April 27, 2025: Big Week For Indices, Big Tech Earnings Coming Up

Last week, Dow Jones rose 2.5%, S&P 500 gained 4.6%, and Nasdaq composite was up 6.7%. Megacaps, like Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon still are below recent highs and their upcoming earnings reports this week will provide insight into numerous demand drivers, including cloud computing spend, AI capex, e-commerce, advertising, consumer tech demand — and of course tariff impacts. Neuralink is seeking US$500 million at an US$8.5 billion valuation, intensifying competition in brain-computer interfaces. Alphabet reported steady Q1 revenue growth of 12%, despite slowing search revenue amid rising AI competition from OpenAI’s ChatGPT. ServiceNow exceeded revenue forecasts, driven by software subscriptions and internal AI efficiencies, boosting its stock after-hours. Tesla faced a challenging quarter, with profits plunging 66% due to reduced automotive sales and controversial CEO Musk’s political affiliations. Apple plans to shift all U.S.-sold iPhone production to India by 2026, reducing reliance on China amid escalating tariffs. Intel will reportedly cut over 20% of staff amid ongoing restructuring. Boeing has agreed to sell parts of its digital aviation unit to private equity group Thoma Bravo for US$10.55 billion. Amazon’s competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink, known as Project Kuiper, is struggling to scale up production of its satellites to hit a key U.S. government deadline. In regulatory news, Google abandoned its cookie-removal plan, while the EU fined Apple and Meta Platforms under new digital competition laws. FTC sued Uber over alleged deceptive billing practices related to its Uber One subscription. Temu and Shein increased U.S. prices ahead of tariff changes, reflecting ongoing trade uncertainties.In Canada, investment bankers applauded new securities rules aimed at reinvigorating the IPO market. In Sophic Capital client news, Cybeats announced its participation at the upcoming RSAC™ 2025 Conference, highlighting its SBOM Studio cybersecurity platform. Cybeats also expanded its SBOM Consumer product, entering new sectors such as healthcare, finance, energy, telecom, and defense, and launching pilots with a U.S. defense agency and Orange S.A.

Canada IPO bankers hail ‘revolutionary’ new fundraising rule.

Investment bankers are applauding steps taken by Canada’s securities regulators to make it easier to do initial public offerings, and to raise money afterwards. At a time when Canadian stock offerings are mired in a multi-year decline, the country’s regional securities regulators have introduced new rules that investment bankers and securities lawyers say could spur IPOs in an otherwise anemic market. The rules allow firms considering an IPO to file prospectuses with only two years of audited financial statements rather than three, and also to use those same prospectuses to raise more capital for an additional 12 months. The rule change would allow firms to raise the smaller amount of C$100 million ($72 million) or 20% of the issuer’s market value for 12 months after an IPO, as long as the shares were trading above the offering price. Nowlan said this could provide an incentive to firms to list. The Canadian Securities Administrators announced the changes last week via blanket orders to be implemented separately through each of its regional members. The new fundraising rules wouldn’t help issuers whose shares have struggled following their IPO. Clothing retailer Groupe Dynamite Inc., for instance, went public in November 2024 and marked the first corporate IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange in nearly two years, but its shares have since fallen nearly 34%. https://tinyurl.com/yeyt36cm

Sophic Client Cybeats Technologies Corp. (CYBT-CSE,CYBCF-OTCQB) to showcase software supply chain security solutions at the RSAC(TM) 2025 Conference. Cybeats Technologies Corp announces its participation in the RSAC™ 2025 Conference, taking place from April 28 to May 1 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The Company will exhibit its flagship platform, SBOM Studio, at its booth and engage with potential clients, investors, and strategic partners. The RSAC™ Conference is one of the world’s premier cybersecurity events, bringing together tens of thousands of cybersecurity professionals, enterprise leaders, and government stakeholders from across the globe. Cybeats’ presence reinforces its commitment to advancing software supply chain resilience and strengthening digital infrastructure in an increasingly regulated and threat-prone environment. https://t.co/PhZJWA6fUX

Sophic Client Cybeats Technologies Corp. (CYBT-CSE,CYBCF-OTCQB) expands SBOM consumer market reach with groundbreaking asset management capabilities, and enhanced visibility for OT and IT environments. Cybeats expands SBOM Consumer for asset management, redefining how enterprises secure the software they rely on beyond the software they create. Cybeats’ new product unlocks a vast new market opportunity, empowering IT and OT in enterprises to manage software security across their entire digital & physical Infrastructure, advancing end-to-end cybersecurity practices and providing comprehensive third-party risk management at scale Building on the commercial success of SBOM Studio, SBOM Consumer expands Cybeats’ reach into the broader enterprise market, enabling visibility, compliance automation, and third-party risk management across both software and device assets. This strategic product launch opens access to new software-consuming sectors-healthcare, finance, energy, telecom, and defense. Already in pilot with a U.S. defense agency and Orange S.A., SBOM Consumer empowers enterprises to evaluate software before deployment, automate risk management, and eliminate blind spots across procurement and operations. https://t.co/2exyNEg3jT

Neuralink raising US$500 million atUS$8.5 billion valuation.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink is raising US$500 million at a valuation of US$8.5 billion, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The brain-computer interface company wants to sell implantable devices that could help people, including those who are paralyzed, control computers directly from their brain. The Food and Drug Administration cleared Neuralink for human clinical trials in early 2023. Months later, the company closed a US$280 million funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund at an unknown evaluation, Reuters reported. The company is also backed by Google Ventures, Valor Equity Partners and Gigafund, a Founders Fund spinoff that has also funded Musk’s Boring Company and SpaceX. The talks come as competitor Precision Neuroscience received FDA clearance for the main component of its own brain implant. https://tinyurl.com/t2jcrtfc

Alphabet revenue growth steady even as search revenue growth slows.

Alphabet’s revenue grew 12% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2025, equal to its growth in the previous quarter, as growth in Google’s Search and Cloud businesses slowed slightly from the fourth quarter. Revenue from Google’s Cloud unit grew 28% year-over-year to US$12.3 billion, lower than the 30% the company reported in the fourth quarter of last year. Operating income growth from the cloud unit was in line with the previous quarter, however, at just above 140%, a sign that the cloud unit is becoming a more meaningful contributor to Google’s profits. Google’s year-over-year Search revenue growth also dropped to 9.8% from 12.5% in the fourth quarter, although in the earnings press release, CEO Sundar Pichai touted the company’s growth in Search engagement from products like the AI-generated answers feature AI Overviews. A Google executive testified Wednesday that Google hasn’t yet seen “cannibalization” of Search usage from OpenAI in commercial queries, but that OpenAI has drawn away from Search queries in homework and math queries. Alphabet’s capital expenditures jumped 43% in the first quarter to US$17 billion. Pichai has said that the company expects to spend US$75 billion this year as it invests in AI infrastructure like data centers. https://tinyurl.com/26a6acw2

ServiceNow tops revenue expectations; shares jump.

ServiceNow’s revenue rose 18.5% in the first quarter to US$3.09 billion, the company said Wednesday, the second consecutive quarter topline growth has decelerated slightly. But the biggest part of ServiceNow’s business, software subscriptions, exceeded previous projections and the IT automation company slightly raised its subscription revenue forecast for the year. CFO Gina Mastantuono said in a press release the company’s internal use of artificial intelligence helped the firm reach profitability goals and “drive meaningful opex efficiencies.” The company maintained its 32% free cash flow margin projection for the year, marginally higher than its 2024 margin. (See The Information’s ServiceNow Org Chart.) The company’s shares jumped more than 8% after hours. Year-to-date, ServiceNow’s share price has fallen more than 20%, steeper than the decline in the same period for the Nasdaq Composite and other indices of major software and technology companies. ServiceNow is one of the earliest software firms to report first quarter results and suggests enterprise software spending was healthy in the first three months of the year. To be sure, macroeconomic concerns around how tariffs will affect business spending largely started in April, so they won’t be reflected in most companies’ March quarter results. https://tinyurl.com/m646jb8d

Sales fall drags down Tesla’s profit 66%.

Tesla’s operating income dropped 66% and overall revenue was down 9% for the quarter compared to last year, driven by 20% lower automotive revenue and increased spending on artificial intelligence, the company reported Tuesday. The automaker produced and delivered fewer cars than any quarter over the past year, in part because it swapped production lines for an updated Model Y. That model, along with the Model 3, is now made with battery packs that are made entirely in the U.S. and therefore protected from some of President Trump’s new tariff measures. Future production may be limited by the uncertainty of those trade measures, the company said. Tesla’s sales in the quarter were also hurt by customers turning away from the brand, upset over CEO Elon Musk’s affiliation with President Donald Trump, Musk and other Tesla executives acknowledged on an investor call. Musk said that starting next month, he would scale back (but not end entirely) his involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency, where he has been involved in slashing costs across the government bureaucracy. As a result, he would devote “far more time to Tesla.” Meanwhile, Tesla said it remained “on track” for the pilot launch of its robotaxi service in Austin by June. On the call, Musk said the Austin launch would begin with 10 to 20 Model Y cars, although the exact number was still under debate. Plans for new vehicles, including more affordable models remain on track for start of production in the first half of 2025, Tesla said. Its statement follows a Reuters report last week that said the launch of a cheaper, scaled down Model Y was likely to be pushed to the latter part of the year. https://tinyurl.com/4fsxd5us

Deliveroo opens door to £2.7 billion meal deal with DoorDash.

Deliveroo, the food delivery company that listed in London with a £7.6 billion valuation in 2021, is set to be the latest UK company swallowed by a US rival after San Francisco-based DoorDash made an indicative £2.7 billion bid. The takeover talks between the two popular takeaway apps come as consolidation gathers pace in the sector. Earlier this year, Prosus struck a €4.1 billion deal to take Europe’s leading food delivery group Just Eat Takeaway private. Founded by Will Shu in 2013, Deliveroo went public in a hotly anticipated IPO four years ago. But the listing proved a debacle as shares lost more than a quarter of their value on the first day of trading. The company has struggled to perform since. Its stock stood at £1.47 at market close on Friday, down more than 60 per cent on its £3.90 listing price. Competition intensified when Uber Eats launched in the UK in 2016 alongside retail giant Amazon starting grocery delivery the same year. Deliveroo said in a statement on Friday that its board “would be minded to recommend” DoorDash’s offer of £1.80 a share if a firm approach were made. Deliveroo operates a food delivery app in nine countries, and booked its first full annual profit in its 2024 results last month. https://tinyurl.com/3m7n2cuc

Boeing to sell parts of aviation software unit to Thoma Bravo for US$10.5 billion.

Boeing has agreed to sell parts of its digital aviation unit to private equity group Thoma Bravo for US$10.55 billion as the US group seeks to bolster its financial position. Virginia-based Boeing on Tuesday said it had agreed to sell its digital aviation solutions business — including its Jeppesen assets, which provide navigation products and software, and ForeFlight, an aviation navigation app — to Thoma Bravo in an all-cash transaction. For Thoma Bravo, a specialist technology investor with US$179 billion in assets, the deal represents a large bet in a new industry, suggesting a belief that the unit possesses predictable revenues, similar to software licences. The private equity group would finance its deal with more than US$6 billion of equity and about US$4 billion in a private loan led by Apollo Global Management, said people briefed on the matter. https://tinyurl.com/wkdvdcy4

Intel plans to cut more than 20% of staff.

Intel plans to cut more than 20% of its workforce, as the U.S. chip giant struggles to turn around its business, Bloomberg reported. The plan, which is likely to be announced this week, according to Bloomberg, is part of Intel’s ongoing effort to streamline its business under its new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took the helm last month. The company, which has been suffering from sales declines and losses, had 108,900 employees as of late December, according to its annual report. The latest restructuring follows Intel’s earlier cuts. In August, the company announced that it would cut about 15,000 jobs, or about 15% of its workforce at the time. Earlier this month, Intel announced a deal to sell a 51% stake in its Altera unit, which makes reprogrammable chips, to Silver Lake in an effort to focus more on its core business. https://tinyurl.com/4ycjpj4k

Apple aims to make all US-sold iPhones in India by 2026.

Apple plans to assemble all the iPhones sold in the U.S. from India as soon as next year, as U.S.-China trade tensions force the company to pivot away from China, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter. The shift aims to cushion the impact of increased U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports, with a goal of producing the totality of over 60 million iPhones sold in the U.S. each year from India by the end of 2026. To achieve this production target, Apple needs to double the iPhone’s output in India, following nearly two decades of heavy investments in and reliance on Chinese manufacturing. Apple was facing a possible 125% U.S. tariff on products made in China, before President Donald Trump offered a temporary exemption on smartphones earlier this month. Still, made-in-China iPhones are subject to a separate 20% levy applied to all imports from China. By comparison, imports from India only face a 10% rate until at least July, as the U.S. and India negotiate a trade deal. Apple has been trying to reduce its reliance on Chinese suppliers in the last five years, driven mainly by rising tensions between the U.S. and China and strict Covid lockdowns in China that affected Apple’s factories in the country. The company is expanding its manufacturing in India by partnering with Tata Electronics and Foxconn. However, those efforts have met with challenges due to geopolitical tensions between China and India. https://tinyurl.com/5cwuudnb

ChatGPT is Cannibalizing Google search but not on shopping.

ChatGPT has drawn away some search queries from Google, a senior Google executive testified on Wednesday, but primarily “homework and math” queries which don’t generate much in ad revenue. The executive, Sissie Hsiao, said “so far we have not seen cannibalization of commercial queries or [queries with] commercial intent.” Still, Hsiao said that Google’s ad chief, Vidhya Srinivasan, believes cannibalization of commercial queries was “inevitable”. Hsiao said Srinivasan wanted Google to speed up adding ads to its Gemini AI chatbot. In notes from an October 2024 meeting presented in court, Srinivasan was quoted noting that the “writing is on the wall.” Hsiao’s comments came on the third day of a hearing in a Washington D.C. courtroom considering how Google should be overhauled to remedy its illegal search monopoly. The Justice Department is arguing that Google be constrained from extending its dominance of search into the nascent field of artificial intelligence. Much of Tuesday’s hearing focused on how AI market leader OpenAI was affected by competition from Google. Hsaio said that search queries that drive ads tend to be those where someone intends to buy something. She said AI chatbots hope to make chatbots helpful for shopping but so far “they’re not really great at it.” https://tinyurl.com/pej39wrz

OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft approach Samsung about AI deals on phones.

OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms have approached Samsung about deals to put their AI chatbots onto Samsung phones, according to an internal Google presentation from September 2024 shown in court on Tuesday. A Google executive later testified that Motorola was also working with various AI firms, including Perplexity. The revelations came on the second day of a hearing to determine how Google’s operations should be overhauled to remedy its illegal search monopoly, a key piece of which are distribution agreements that Google has with phone makers, wireless carriers and Web browsers to make Google search the default search provider. The Justice Department is trying to make the case that Google wants to extend its search dominance to AI, by using the same kind of distribution agreements. But under questioning from Google’s lawyer, a senior Google executive, Peter Fitzgerald, testified on Tuesday that phone makers and wireless carriers that have deals with Google were also talking with Google’s competitors in AI. Fitzgerald testified that Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google’s chatbot Gemini could be on phones at the same time, rather than Gemini being exclusive, under new agreements Google recently struck with phone makers. A Justice Department lawyer pointed out that those letters amending those agreements with regards to assistant and generative AI services were only sent last week, ahead of the trial. Before Amit Mehta, the judge in the case, ruled last fall that Google violated antitrust laws with its search business, Google was considering more restrictive distribution agreements that would have required partners to preinstall Gemini alongside Search and Chrome, according to internal slides presented in court. Those draft agreements were not executed in part because of the case, according to an internal memo. https://tinyurl.com/5b4dz88m

Washington Post signs licensing deal with OpenAI.

The Washington Post is the latest publisher to sign a content licensing deal with OpenAI, the newspaper announced today. As a result of the deal, Washington Post reporting will appear in ChatGPT answers, but “always with clear attribution and direct links to full articles,” the Post said. OpenAI has struck content licensing deals with more than 20 publishers, although the New York Times sued OpenAI over copyright infringement in late 2023. Last month, a judge allowed the case to move forward. The Post said it already is using AI internally as a reporting tool, and externally, for summaries and audio versions of articles. The publisher said that it is agnostic to which large language model it uses for its own AI products. Many publishers have been hewing towards using OpenAI as their LLM because some OpenAI content licensing deals give publishers credits to use the tech. https://tinyurl.com/3aujj8cc

Google rebuffed OpenAI request to access search data.

OpenAI reached out to Google last July to discuss accessing Google’s Search data to help develop its own SearchGPT product, according to testimony and emails presented in court on Tuesday. Google rejected that request on August 13, days after a federal judge ruled that it had an illegal monopoly in Search, according to an email presented in court. But, OpenAI may end up with another chance: The Department of Justice is requesting that the judge, Amit Mehta, require Google to syndicate its search engine—allowing third parties such as OpenAI to access search results in real time—and share its search index and click and query data, in order to jumpstart competition in the search market. The DOJ’s request is part of the proposed remedies the government seeks to fix Google’s antitrust violations on search. OpenAI product leader, Nick Turley, who oversees SearchGPT as part of ChatGPT, testified Tuesday in response to questioning from Mehta that he thought that OpenAI could power 100% of searches with its own technology in five years if it was allowed to use Google’s index and click and query data, although Turley said that he had consistently underestimated the difficulty of building a search index. Mehta on Monday had signaled support for requiring Google to share data with other companies; his question to Turley indicated that he may be thinking about how long that requirement would need to last to restore competition. https://tinyurl.com/wybxmbn2

Amazon struggling to scale up Kuiper satellite production. 

Amazon’s competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink, known as Project Kuiper, is struggling to scale up production of its satellites to hit a key U.S. government deadline, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Despite a Federal Communications Commission deadline of July 2026 to deploy more than 1,600 satellites, Amazon has produced just a few dozen satellites so far, making it likely that the company will have to request an extension, according to the report. Amazon is not consistently producing one satellite per day and would have to quadruple production to meet the deadline, Bloomberg reported. Kuiper is intended to be a satellite internet competitor to SpaceX which currently has millions of Starlink customers and thousands of satellites in orbit. Amazon was set to launch its first commercial Kuiper satellites on April 9, but the launch was delayed until April 28 due to weather conditions. An Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company is still on track to build and launch enough satellites to start offering commercial Kuiper internet service to customers later this year. https://tinyurl.com/ycxub4hj

Cookies will keep tracking users on Chrome, Google says.

Google has abandoned its plan to remove cookies from its Chrome web browser, giving up a privacy-driven effort that the company has been pursuing for at least five years, the company said Tuesday. Cookies track users across the web and help advertisers target and measure ads. Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple each removed cookies from their browsers years ago. Google had said in 2020 it would get rid of cookies as well and built a team to design alternative solutions for advertisers. But last summer Google said the cookies would remain on Chrome, though users would get a prompt to choose whether they wanted to be tracked. Today, Google said it would not offer users a prompt, though users are free to change their privacy settings within the chrome browser. Google has been rolling back privacy protections for users in other ways – last year, the company reversed an internal policy to allow advertisers to target via internet protocol addresses. The cookie-replacement ideas were devised by Google’s privacy sandbox unit, which is part of Google’s platforms and devices division. That division laid off hundreds of people earlier this month. Google said in the post today that privacy sandbox “may have a different role to play in supporting the ecosystem.” https://tinyurl.com/mr4xpbmj

EU fines Apple and Meta for breaching digital competition law.

The European Commission said Wednesday it has fined Apple and Meta Platforms hundreds of millions of dollars each for violating the region’s Digital Markets Act, making the two tech giants the first companies to be fined under the new digital law. The commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said in a statement that it has imposed a 500 million euro (US$570 million) fine on Apple and a 200 million euro fine on Meta. It said Apple’s rules for its App Store and Meta’s “pay or consent” advertising model both violate the Digital Markets Act. The commission ordered both companies to make changes to their practices. The commission said Apple and Meta are required to comply with its decisions within 60 days, and a failure to do so could result in additional penalties. https://tinyurl.com/erjznxn9

FTC sues Uber, alleging deceptive billing practices.

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday sued Uber for “deceptive billing and cancellation practices” on its Uber One subscription service. The Uber One subscription service costs up to US$9.99 a month and gives subscribers free delivery fees, discounts on rides and other perks like member-only promotions. Uber One promises customers monthly savings of US$25, which the FTC says is deceptive because it does not take into account the cost of the subscription. The complaint also alleges that Uber makes it difficult for customers to cancel the service once signed up. Customers have complained about being charged for the service during the free trial period despite Uber saying that customers should be able to cancel at no charge during the trial. San Francisco-based Uber launched Uber One in November 2021 and has 30 million users, according to the company’s financial statement. Uber denied that it charges customers without their consent, and said that the majority of cancellations in-app take 20 seconds or less. https://tinyurl.com/4xrmf6se

Temu and Shein hike prices in response to U.S. tariffs.

Temu and Shein have hiked at least some prices in the U.S. ahead of a planned Trump administration move to end a trade rule that has allowed e-commerce sites to ship orders into the country from China without paying tariffs. Both China-founded sites published nearly identical statements last week warning customers that they planned to raise prices on April 25 due to “recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs.” While Temu and Shein frequently change prices, many items appeared to be more expensive across the board on Friday—for example, a Shein dress that had cost US$12.07 earlier in April now costs US$21.49, according to e-commerce consultant Juozas Kaziukenas. Temu users took to forums like Reddit to complain about price hikes. It was not immediately clear whether Amazon had started raising prices on Haul, its Temu competitor that also uses the same trade rule. The U.S. plans to stop allowing importers to bring individual packages worth less than $800 from China and Hong Kong to the U.S. without paying tariffs under an executive order set to go into effect May 2. The administration has also said it plans to end use of the trade rule for packages coming from other countries but has not yet set a date for the ban to go into effect. https://tinyurl.com/mrybnyyc

DHgate, Taobao U.S. app downloads climb.

Downloads of Chinese shopping apps DHgate and Taobao have surged over the past week, after viral TikTok videos claimed that the apps could help U.S. shoppers buy cheap versions of popular luxury brands directly from manufacturers in China. DHgate, a wholesale marketplace app, ranked as the top free shopping app on Apple’s iPhone app store on Sunday, according to Apple’s rankings, while Alibaba Group’s Taobao was the sixth most-popular free shopping app. Both apps were previously little known to U.S. shoppers. President Donald Trump’s recent tariff announcements for major global trade partners have raised consumer awareness of potentially higher prices from a range of online sellers, sending shoppers on the hunt for relative bargains. https://tinyurl.com/vnh5pte5

Tether, Softbank, Cantor launch Bitcoin investing vehicle.

Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, and SoftBank are funding a new publicly traded company, called Twenty One Capital, that will invest in bitcoin. The company will launch with about US$3.9 billion in bitcoin and will trade on the stock market through a merger with Cantor Fitzgerald’s special-purpose acquisition company Cantor Equity Partners. Twenty One Capital says it expects to launch with more than 42,000 bitcoin, worth about US$3.9 billion at current prices, which will make it the third largest bitcoin treasury in the world. Tether and its affiliate Bitfinex plan to contribute 31,500 bitcoin in exchange for shares in the new company, according to an investor presentation. Twenty One will also raise $585 million from investors to buy bitcoin. The company is aiming to rival Michael Saylor’s Strategy, a software-maker-turned bitcoin investing firm, which has amassed $50 billion worth of bitcoin. Twenty One, led by chief executive Jack Mallers, who founded digital payment provider Strike, says it also plans to offer bitcoin-related lending. https://tinyurl.com/3u4kcf6x

Crypto companies BitGo, Coinbase eye bank licenses.

Crypto companies Circle and BitGo plan to apply for bank charters or licenses, while Coinbase and Paxos are considering similar moves, the Wall Street Journal reported. Getting a national trust or industrial bank charters could enable crypto firms to directly take customer deposits, make loans, or issue a stablecoin. Obtaining a national bank charter has been difficult in recent years, but the friendlier regulatory environment under Trump could make it easier for crypto firms to obtain signoff. Coinbase is “actively considering” applying but “has not made any formal decisions yet,” a spokesperson said. Circle, which filed paperwork for an initial public offering earlier this month, said in its filing that it would have to apply for a non-insured depository institution charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or acquire an existing one, or be acquired by a bank, to comply with proposed stablecoin legislation, given its stablecoin market circulation exceeds a US$10 billion threshold. Separately, Circle announced Monday that it is launching Circle Payments Network, connecting banks, fintechs, payment providers and crypto firms to enable cross-border payments using stablecoins. Circle has been working to expand its business by encouraging more people and businesses to use its dollar-pegged stablecoins to move money. https://tinyurl.com/mw5dkeu3

Sophic Client American Aires (WIFI-CSE, AAIRF-OTCQB) – 8 Advantages of Aires’ NBA Timberwolves Partnership.

“You’re going to see more and more high level, mass market, global opportunities really emerge from this foundational pillar that is this Timberwolves Partnership and Aires Certified Spaces.” — Aires CEO, Josh Bruni Check out this video to hear CEO Josh Bruni talk about 8 advantages of Aires’ partnership with the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves: 1. Target Center is very public (lots of exposure for Aires) 2. It’s a place of high performance (which aligns with the Aires brand) 3. The Aires Certified Spaces (ACS) products installation is very visible 4. The partnership stands for our shared commitment to environmental wellness and optimization 5. The Timberwolves are another great Aires partner 6. The partnership is opening up other opportunities for Aires 7. It represents the realization of ACS after years of foundational work 8. Together with our other partnerships, it helps Aires accelerate while enhancing efficiency Aires Certified Spaces supports our expanding brand awareness and growing sales through mass market exposure across multiple B2B markets, including: – Stadiums & Arenas – Healthcare & Wellness Spaces – Fitness Facilities & Gyms -Hotels & Resorts – Educational Institutions & Libraries – Airbnbs & Vacation Rentals – Corporate Offices & Coworking Spaces – Restaurants, Coffee Shops & Community Hub. https://tinyurl.com/28ef96u9

Sophic Client Plurilock (PLUR-TSXV, PLCKF-OTCQB) Code and Country Podcast Episode 10 – Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer, CIO and CISO, NATO.

What does it take to defend 32 nations across five domains in an era of AI, quantum, and nation-state threats? In this episode of Code and Country, we sit down with NATO’s first-ever CIO and CISO, Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer, for an inside look at the alliance’s approach to cybersecurity, digital transformation, and geopolitical defense. We explore why NATO consensus creates stronger decisions, how muti-domain operations integrate land, sea, air, cyber, and space defense, and what cyber leaders can learn from NATO’s approach to AI-powered protection and zero trust architecture. Manfred shares how Russia, China, and North Korea use disinformation, stealth and ransomware to pursue their national agendas. He also explains how Q-Day is coming and what leaders must do now to prepare for post-quantum cryptography. If you are thinking about cyber threats at nation-state scale, emerging quantum risks, or the impact of AI on defense strategies, this conversation will keep you ahead of the curve. Listen to learn how NATO is modernizing cyber defense in support of democratic institutions. https://tinyurl.com/bdzyz6ze