat — pose an enormous risk to U.S. defense readiness and the willingness of the U.S. private sector and academia to work with the IC [Intelligence Community] and DoD, consistent with their own values and legal ethics,” Warner said.
Elon Musk, the mega-billionaire who had been Trump’s biggest financial backer in the 2024 election, owns xAI, which aims to compete directly with Anthropic and another major AI company, OpenAI.
Musk in recent weeks has repeatedly bashed Anthropic on his social network X, writing on Friday that the company “hates Western civilization.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday that his company “cannot in good conscience” allow the Pentagon to use its models without limitation.
In a statement on Thursday, Amodei said, “It is the [Defense] Department’s prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision. But given the substantial value that Anthropic’s technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider.”
“Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters — with our two requested safeguards in place,” Amodei said.
“Should the Department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions. Our models will be available on the expansive terms we have proposed for as long as required.”
On Friday, another major AI company, OpenAI, said it has the same “red lines” as Anthropic regarding the use of its technology by the Pentagon and other customers.
“We have long believed that AI should not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons, and that humans should remain in the loop for high-stakes automated decisions,” Open AI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a memo seen by CNBC.
OpenAI last year signed its own $200 million contract with the Pentagon.
OpenAI’s contract is for AI models in non-classified use cases, which include everyday office tasks.
Anthropic’s contract with the Defense Department included classified work.
The Defense Department had no comment on Friday other than pointing to Trump’s announcement.
Hegseth, in a post on X, included a screengrab of Trump’s post, and cc:ed Anthropic and Amodei with the message, “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
February 27, 2026
Japan Backs Tech Venture Led by Former Epstein Associate Joichi Ito
After a disgraced exit from the top ranks of U.S. tech and media circles, an entrepreneur who had deep ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein secured a second act in Japan with the help of powerful allies in the Japanese government.
Joichi Ito, the entrepreneur, resigned in 2019 from a prominent position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after revelations about his efforts to conceal millions of dollars he raised through connections to Epstein. He also quit a position at Harvard University and board seats at the MacArthur Foundation and The New York Times.
Six years later, in Japan, Ito is helping lead a government initiative championed by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her inner circle. The project, a strategic priority for the government, has more than $400 million in public funding and seeks to team up with top U.S. and Japanese universities to create a startup hub in Tokyo.
Within the next few months, the Japanese government will decide whether to authorize the project, known as the Global Startup Campus Initiative, as a legal entity, the final step required for it to move ahead.
But Ito’s involvement caused universities including MIT, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon and Keio University in Japan to distance themselves from the initiative after being approached as potential partners, according to interviews with government and university officials, as well as internal documents and emails reviewed by the Times. The project has fallen behind its own timeline targets.

And that was before the latest tranche of Epstein files released by the Justice Department shed new light on the depth of Ito’s ties to Epstein. These latest revelations are likely to further deter some potential partner organizations, said six government and university officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their groups’ internal views.
Ito was a prolific correspondent with Epstein. A Times analysis shows that Ito and Epstein exchanged more than 4,000 emails through the years. The emails show that Ito was a frequent visitor to Epstein’s private Caribbean island, and the two were so close that Ito even joked about naming his daughter “Jeffrina.”

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her inner circle are backing a tech initiative led by Joichi Ito. (Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times)
Ito did not respond to requests for comment. The university he heads in Japan declined to make him available for an interview. In previous statements made to local media, Ito has said he deeply regrets soliciting donations from Epstein. “I was never involved in, never heard him talk about, and never saw any evidence of the horrific acts that he was accused of,” Ito said in a statement in 2019.
A spokesperson for Japan’s Cabinet secretariat, which promotes the Global Startup Campus Initiative, said she recognized there were concerns about Ito. But the secretariat office decided to bring Ito on as an executive adviser, she said, “as we haven’t confirmed any wrongdoing by him and we believe he is highly knowledgeable.”
Ito, 59, was born in Kyoto and raised in suburban Detroit. After dropping out of Tufts University and the University of Chicago, he returned to Japan in the 1990s to start a string of early internet service providers.
A master networker, Ito maintained U.S. connections as a venture capitalist with early stakes in companies like Twitter. In 2011, he was tapped for a prestigious position leading MIT’s Media Lab, a sort of academic Skunk Works where designers and engineers build futuristic prototypes.
It was through these circles that Ito began associating with Epstein, who became a significant, concealed MIT donor. Starting in 2013 — roughly five years after Epstein was convicted in Florida of soliciting prostitution from a minor — Ito met frequently with Epstein, and the financier contributed funding on multiple occasions for Ito’s ventures.
After a 2019 article in The New Yorker described the measures that Ito took to conceal Epstein-directed donations made to his lab, Ito resigned from MIT. At the time, he said he had “screwed up” by accepting the money but that he had done so after a review by the university and consultation with his advisers.
Ito returned to Japan, taking a position at a little-known private university on the outskirts of Tokyo in 2021.

Fumio Kishida addresses the U.S. Congress in 2024, when he was prime minister. Kishida personally pitched the Global Startup Campus Initiative idea to then-U.S. President Joe Biden. (BLOOMBERG)
The next year, in 2022, Fumio Kishida, then the prime minister, introduced the Global Startup Campus Initiative. The plan was to build a research hub focused on technologies, including artificial intelligence and robotics. It was to be anchored by a partnership with MIT and sought to recruit researchers from U.S. universities to collaborate with Japanese entrepreneurs.
Kishida personally pitched the idea to then-President Joe Biden during a 2023 meeting in Hiroshima. A campus in central Tokyo was supposed to be completed by around 2028.
At its outset, Ito was not involved with the government group leading the project. But in early 2024, people involved in the initiative received a memo naming Ito as one of three leaders who would dictate the group’s strategies, along with two high-ranking Japanese government officials.
According to documents reviewed by the Times, the memo was sent by Akira Amari, a long-standing and influential figure within Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated Japanese politics for decades. At least four government and university officials said they were surprised at the time by the appointment of Ito, given his ties to Epstein.
Amari is close with the current prime minister, Takaichi, who has been known to call him “aniki,” or “big brother.” Takaichi has endorsed the initiative as one of her administration’s growth strategies. The prime minister and Amari’s offices did not respond to requests for comment.
In Japan, Ito’s role in the Global Startup Campus Initiative has gone mostly unnoticed. In 2025, a lawmaker, Satoshi Honjo, raised questions about the appointment during parliamentary sessions. He asked whether it was problematic for a person with ties to Epstein to, in effect, lead the initiative.
A high-ranking Takaichi administration official, Kiyoto Tsuji, then a Cabinet office vice minister, responded by saying Ito “has provided us with a variety of useful information and advice toward realizing the initiative.” And, he added, “he is merely acting as a part-time adviser.”
But documents suggest Ito plays a much bigger part. Government officials have told potential partner universities that he plays a “pivotal role” in the initiative, according to internal documents and correspondence. The documents show a framework for the project that is based solely on “ideas from Professor Joichi Ito.”
More than three years after the group’s launch, it publicly lists a few universities — the University of Tokyo, Imperial College London and the National University of Singapore — as “pilot activity” partner organizations. Others have expressed hesitation in associating with a group tied to Ito.
MIT, Harvard and Keio have each conveyed to Japanese officials that they would be reluctant to work with the initiative if Ito was involved, according to emails viewed by the Times and four individuals with direct knowledge of the interactions. At the start, MIT was supposed to be a cornerstone partner.
Last year, Martial Hebert, a dean at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, wrote in an email to Japanese officials obtained by the Times, “We will not be part of any project that involves Joi.” A spokesperson for Carnegie Mellon confirmed that the school is not working with the Global Startup Campus Initiative but declined to comment on its reasoning.
In 2024, Richard K. Lester, then MIT’s vice provost for international activities, told Japan’s minister in charge of economic revitalization that many of the school’s faculty would “find it difficult to cooperate with the Global Startup Campus if Mr. Joichi Ito was to occupy a significant position,” according to internal minutes from the meeting.
Imperial College London, the University of Tokyo, MIT, Harvard, and Keio did not respond to requests for comment. The National University of Singapore said in a statement that it is working with the Global Startup Campus Initiative “under the purview of Japan’s Cabinet Office” and that it had no relationship with Ito.
Before Ito was appointed in early 2024, the Global Startup Campus Initiative was behind schedule.
Two people familiar with its operations said it further lost pace after Ito joined. The spokesperson for the Cabinet secretariat said Ito helped introduce new strategies for the project that have enabled the group to “progress rapidly.” The spokesperson said she could not comment on the progress of conversations with individual universities.

Although the Global Startup Campus Initiative has already been allocated a budget of more than $400 million, it will need to be approved by parliament as a so-called operating corporation. The group had originally aimed to receive this approval last year. The decision on whether the initiative will be approved is now expected by July.
Some notable names publicly listed as the project’s “pilot activity” partner organizations include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropy run by Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife, Priscilla Chan; and Hakuhodo, a major Japanese advertising company.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative said it does not provide funding to the Global Startup Campus Initiative. Hakuhodo did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest Epstein files provide more detail about Ito’s money transfers with Epstein. In a May 2014 email exchange, Ito wrote to Epstein, “The slush fund, if it’s at MIT is easy. Should I send you the instructions?” Later that month, Ito confirmed receipt of the capital, writing, “I just got notice that $500K came into my slush fund account. Thanks!”
Honjo, the politician who questioned Ito’s appointment in parliament, said in an interview that it was “an established fact” that Ito had not properly disclosed Epstein-directed financial contributions to his MIT lab. “He can’t be called the right person for the job,” Honjo said.
The spokesperson for the Cabinet secretariat said the Global Startup Campus Initiative is moving into its next phase starting in the fiscal year that begins April 1. With regard to Ito, “we don’t believe there is a problem currently, but we will choose the appropriate people for the next fiscal year’s goals,” she said.
The recently released emails, as well as flight logs, detail at least five instances in 2013 and 2014 in which Ito planned to or did visit Epstein’s private island. In 2017, two years before he resigned from MIT, Ito wrote to Epstein saying he hoped his estate was OK after the devastation of Hurricane Irma. In a separate exchange, Epstein jokingly asked if “little Jeffrina,” Ito’s baby, had been born yet.
In Japan, the Epstein files have been treated mostly as a “domestic American issue,” said Chizuko Ueno, chief director of Women’s Action Network, a Japanese advocacy group. The Japanese establishment tends to ignore or bury contentious matters involving high-powered officials if there is no criminal conviction, she said.
Ueno is also a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, one of the institutions publicly associated with the initiative. Ueno said that Japan and the university had become less tolerant of individuals with histories of possible misconduct and that she believed the school and government officials would increasingly find they “can no longer ignore it; they have to do something.”
February 27, 2026
ChatGPT Maker Considered Warning Police About Canada Mass Shooting Suspect
TORONTO—ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said Friday it considered last year alerting Canadian police about the activities of a person who months later committed one of the worst school shootings in the country’s history.

OpenAI said last June the company identified the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar via abuse detection efforts for “furtherance of violent activities.”

The San Francisco tech company said it considered whether to refer the account the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but determined at the time that the account activity did not meet a threshold for referral to law enforcement. OpenAI banned the account in June 2025 for violating its usage policy.

The 18-year-old killed eight people in a remote part of British Columbia last week and died from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.

OpenAI said the threshold for referring a user to law enforcement is whether the case involves an imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm to others. The company said it did not identify credible or imminent planning. The Wall Street Journal first reported OpenAI’s revelation.

OpenAI said that, after learning of the school shooting, employees reached out to the RCMP with information on the individual and their use of ChatGPT.
“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the Tumbler Ridge tragedy. We proactively reached out to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with information on the individual and their use of ChatGPT, and we’ll continue to support their investigation,” an OpenAI spokesperson said.

The RCMP said Van Rootselaar first killed her mother and stepbrother at the family home before attacking the nearby school. Van Rootselaar had a history of mental health contacts with police.

The motive for the shooting remains unclear.

The town of 2,700 people in the Canadian Rockies is more than 1,000 kilometers northeast of Vancouver, near the provincial border with Alberta. Police said the victims included a 39-year-old teaching assistant and five students, ages 12 to 13.

The attack was Canada’s deadliest rampage since 2020, when a gunman in Nova Scotia killed 13 people and set fires that left another nine dead.
February 21, 2026
Big Social Media Platforms Agree to Independent Teen Safety Ratings
Three leading social media companies have agreed to undergo independent assessments of how effectively they protect the mental health of teenage users, submitting to a battery of tests announced Tuesday by a coalition of advocacy organizations.
The platforms will be graded on whether they mandate breaks and provide options to turn off endless scrolling, among a host of other measures of their safety policies and transparency commitments. Companies that reviewers rate highly will receive a blue shield badge, while those that fair poorly will be branded as not able to block harmful content. Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram, TikTok and Snap are first three companies to sign up for the process.
“I hope that by having this new set of standards and ratings it does improve teens’ mental health,” said Dan Reidenberg, managing director of the National Council for Suicide Prevention, who oversaw the development of the standards. “At the same time, I also really hope that it changes the technology companies: that it really helps shape how they design and they build and they implement their tools.”
Teenagers represent a coveted demographic for social media sites and the new standards come as the tech industry faces increasing pressure to better protect young users.
A wave of lawsuits alleges that leading firms have engineered their platforms to be addictive. Congress is weighing a suite of bills designed to protect children’s safety online. And state lawmakers have sought to impose age limits on social apps.
But those efforts have borne little fruit. Some legal experts argue teens and their families may face difficulty in court cases proving the connection between social media use and their struggles. Officials in Washington, meanwhile, have been unable to agree on how to regulate the industry and laws passed by the states have run into First Amendment challenges.

The voluntary standards represent an alternative approach. Reidenberg said in an interview that the ratings are not a substitute for legislation but will be a helpful way for teenagers and parents to decide how to engage with particular apps. The project is backed by the Mental Health Coalition, an advocacy group founded by fashion designer Kenneth Cole.

Cole said in a statement that the standards “recognize that technology and social media now play a central role in mental health — especially for young people — and they offer a clear path toward digital spaces that better support well-being.”
There is still no scientific consensus on whether social media is on the whole harmful for children and teenagers. While some research has found that the heaviest users have worse mental health, studies have also found that young people who are not online can also struggle. But teenagers themselves have reported becoming more uneasy about the time they spend online, with girls in particular telling pollsters at the Pew Research Center in 2024 that apps were affecting their self-confidence, sleep patterns and overall mental health.
Reidenberg said it’s clear that in some cases young people’s time online becomes problematic. He said the system was developed without funding from the tech industry, but companies will have to volunteer to participate.
Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, said the standards will “provide the public with a meaningful way to evaluate platform protections and hold companies accountable.” TikTok’s American arm said it looked forward to the ratings process. Snap called the Mental Health Coalition’s work “truly impactful.”
Organizers compared the process to how Hollywood assigns age ratings to movies or the government assesses the safety of new cars. Companies will submit internal polices and designs for review by outside experts who will develop their ratings. In all, the companies’ performance will be measured in about two dozen areas covering their policies, app design, internal oversight, user education and content.
Many of the standards specifically target users’ exposure to content about suicide and self harm. But one also targets the sheer length of time that some people spend scrolling, crediting platforms for offering either voluntary or mandatory “take-a-break” features.
The standards are being launched at an event in Washington on Tuesday. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia) said in a statement that he welcomed the standards but they weren’t a substitute for regulatory action.
“Congress has a responsibility to put lasting, enforceable guardrails in place so that every platform is held accountable to the young people and families who use them,” he added.
February 10, 2026
Crypto Enters Another Winter, Leaving Longtime Bulls Searching for Answers

(Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News)
Bitcoin just suffered its largest weekly decline in more than three years. But the worst part for some of crypto’s permabulls is that they aren’t sure what exactly caused the crash.
The selloff left many of the market’s luminaries—those so well-known that they go simply as “Pomp” and “Novo” and “Mooch”—searching for answers.
“Bitcoin is crashing and investors are freaking out,” Anthony Pompliano, a crypto evangelist and investor, wrote Friday.
Bitcoin fell 16% to $70,008 this past week, down a sharp 45% from its all-time high of $126,273 in October. Ether dropped 24% to $2,052, off 59% from its own high of last year. Both tokens staged furious rallies Friday, but the week remained a historically bad one for crypto. And few seem to know what went wrong.
Market theories for the selloff ranged from investors’ pivot toward the prediction markets and other risky bets, to widespread profit-taking after a blistering bull run.
Price performance, past two years
Price performance, past two years
Trump’s surprise announcement of
100% tariffs against China
Source: The NY Budgets Crypto Index

“There was no smoking gun,” said Michael Novogratz, who runs Galaxy Digital, a crypto merchant-banking and trading firm.
For much of last year, crypto was in ascendance. President Trump’s return to the White House ushered in a new era for digital assets, which continued to gain acceptance among individual investors and legitimacy on Wall Street. As bitcoin and other popular tokens touched record highs, it seemed as though the market’s best days always lay ahead.
“I really didn’t think that we’d see a six at the beginning of the bitcoin price ever again,” said Cory Klippsten, chief executive officer of the bitcoin financial services firm Swan Bitcoin.
And yet, for a 24-hour stretch that ended Friday afternoon, bitcoin was back at that level. Past crypto selloffs had clearer explanations, which made this one more mystifying.
In 2018, bitcoin fell 80% from its peak after the initial coin offering bubble burst, ending an era in which thousands of unproven startups raised billions of dollars with little more than a sales pitch. In 2022, the $40 billion collapse of TerraUSD and Luna coins triggered a cascade of company failures across the crypto sector that culminated in the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange.

Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images
This time, there is no clear consensus. “If you ask five experts, you’ll get five explanations,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who served for 11 days as communications director during Trump’s first term and is among the best-known crypto bulls at his firm, SkyBridge Capital.
Here are some of the most popular explanations:
New shiny objects
There is no shortage of other markets for traders to make audacious bets, said Pompliano, the CEO of ProCap Financial. Prediction markets, gold, silver, artificial intelligence and so-called meme stocks are all vying for their attention of late, drawing eyes away from crypto.
“It used to be that bitcoin was the consensus view where asymmetry existed,” Pompliano said. “Now you have AI, prediction markets…many other areas where people can go and they can speculate.”
More supply?
Wall Street has sought to capitalize on crypto’s popularity by launching a growing array of exchange-traded funds and derivatives linked to bitcoin and other popular tokens. Their proliferation might not affect the sheer number of bitcoins, ethers and other tokens, but some investors thought their arrival has dented bitcoin’s appeal as a scarce asset.
Bitcoin’s main appeal has always been its limited supply of 21 million coins. By launching ETFs and complex derivatives, Wall Street has enabled investors to bet on the price of bitcoin without needing to buy or hold the actual coins, some analysts said.
New sheriff
Other investors suspected that Kevin Warsh, Trump’s pick to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve, might be bringing down crypto prices.
Warsh, they said, is seen as more hawkish on interest rates as a tool to tame inflation, and more supportive of a stronger U.S. dollar. Higher rates and a stronger dollar are conditions that typically hurt some alternative assets, such as gold and crypto, making them less attractive to investors. And this past week, the WSJ Dollar Index edged up 0.4%.
Still, Warsh and the Fed are expected to cut rates this year, not raise them. And Warsh has warmed to bitcoin. He famously dubbed the digital currency a “policeman for policy,” saying in a TV interview that bitcoin’s price can inform policymakers when they are doing things right and wrong.
Clouded clarity
After Trump signed into law the Genius Act last year, paving the path for stablecoins—digital assets pegged to fiat currencies like the dollar—the industry turned its attention to the next important piece of legislation: the Clarity Act. This bill would create a clear regulatory framework for the burgeoning industry.
Congress appeared on the cusp of moving the bill ahead when a dispute between crypto exchanges and traditional banks stalled that momentum. Without this measure, many financial firms are hesitant to integrate digital assets into their offerings. And unless a compromise is reached, the dust-up might deny the crypto market a catalyst that could have extended the rally.
Profit-taking
Novogratz and some other investors thought much of the selloff was driven by investors eager to lock in gains they collected when bitcoin, ether and other digital tokens rallied in the midst of the “euphoria” of Trump’s election in 2024 and pledge to make the U.S. the world’s crypto capital.
And those gains were indeed spectacular. Bitcoin, for one, rocketed around 80% from Election Day until early October of last year.
Sharp selloffs are hardly unusual in crypto, of course. They are so regular, in fact, that investors give them a name—crypto winter—that befits the belief that these downturns are as predictable as the seasons.
Some analysts believe this crypto winter could thaw faster than those of the past. No key companies have collapsed or faced allegations, revelations that have elicited crises of confidence in past crashes.
For believers, Friday’s rally served as reassurance that cryptocurrencies have always bounced back, part of why they stick with these investments.
“The infrastructure is stronger, stablecoin adoption continues to grow and institutional interest hasn’t evaporated, it’s just sidelined,” said Jasper De Maere, a strategist at the crypto trading firm Wintermute. Interest in these investments “can return quickly,” he said.
Many of crypto’s true believers are willing to wait.
On a Thursday afternoon conference call, Strategy founder Michael Saylor sought to reassure investors that bitcoin was coming back.

Republicans are way ahead of Democrats regarding their opinion of crypto and bitcoin, said MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor. (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)
Moments earlier, his company, which stockpiles bitcoin, had reported a $12 billion quarterly loss related to the token’s late-2025 swoon. Saylor told his investors the only way to handle the downturn is to hold on—and tune out the market’s volatility.
“Your time horizon needs to be, minimal, four years,” Saylor said.
February 6, 2026
SpaceX Pushes for Early Index Inclusion Ahead of Potential IPO
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking an early boost for shares after the rocket-and-satellite business makes its stock market debut later this year.
Advisers for the company, which recently merged with xAI, have reached out to major index providers, including Nasdaq, to discuss how SpaceX and this year’s other hot startups might join key indexes sooner than normal, according to people familiar with the matter.
Companies typically must wait several months or a year after their public debut before gaining inclusion in a major index such as the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq 100. Inclusion unlocks access to retail and institutional capital from funds, particularly those mimicking the performance of indexes that have to hold the companies in the index.
The traditional waiting period is intended to give the companies time to demonstrate that they are stable and liquid enough to handle extensive buying from index funds.
SpaceX hopes to skirt traditional rules in an effort to bring liquidity to its shareholders sooner as part of its planned IPO. SpaceX advisers have sought index policy changes that would fast-track its entry into major indexes for the company and benefit other highly-valued private companies, the people said.
Last valued at $800 billion, SpaceX is targeting a valuation of more than $1 trillion, a listing that would become the largest-ever U.S. IPO.

Elon Musk. © Al Drago/Bloomberg
Investors and advisers to companies planning to go public this year are concerned not only about initial trading, but also that the standard six-month lockup period—which prevents early investors, executives and employees from selling their stock—might prompt significant selling that pressures shares. After Meta went public in 2012, shares sank when early investors unloaded all at once.
SpaceX is exploring ways to better balance supply and demand to avoid that outcome, some of the people said.
Advocates of index methodology changes have said that by allowing newly public companies earlier entry to key indexes, individual investors, who have famously missed out on the big gains in private markets, could secure earlier exposure via popular exchange-traded funds and index funds.
Earlier this week, the Nasdaq Stock Market shared proposals to update some of the Nasdaq 100 index methodology and asked for feedback from market participants.
Among the proposals is a potential “fast entry” process. Under this option, companies whose market capitalizations rank in the top 40 of the Nasdaq 100’s constituents could be added to the index after 15 trading days. Companies typically now must wait at least three months to be added to the index. At their current valuations, SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic would all qualify.
The S&P Total Market Index and MSCI indexes have fast-track options, which some advisers to SpaceX are also exploring in an effort to ensure the IPO trades well, some of the people familiar with the matter said.
The one index where there is now no fast-entry option is also one of the most important: The S&P 500. To join the index, a company must be U.S.-based, profitable and have a market capitalization of at least $22.7 billion. Joining gives it access to a steadier index-fund investor base.
OpenAI is laying the groundwork for a fourth-quarter IPO as it races rival Anthropic to list shares publicly. OpenAI is aiming to raise $100 billion before the IPO at a valuation of more than $800 billion, while Anthropic is raising billions more at a valuation of $350 billion.
February 4, 2026
Elon Musk Says SpaceX and xAI Will Merge to Build AI Data Centers in Space
Elon Musk in animated space. © The NY Budgets/Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images
On Monday, Elon Musk announced that he was merging two of his companies, SpaceX and xAI, in a deal said to be worth $1.25 trillion. The reason, Musk said in an announcement, was that in order for AI to grow, it needed to go to space.
AI relies on “large terrestrial data centers” that run on “immense amounts of power and cooling,” he said, which comes at great expense to the environment and community opposition. The solution: data centers in space. “In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale,” Musk said.
Musk isn’t the only one looking to launch data centers into orbit. Google has Project Suncatcher to build solar-powered AI data centers in space. China is looking into space-based data centers, as is Europe. As we reported last year, space-based data centers — in the form of satellites with solar panels — are Big Tech’s latest fad and Silicon Valley’s newest investable venture.
On the surface, it sounds like a logical solution to the unique problem presented by power-hungry data centers. Local communities are rising up against data center projects over concerns about electricity demand, water usage, and rising utility rates. Launching those data centers into space means they are not taking up any space on Earth, and in a sun-synchronous orbit there is the availability of solar energy.
AI relies on “large terrestrial data centers” that run on “immense amounts of power and cooling,” Musk said, which comes at great expense to the environment
But there’s another, simpler way of looking at Musk’s merger: SpaceX is profitable, and xAI is not. Not only is xAI not profitable, it’s in the midst of a serious cash burn as it races to compete with well-financed rivals like Google and OpenAI. As Bloomberg recently reported, the AI company is burning about $1 billion a month as it spends heavily to build data centers, recruit talent, and run the social media platform X.
Meanwhile, SpaceX generated about $8 billion in profit on an estimated $16 billion of revenue last year, Reuters reported. The main revenue driver is Starlink, which accounts for up to 80 percent of the company’s revenue. Since 2019, SpaceX has launched over 9,500 satellites and boasts up to 9 million broadband internet users. The company is also a major government contractor, having secured over $20 billion in NASA and Defense Department deals since 2008. When it goes public later this year, SpaceX is expected to raise up to $50 billion in investment.
Meanwhile, xAI has it own government tie-ups. The Department of Defense is using Grok, in addition to other chatbots, to analyze information that flows through its military intelligence networks.
It’s not clear how investors will feel about merging the cash-burning xAI with the profitable SpaceX. But it’s important to note that Musk has done this before, when he merged the debt-ridden SolarCity with Tesla in 2016. Since Musk was the largest shareholder and chairman of both Tesla and SolarCity, shareholders sued to block the merger, alleging it was a $2.6 billion “bailout” of a cash-strapped, struggling company. Musk eventually won the lawsuit, with a judge ruling that he did not force Tesla to overpay for SolarCity.
Musk now faces a new lawsuit from Tesla shareholders over his creation of xAI. The lawsuit alleges that Musk breached his fiduciary duty to Tesla by forming xAI, which competes with the automaker for AI talent, resources, and Musk’s attention. The news that SpaceX is acquiring xAI certainly won’t settle those concerns; if anything, it makes it more chaotic and complex.
So where does this all leave Tesla? In the most recent earnings report, Tesla said it was investing $2 billion into xAI “to enhance Tesla’s ability to develop and deploy AI products and services into the physical world at scale.” Grok, xAI’s chatbot that’s currently under investigation in multiple countries for generating nonconsensual sexualized images of people, including children, was recently integrated into certain Tesla vehicles as a voice assistant. Grok also lags behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and other large language models in several key metrics.
Data centers in space is pure Musk futurism that has no guarantee of success. It’s not as simple as just strapping a GPU to a rocket and hitting “launch.” First off, GPUs are total power hogs. Unless you’ve got a nuclear reactor floating up there, you’re going to need a massive solar arrays to power it. Then there’s the communication situation; even if you’re hitching a ride on Starlink, you still have to figure out the budget for sending info back and forth to Earth. Eventually, the numbers start to look pretty scary.
Musk says merging SpaceX and xAI is the way to make it happen. And perhaps one day he’ll take the suggestion of bullish investors to combine all his companies, including Tesla, Neuralink, and the Boring Company, into one massive, Musk-run mega-corporation: Musk Inc., if you will. How will Tesla shareholders react?
“Tesla is Musk’s liquid piggy bank, since it’s publicly traded; his other companies are not,” Tesla investor James McRitchie said during a prevote presentation before the company’s 2024 shareholder meeting, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Either he sticks around long enough to use our shareholder capital to fund his other ventures, or he shifts his attention sooner if we reject his pay package and turn off the money tap.”
February 4, 2026
Meta Is Blocking Links to ICE List on Facebook, Instagram and Threads
In a move that’s sure to rile up the far-left activist crowd but makes perfect sense for anyone who values the safety of our nation’s border enforcers, Meta has quietly started blocking links to the so-called “ICE List” website across its major platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
This decision comes amid growing concerns over online harassment and doxxing targeted at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel, who are on the front lines protecting America’s sovereignty from illegal crossings and criminal elements.
The ICE List, a crowdsourced wiki-style site launched in June last year, purports to “hold accountable” DHS employees by compiling and publicizing their names, often pulled from public sources like LinkedIn profiles.
Site creator Dominick Skinner, a self-described activist, claims the project is run by a small core team of five, bolstered by hundreds of anonymous volunteers who submit tips on ICE agents’ activities across U.S. cities. But let’s call it what it is: a thinly veiled attempt at intimidation, masquerading as “transparency.” Skinner himself griped to WIRED that Meta’s block is no surprise from a company led by Mark Zuckerberg, who he accuses of cozying up to President Trump—referencing Zuckerberg’s attendance at Trump’s inauguration and past political donations. “I think it’s no surprise that a company run by a man who sat behind Trump at his inauguration, and donated to the destruction of the White House, has taken a stance that helps ICE agents retain anonymity,” Skinner said.
Skinner’s rhetoric reeks of the kind of liberal outrage we’ve seen time and again from those who demonize law enforcement while turning a blind eye to the real threats at our borders. ICE agents aren’t “terrorizing immigrant communities,” as Skinner alleges; they’re enforcing the laws of the land, deporting criminals, and stemming the tide of illegal immigration that strains resources and undermines wages for hardworking Americans. In a right-of-center view, this is essential work—pro-ICE all the way. These agents put their lives on the line daily, facing dangers from cartels, human traffickers, and yes, even domestic agitators who think doxxing is a form of “activism.”
The block was first noticed by volunteers associated with ICE List on Monday night, with widespread confirmation by Tuesday morning. Attempts to share links on Facebook yield messages like, “Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can’t be edited,” which later updated to, “Your content couldn’t be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards.” On Threads, links simply vanish with a curt “Link not allowed.” Instagram users see, “We restrict certain activity to protect our community. Let us know if you think we made a mistake.” Interestingly, WhatsApp—another Meta property—still allows sharing, perhaps due to its end-to-end encryption focus.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone pointed to the company’s policy against sharing personally identifiable information (PII), specifically prohibiting “content asking for personally identifiable information of others.” When pressed on why the block came after six months of unrestricted sharing, Stone reiterated the doxxing concerns.
This isn’t Meta’s first rodeo; back in the day, they shut down a Chicago-based Facebook group tracking ICE sightings after pressure from the Justice Department. Good on them for stepping up again—protecting public servants from harassment aligns with basic decency, even if it irks the anti-border crowd.
The site gained notoriety earlier this month after claiming to upload a “leaked” list of 4,500 DHS employees. But a closer look reveals it’s mostly aggregated from public data—LinkedIn bios, social media posts, and the like. ICE List describes itself as “an independently maintained public documentation project focused on immigration-enforcement activity,” aiming to “record, organize, and preserve verifiable information about enforcement actions, agents, facilities, vehicles, and related incidents.” Sounds noble, but in practice, it’s a hit list that could endanger families and fuel vigilante actions. The Trump administration has rightly pushed back against such tactics, threatening prosecutions for doxxing and leaning on tech firms to curb these efforts.
From a pro-ICE perspective, this blocking is a win for national security. ICE isn’t about haphazard “remigrations”—that far-right buzzword for mass expulsions without due process, which we’re firmly against here. No, ICE handles targeted, legal deportations of those who break our laws, like violent offenders and repeat border-jumpers. Remigration schemes, often peddled by extremists, ignore the rule of law and humanitarian considerations; ICE, on the other hand, operates within the framework of justice, ensuring removals are justified and orderly. Liberals like Skinner and his ilk want to abolish ICE altogether, chanting “no borders, no walls” while ignoring the chaos that invites—fentanyl floods, human smuggling, and overburdened communities.
Social media reactions have been swift and divided, as seen on X (formerly Twitter). One user, @warriors_mom, shared the WIRED story, noting, “Users of Meta’s social platforms can no longer share links to ICE List, a website listing what it claims are the names of thousands of DHS employees.” Another, @snoopyicetea, pointed out, “TikTok isn’t the only app being censored in the US. Every Meta app is blocking links to ICE list.” Tech enthusiast @f1rede weighed in thoughtfully: “Meta is blocking links to ICE List (a crowdsourced wiki naming ICE/CBP agents) on Facebook, Instagram & Threads, citing PII/doxxing rules. Protecting people is vital — but so is public accountability. Should platforms block site links like this?” Meanwhile, conspiracy-tinged posts like @z_007_z’s linked it to broader U.S.-Iran parallels and Trump control, showing how quickly these stories spiral.

Critics on the left cry censorship, but this is about safety, not suppression. Meta’s platforms have long battled misinformation and harmful content, and blocking a site that solicits tips on agents’ identities fits squarely under that umbrella. Skinner countered Meta’s rationale by noting his site has been crowdsourcing info for months, but that doesn’t make it right—public data or not, aggregating it for targeted harassment crosses a line.
This episode highlights the ongoing tug-of-war between free speech and security in the digital age. With the 2026 midterms on the horizon, expect Democrats to seize on this as evidence of Big Tech’s “bias” toward conservatives, while ignoring their own calls to defund ICE. But for those of us with a right-center lean, it’s refreshing to see a tech giant like Meta prioritize the protection of our ICE heroes over the whims of liberal activists. After all, secure borders mean safer communities, and that’s a policy worth defending.
January 27, 2026
US-Japan Panel Holds Second Meeting to Advance $550B Trade Deal Investments
Japan and the United States convened their second high-level consultation committee meeting on Tuesday, signaling renewed momentum in deploying a landmark $550 billion Japanese investment pledge that anchors the allies’ hard-won trade agreement. The two-hour virtual session, co-chaired by Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, focused on expediting project selections, with officials pledging to announce the inaugural initiative “as soon as possible,” according to a statement from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
The gathering builds on the panel’s inaugural online meeting last week, where representatives from Japan’s foreign, trade, and finance ministries joined U.S. counterparts from the Commerce and Energy Departments to exchange views on potential investments. Energy projects emerged as early frontrunners, with sources familiar with the discussions indicating a handful under review for priority funding. Recommendations from the consultation committee will feed into an investment panel chaired by Lutnick, culminating in final approvals by President Donald Trump—a structure that underscores Washington’s directive role in allocating the funds.
This accelerated pace reflects mounting pressure to operationalize the pledge, formalized in a September memorandum of understanding (MOU) following July’s framework accord. The $550 billion commitment—upped from an initial $400 billion discussion at Trump’s insistence—secured Japan’s relief from steep U.S. tariffs, capping duties at 15% on automobiles and most goods after an earlier spike to 25%. Non-compliance risks penalty clauses, including tariff hikes, potentially unraveling the deal and exposing Tokyo to renewed trade friction.
Target sectors span strategic priorities: semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, metals, shipbuilding, energy, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. Financing will flow through project-by-project commitments, leveraging institutions like the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI) for equity, loans, and guarantees. Investments must materialize by January 19, 2029—the end of Trump’s term—aligning with his administration’s push to revitalize U.S. industrial capacity and bolster supply chains amid global competition, particularly from China.

Market reactions have been muted but positive. The Nikkei 225 edged up 0.4% on Wednesday, buoyed by clarity on tariff stability, while U.S. futures showed modest gains in chip and energy stocks. Analysts at Nomura Securities project the fund could inject $100-150 billion annually into U.S. infrastructure, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in swing states—a political windfall for Trump. However, skeptics note execution hurdles: Japan’s characterization of the pledge as facilitated private-sector flows contrasts with U.S. portrayals of direct government-directed capital, potentially complicating disbursements.
The process traces to Trump’s October visit to Tokyo, where an initial project shortlist was floated. Early contenders include LNG terminals, rare earth processing facilities, and semiconductor fabs—areas ripe for de-risking U.S. dependencies. “This isn’t charity; it’s mutual security,” Lutnick remarked in a recent CNBC interview, emphasizing profit-sharing tilted heavily toward America post-recoupment (90-10 split).
For Japan, already the largest foreign investor in the U.S. with over $800 billion in holdings, the pledge reinforces alliance ties while mitigating tariff pain on exporters like Toyota and Sony. Yet, domestic critics decry it as concessional, with opposition lawmakers questioning the fiscal burden amid Japan’s aging demographics and debt load.
As the committee eyes a third session next week and potential Trump sign-offs in early 2026, the initiative tests the Trump administration’s dealmaking prowess. Success could blueprint similar pacts with other trading partners; delays risk reigniting trans-Pacific tensions in an era of reshoring and economic nationalism.
December 24, 2025
Nvidia’s Record Profits Alleviate Investor Concerns Amid AI Boom
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address at CES on Jan. 6, 2025. © Patrick T. Fallon / Getty Images
Stock Widget
Nvidia NVDA +4.25% ▲ reported record sales and strong guidance Wednesday, helping soothe jitters about an artificial intelligence bubble that have reverberated in markets for the last week.

Sales in the October quarter hit a record $57 billion as demand for the company’s advanced AI data center chips continued to surge, up 62% from the year-earlier quarter and exceeding consensus estimates from analysts polled by FactSet. The company increased its guidance for the current quarter, estimating that sales will reach $65 billion—analysts had predicted revenue of $62.1 billion for the quarter.
Shares in the world’s most-valuable publicly listed company rose almost 5% in premarket trading Thursday.
“We’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI,” said Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang. “AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.”
Wednesday’s result will allow investors to breathe a sigh of relief. Each Nvidia quarterly earnings report has come to be seen as a financial Super Bowl of sorts as the AI boom has taken off. The company is regarded as a bellwether for both the health of the tech industry and the market as a whole.
This quarter, however, the stakes seemed higher. Rarely has an earnings report from a single company been greeted with such nervous anticipation.
In recent weeks, investors have sold off big tech names, worried that companies are spending far too much money on data centers, chips, and other infrastructure in the race to design and operate the world’s most powerful AI models, with little hope of recouping their investments in the near term.

Adding to the pressure is a flurry of recent AI deals structured using what critics have dubbed “circular” funding mechanisms—broadly referring to suppliers like Nvidia making large capital investments in the businesses of the customers who buy their products. Just a few months ago, investors viewed such deals with enthusiasm, pumping up shares for a variety of AI-related companies, but this week one such deal—between Nvidia, Microsoft and Anthropic—was greeted warily.
This week, 45% of global fund managers surveyed by Bank of America said that an AI stock-market bubble was one of the biggest risks facing the market.
A number of bearish moves by high-profile investors have also rattled tech markets. Last week, Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group sold its entire $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia to divert that money to other AI investments, while a hedge fund run by influential billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel unloaded its entire $100 million Nvidia stake in the third quarter.
Earlier this month, Michael Burry—who famously predicted the popping of the subprime mortgage securities bubble and was profiled in the Michael Lewis book “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine”—revealed in a securities filing that he was betting against the stocks of both Nvidia and AI-heavy defense analytics firm Palantir.
“The last few weeks, there have been some escalating cracks in the AI landscape,” said Matt Stucky, chief portfolio manager for equities at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company, an Nvidia shareholder. “Nvidia is the beneficiary of a lot of AI spending, and market forces are pushing back harder and harder on that spending.”
Quarterly net income was $31.9 billion, 65% higher than a year earlier. Sales of Nvidia’s Blackwell line of graphics processing units—its most powerful chips yet—were “off the charts,” Huang said. Revenue from Nvidia’s data center segment set a record at $51.2 billion, beating analysts’ expectations of $49 billion.
The potential for revenue increases may be limited going forward after the Trump administration announced earlier this month that it is not considering allowing a version of the Blackwell chip to be sold in China, a fast-growing AI market that represents tens of billions of dollars in potential sales.
Half of the company’s long-term opportunity will come from customers’ transition to accelerated computing and generative AI, Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, said on a call with investors. While sizable purchase orders for Nvidia’s Hopper Platform never materialized in the quarter due to geopolitical issues with China, the company remains committed to engaging with governments, she added.
In separate news, the Commerce Department approved the sale of up to 70,000 advanced artificial-intelligence chips to two companies based in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, a big win for the Middle Eastern nations as they seek to catch up in the AI race. The approvals are a reversal from earlier this year, when some administration officials rejected the idea of exporting directly to the state-backed companies over security concerns.

Terms of the deal will allow U.S. firms to sell up to 35,000 of Nvidia’s GB300 servers or their equivalents to both G42, a state-run AI firm based in Abu Dhabi, and Humain, a Saudi government-backed AI venture, government officials said. Nvidia competitor Advanced Micro Devices also has an agreement worth billions of dollars to work with Humain.
Nvidia’s stock price more than doubled between early April and late October, rising from the low $90s to more than $200 per share, but has lost ground in the last few weeks as bubble worries have grown. So far this year, it’s up about 30%.
November 20, 2025
Nvidia’s $5 Trillion Milestone: What Does It Mean for the Future of AI and Tech?
Stock Widget
Nvidia Corp. NVDA +5.50% ▲ etched its name deeper into history books Wednesday, becoming the first publicly traded company to eclipse a $5 trillion market capitalization—a staggering milestone that underscores the artificial intelligence revolution’s grip on global markets, even as whispers of an impending bubble grow louder. The Silicon Valley chipmaker’s shares surged as much as 5.5% during the session, closing at $207.04 with 24.3 billion shares outstanding, catapulting its valuation to $5.03 trillion. Just three months after breaching $4 trillion and a mere two years after cracking $1 trillion, Nvidia’s ascent—up 50% year-to-date and over 1,500% in the past five years—has outpaced the Nasdaq’s 23% gain this year and the S&P 500’s 17%, cementing its status as the world’s most valuable firm ahead of Microsoft MSFT +2.10% ▲ ($4 trillion) and Apple AAPL +1.80% ▲ ($3.9 trillion).

The rally, which added nearly $140 billion to Nvidia’s coffers in a single day, was supercharged by CEO Jensen Huang’s announcements at the company’s annual AI conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Huang revealed a pipeline of $500 billion in AI chip orders through next year, alongside a flurry of high-profile deals: a partnership with Uber Technologies Inc. to advance robotaxi development, a $1 billion investment in Nokia Oyj for next-generation 6G networks, and collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy to construct seven new AI supercomputers. Last month, Nvidia committed $100 billion to OpenAI, aiming to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers to supercharge the ChatGPT maker’s computing prowess. “These aren’t hypotheticals—these companies are generating real revenues, and the products are profitable,” Huang told NBC News, brushing off bubble concerns. “Generative AI has evolved from interesting to indispensable.”
Nvidia’s dominance in graphics processing units (GPUs)—repurposed from gaming rigs to the lifeblood of AI training for models like ChatGPT and image generators—has made it indispensable to Big Tech’s AI arms race. Its largest customers, including OpenAI, Tesla Inc., xAI, Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Oracle Corp., have funneled billions into Nvidia’s H100 and upcoming Blackwell chips, driving demand that outstrips supply. The semiconductor giant’s market cap now dwarfs the combined valuations of rivals like Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel Corp., Broadcom Inc., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Micron Technology Inc., ASML Holding NV, Lam Research Corp., Qualcomm Inc., and Arm Holdings Plc—collectively worth less than half of Nvidia’s heft.
To put $5 trillion in perspective: It’s equivalent to roughly 25 Walt Disney Cos., 50 Nikes, 96 Ford Motor Cos., 945 Macys, or over 3,311 JetBlue Airways Corps. Nvidia alone towers over the entire S&P 500 energy sector (three times its size) and eclipses major international benchmarks like Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC indices (more than double each). More strikingly, its valuation surpasses the gross domestic product of every nation on Earth except the United States ($29.1 trillion) and China ($18 trillion), per World Bank and IMF data—including India, Japan, the U.K., and Germany ($4.6 trillion last year). A $1,000 investment in Nvidia a decade ago, when shares bottomed at $0.47 in February 2015, would now be worth $441,000—a 44,000% return that has minted fortunes, including Huang’s estimated $174.4 billion net worth, ranking him eighth on Forbes’ billionaire list.
The AI boom, often likened to the iPhone’s 2007 debut for its transformative potential, has propelled Nvidia from a $10 billion niche player in 2015 to this colossus. Yet, the speed of its rise—stock up 3.4% to an intraday high of $207.85 Wednesday—has reignited debates over sustainability. Officials at the Bank of England flagged AI’s “growing risk” of a tech stock burst earlier this month, while IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva echoed warnings of parallels to the late-1990s dot-com bubble. Nvidia’s shares, trading at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 45, reflect sky-high expectations for sustained GPU demand amid an AI infrastructure spend projected to hit $1 trillion annually by 2030, per McKinsey & Co.
Geopolitical crosswinds add intrigue. Huang jetted to South Korea this week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, where free-trade ideals clash with escalating U.S. tariffs on tech and beyond. A pivotal sideline Thursday: a face-to-face between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, where Trump pledged to discuss Nvidia’s chips. In August, the administration struck a deal with Nvidia and AMD to ease export curbs on advanced chips to China in exchange for a 15% revenue cut to Washington—despite national security qualms over potential military diversions. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick quipped on CNBC in July that selling America’s “fourth best” AI tech to Beijing was “cool,” but not the top tiers. Nvidia’s August overtures for a China-specific chip, plus a $5 billion infusion into Intel (where the U.S. government now holds a 10% stake worth $11 billion), highlight efforts to balance export growth with domestic bolstering under the CHIPS Act.
For investors, Nvidia’s milestone is a double-edged sword. The Magnificent Seven tech stocks, led by Nvidia, have shouldered 60% of the S&P 500’s gains this year, but rotation risks loom if AI hype cools. “Nvidia isn’t just a company—it’s the AI proxy,” said Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities analyst. “But at $5 trillion, any earnings miss could trigger a reality check.” With Blackwell production ramping and partnerships like the Nokia tie-up eyeing 6G’s trillion-dollar frontier, Nvidia’s trajectory suggests more records ahead. Yet, as Huang attends APEC amid Trump-Xi tensions, the chip king’s fate remains intertwined with the very global supply chains it seeks to redefine.
October 29, 2025
Meta Stock Falls Even After Strong Revenue Report
Stock Widget
Meta Platforms Inc. delivered a resounding third-quarter earnings beat on Wednesday, with adjusted earnings per share of $7.25 topping analyst expectations of $6.69 and revenue surging to $51.24 billion against forecasts of $49.41 billion, as polled by LSEG. The results underscored the social media giant’s robust advertising engine and user engagement amid a resurgent digital ad market, yet Meta META -1.20% ▼ shares tumbled 1.2% in after-hours trading to $582.34, capping a volatile session that saw the stock dip 0.3% during regular hours. Investors, spooked by Meta’s forecast of “significant acceleration” in AI-related infrastructure costs next year—potentially ballooning to tens of billions—brushed aside the positives, signaling growing unease over the sustainability of Big Tech’s AI arms race.

The earnings, released after the bell on October 29, highlighted Meta’s operational resilience. Net income soared to $15.69 billion, or $6.03 per share, a 35% jump from $11.58 billion, or $4.39 per share, a year earlier—well ahead of FactSet’s consensus of $5.22. Revenue climbed 19% year-over-year, fueled by a 22% uptick in ad sales to $50.1 billion, as daily active users across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp swelled to 3.28 billion, up 6% from last year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted the quarter as a “strong foundation” for AI integrations, including enhanced Reels recommendations and Llama model advancements, which drove a 12% increase in time spent on the platforms.
Yet, the post-earnings glow faded swiftly. Meta’s guidance for Q4 projected revenue of $52.5 billion to $54 billion, in line with Wall Street’s $53.2 billion midpoint, but the real headwind was the capex outlook. The company flagged a “meaningful ramp” in 2026 AI infrastructure spending, on top of the $39 billion already earmarked for 2025, to fuel data centers and GPU acquisitions from Nvidia Corp. “We’re investing aggressively in AI to stay ahead,” Zuckerberg said on the earnings call, but analysts like Bank of America’s Justin Post worried aloud about the “long-term growth manifestation” of these outlays, especially as rivals like OpenAI pivot toward ads and social features, intensifying competition in Meta’s core turf.
The reaction rippled across global markets. In Frankfurt pre-market trading Thursday, Meta (META.O) shares slipped 2.6% to €530, mirroring a 5.1% drop in Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O) amid its own Azure cloud growth slowdown warning—dragging Nasdaq futures down over 1%. The Magnificent Seven cohort, already under scrutiny for AI hype, saw broader pressure: Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. reports later in the week loom large, with investors parsing for similar spending spikes. “Meta’s beat was textbook, but the AI capex fog is thick—it’s all about the denominator now,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives, who maintains an Outperform rating but trimmed his price target to $650 from $675.
Meta’s Q3 performance aligns with a digital ad sector rebound, projected to grow 12% to $740 billion globally in 2025 per eMarketer, buoyed by election-year spending and e-commerce tailwinds. Reality Labs, Meta’s metaverse arm, narrowed losses to $4.2 billion from $5.1 billion, with Quest headset sales up 15%—a bright spot amid Zuckerberg’s pivot to AI glasses and wearables. Still, the stock’s 1.2% after-hours slide erased $25 billion in market cap, leaving Meta at $1.48 trillion—down 5% year-to-date versus the Nasdaq’s 23% gain.
Looking ahead, Wall Street eyes Meta’s AI monetization roadmap at next week’s investor day, where details on ad-targeting LLMs and enterprise tools could assuage fears. For now, the earnings saga encapsulates Big Tech’s paradox: explosive growth meets escalating costs in an AI gold rush that has minted trillion-dollar valuations but risks a valuation reset if returns lag. As Ives put it, “The party’s still on, but the bill just arrived.”
October 29, 2025