February 07, 2026: The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times

Last week, Dow Jones gained 2.5%, and hit a record high 50,000 Friday, S&P 500 was down 0.1%, Nasdaq composite fell 1.8%. Software stocks are facing a brutal reckoning as short sellers pocketed US$24 billion in paper gains this year, betting on AI-driven disruption of traditional SaaS models. The rout intensified following Anthropic’s release of Claude Opus 4.6, which specifically targets legal and financial workflows, sending shares of Snowflake, Salesforce, and S&P Global tumbling. The “AI arms race” reached an unprecedented scale, with Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft forecasting a combined US$650 billion in 2026 capital expenditures. Amazon (US$200 billion) and Alphabet (US$180 billion) are leading this surge. Oracle is seeking up to US$50 billion in fresh funding to build data centers for clients like OpenAI and xAI. SpaceX consolidated acquiried xAI for US$250 billion, valuing SpaceX at US$1 trillion, and filing for 1 million satellites to host orbital data centers. While AWS CEO Matt Garman expressed skepticism regarding the near-term viability of space-based compute. Waymo raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation. Nvidia is delaying its new gaming GPU release to prioritize AI-grade memory. Cerebras raised US$1 billion following a massive US$10 billion compute deal with OpenAI. Uber is aggressively expanding its robotaxi footprint to Hong Kong and Madrid following a 20% revenue jump. In Canada, the federal government signaled a strategic shift by backing the new Defence, Security and Resilience Bank to support industrial scale-up and supply-chain stability. BeWhere launched a $4 million offering for European expansion. Sophic client, Plurilock announced $1.19 million in cybersecurity renewals, deepening its integration into high-stakes national security and enterprise “Insider Risk” programs.

Sophic Client Plurilock (PLUR-TSXV, PLCKF-OTCQB) announces four cybersecurity contract renewals totalling $1.19 million across two enterprise and government customers.

Plurilock Security Inc. announces four cybersecurity contract renewals with two existing customers totaling $1,190,000. The agreements include three Critical Services (“PLCS”) contracts with a commercial firm and a data security licensing agreement with a national security focused government agency. The three PLCS agreements, ranging from six to twelve months in duration, renew and expand Plurilock’s role supporting the commercial firm’s Insider Risk initiatives, Security Information and Event Management (“SIEM”) operations, and executive communications programs. These engagements reflect expanded scope within an established relationship where Plurilock continues to be embedded across multiple security functions.”These renewals demonstrate the strength of Plurilock’s long-term customer relationships, our value proposition and our ability to become increasingly integrated into critical security programs over time,” said Ian L. Paterson, CEO of Plurilock. “We often begin by solving a specific challenge, and through performance and trust, we expand across broader mandates. This pattern of organic account growth, combined with reoccurring renewals, is core to how we execute on our mission of securing the systems that underpin society.” https://tinyurl.com/mryxjv32

Canada backs new Defence, Security And Resilience Bank.

Statement from the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) Development Group: The DSRB Development Group welcomes the statement by Canada’s Minister of Finance confirming Canada’s leading role with regards the establishment of the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank. Canada’s leadership reflects a shared understanding among allies that strengthening defence and security now requires not only increased spending, but financing structures capable of supporting industrial scale-up, supply-chain resilience, and long-term capacity. The Defence, Security and Resilience Bank is being established to address this challenge by improving access to affordable, predictable financing across defence and security ecosystems, while working alongside existing national and multilateral institutions. The DSRB Development Group is working closely with Canada and other like-minded nations to support the establishment of the Bank, including its design, governance, and operational framework, to ensure it meets the needs of participating nations and their industries. https://tinyurl.com/3u7nce5b

BeWhere Holdings Inc. (BEW-TSXV) announces $4.0 million brokered LIFE offering.

BeWhere Holdings Inc. has entered into an agreement with Canaccord Genuity Corp. to act as lead agent and sole bookrunner, on behalf of a syndicate of agents (collectively, the “Agents”), in connection with a commercially reasonable efforts private placement offering of up to 5,720,000 common shares of the Company (each, a “Common Share”) at a price of C$0.70 per Common Share (the “Issue Price”) for gross proceeds of up to $4,004,000 (the “Offering”). In addition, the Company will grant to the Agents an option (the “Over-Allotment Option”) to sell up to that number of additional Common Shares as is equal to 25% of the number of Common Shares issued in connection with the Offering, being 1,430,000 Common Shares, at the Issue Price for additional gross proceeds of up to C$1,001,000. The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering to expand its equipment rental business to further enhance recurring revenue, to fund its European expansion and for working capital and general corporate purposes, as described in the offering document for the Offering on Form 45-106F19 filed by the Company on SEDAR+ in accordance with the Listed Issuer Financing Exemption (as defined herein). The Company expects to close the Offering on or about February 18th, 2026. https://tinyurl.com/yhx5w92k

AgTech startup Brilliant Harvest secures US$4 million in seed funding.

Brilliant Harvest, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform serving the heavy equipment industry, announced that it has secured US$4 million ($5.4 million) in seed funding. The Calgary-based AgTech startup is an AI-driven customer experience platform that ingests complex technical manuals, work orders, and conversational data to provide accessible, accurate, and fast answers for service, parts, and aftermarket teams in the heavy equipment industry. The company describes itself as “farmers first and innovators second.” Announced on Feb. 5, the funding round includes returning investment from Builders VC and AltaML, as well as new participants FTW Ventures, Alpaca VC, Automotive Ventures, SVG Ventures, and NYA Ventures. The funding announcement coincides with another milestone for Brilliant Harvest as it simultaneously announced its platform now supports dealerships representing more than 50 percent of CNH Industrial’s (a major designer and producer of agricultural and construction machinery) larger dealer stores. https://tinyurl.com/mpf976yz\

Software short sellers mint US$24 billion profit as stocks tumble.

Worries that advancements in the artificial intelligence technology will disrupt traditional software business models has sent shares of software and artificial intelligence-linked names down 20% this year. For short sellers betting against the group, that’s meant US$24 billion in paper gains, according to data from S3 Partners LLC. “This is a software-specific phenomenon; the broader Mag 7 is essentially unchanged,” Leon Gross, S3’s director of research wrote in a note to clients. Investors have been punishing software stocks for months amid growing fears that AI would hurt the core businesses of companies in the sector. Those worries became especially pronounced this week when Anthropic PBC released a new productivity tool that sent software, financial services and even asset management stocks tumbling, weighing on the broader stock market. Bears are increasing their positions in the group as the rout shows no signs of subsiding, betting on more pain ahead. Short interest is rising in stocks including Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Broadcom Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., according to S3 Partners. Short interest in Microsoft has jumped by 20% this year, and it’s gone up by 10% for Oracle, according to S3. Broadcom and Amazon have seen increases in short interest as well. This marks a shift from the typical moves short sellers make at this point in a decline, especially in shares of Microsoft. Historically, the software company “behaves like a reversal stock, with shorts covering on the way down,” Gross said. “Now it is trading like a momentum-driven, distressed name, with shorts increasing into weakness.” https://tinyurl.com/45rmx595

Wall Street dumps software stocks as AI disruption fear lingers.

Shares of enterprise software stocks tumbled Tuesday as worries over new AI tools replacing traditional enterprise software subscriptions deepened following Anthropic’s release of its latest tool to automate legal tasks. Shares of Snowflake, Atlassian, MongoDB, Elastic and Hubspot fell more than 10%. Other software heavyweights such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday lost more than 7%. Many have tried to add new AI products or make acquisitions to beef up their offerings to fend off competitions from AI-native startups. Companies that sell analytics software to the legal industry were particularly hit by Anthropic’s release. Britain’s RELX and the Netherlands’ Wolters Kluwer fell by more than 10%. London Stock Exchange Group and Thomson Reuters, which have large data analytics businesses, lost more than a tenth of their market share. https://tinyurl.com/4cc7bwcv

SpaceX acquires xAI for US$250 billion.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX acquired xAI for US$250 billion in stock, said a person familiar with the situation. SpaceX was valued at US$1 trillion in the deal, another person familiar with the deal said. The news, without the price, was confirmed by Musk in a press release posted to SpaceX’s website Monday. Musk did not provide details of the purchase price or how the deal could affect SpaceX’s potential IPO this year. “SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform,” Musk said in the press release published on SpaceX’s website. Most of the release focuses on SpaceX’s plans to launch data centers into space, which Musk says will be “the lowest cost way to generate AI compute” within two to three years. https://tinyurl.com/y9yaup3b

Waymo raises US$16 billion in funding at US$126 billion valuation.

Self-driving ridesharing service Waymo said Monday it has raised US$16 billion at a US$126 billion valuation. The valuation includes the size of the investment, according to an investor in the round. Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global and Sequoia Capital led the round, it said. Waymo said that Alphabet remains a majority shareholder. Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global Management and Bessemer Venture Partners are amongst the investors who participated. Waymo said that in 2025 it more than tripled its annual volume of rides to more than 15 million, with expansion to Tokyo and London this year. The company has come under scrutiny recently for some recent incidents, including a child struck by one of its vehicles in Santa Monica and its vehicles stuck at intersections during a San Francisco power outage, Waymo has touted its safety record, claiming that its vehicles reduce serious injury crashes by 90%. https://tinyurl.com/5ansdjvw

AI chip startup Cerebras raises US$1 billion at US$23 billion valuation.

AI chip startup Cerebras Systems said Wednesday has raised about US$1 billion in a new funding round that values the company at US$23 billion including the new investment. The Information first reported in January that the startup was in fundraising talks at a US$22 billion valuation before the new investment. The new funding round comes as Cerebras is expected to list in the coming months. It aimed to go public earlier but said last September that it was withdrawing those plans and instead raised more money privately. The company also recently announced a deal with OpenAI, which agreed to purchase 750 megawatts worth of computing power from the startup through 2028 for about US$10 billion, according to a person familiar with the deal. https://tinyurl.com/mt5xrcpk

Oracle to raise up to US$50 billion for cloud expansion.

Oracle said Sunday it plans to raise between US$45 billion and US$50 billion this year through a mix of debt and equity to fund the rapid expansion of its cloud computing business. Oracle said the funds will go toward data center development to serve several large customers including OpenAI, Advanced Micro Devices, xAI, Meta Platforms, TikTok and Nvidia. Oracle previously hinted it would need to raise additional debt to fund its growth but hadn’t disclosed a specific plan for the year. Notably, Oracle said the new funding wouldn’t just go toward data center capacity for OpenAI, which has committed to spend several hundred billion dollars on Oracle Cloud in the coming years. Oracle shares are down 50% from last year’s high—erasing around US$450 billion in market value—as investors question how much upfront investment Oracle will need to make before it will begin seeing meaningful revenue growth from the OpenAI contract. There are also concerns around whether OpenAI can pay for the cloud rentals and whether Oracle can get the data centers ready on time. Lenders have also grown cautious of all of the borrowing tied to Oracle data centers and have said privately that they want to limit their exposure. Developers building Oracle’s data centers for OpenAI have already borrowed more US$65 billion in construction debt. Roughly half of the new funding will come from equity and the other half will come from a bond offering, Oracle said. In the three months ended at the end of November, Oracle burned roughly US$10 billion, driven by spending on data centers, and in September raised an US$18 billion bond offering. Oracle ended the quarter with about US$20 billion in cash, even as its spending pushed its free cash flow negative and prompted the company to lean more heavily on debt. https://tinyurl.com/3zny3rhm

Snowflake paying OpenAI US$200 million for access to AI models.

Snowflake has inked a US$200 million, multi-year agreement with OpenAI, under which it will incorporate the startup’s AI models in its own application-building service and equip its employees with OpenAI’s business version of ChatGPT. The agreement with Snowflake, which sells a cloud database widely used among Fortune 500 companies, is the latest sign of OpenAI’s efforts to compete for large AI deals with rivals like Anthropic and Google. While OpenAI already has many business customers, agreements with major enterprise software providers could help it make more inroads with technology decision makers. OpenAI’s Snowflake agreement also shows how the startup is moving out of the shadow of its Microsoft partnership. Snowflake customers will now get direct access to OpenAI’s models, while previously they had to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud service to use them. That could entice Snowflake’s customers to build more AI-powered applications that tap the data they store in its database. https://tinyurl.com/efjh2cfa

Big Tech to spend US$650 billion this year as AI race intensifies.

Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that will reach about US$650 billion in 2026 — a mind-boggling tide of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear housed within them. The spending planned by Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp., all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for AI tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-water mark for capital spending by any single corporation in any one of the past 10 years, according to Bloomberg data. https://tinyurl.com/4bumjtcn

Alphabet will double capex to about US$180 billion as ai cloud business booms.

Alphabet reported a better than projected 18% increase in fourth quarter revenue, fueled by strong growth both in its core search ads business and in cloud sales. Google’s revenue from search ads grew 17%, topping the third quarter’s 14.5% growth, and Cloud revenue soared 48%, well above that segment’s 34% growth in the third quarter. The results suggest Google’s advances in AI are lifting its business. And Google signaled its intention to keep the AI growth going, saying it plans to double its capital expenditures this year to between US$175 billion and US$185 billion. Google also highlighted the growth of its Gemini app, which it said has now reached 750 million monthly active users. (OpenAI said last fall that ChatGPT had 800 million weekly active users.) Other segment results indicate how much money the company is investing in areas like Waymo and its Google DeepMind AI research unit. Alphabet’s losses on Other Bets, which include Waymo, more than tripled to US$3.6 billion last quarter, and its net loss on Alphabet-level activities, which Google said “primarily reflect expenses related to our shared AI research and development,” more than doubled to US$5.9 billion. https://tinyurl.com/mumm3us9

Amazon plans US$200 billion capital spending in 2026.

Amazon said on Thursday it expects capital expenditures to rise to US$200 billion this year as it pours more money into artificial intelligence efforts. The company’s shares fell more than 7% in after hours trading. That would mark a jump from Amazon’s 2025 spending of US$131.8 billion. It’s also higher than cloud and AI competitor Google’s planned spending of between US$175 billion and US$185 billion this year. Amazon said the 2026 spending would focus on areas including AI and chips as well as robotics and its Leo satellite internet service. Revenue in the Amazon Web Services cloud unit rose by 24% to US$35.6 billion in the fourth quarter, up from 20% growth the previous quarter and AWS’ fastest revenue growth since 2022. Amazon’s overall net sales rose 14% to US$213.4 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to 13% growth in the second and third quarters of 2025. https://tinyurl.com/3zedes4v

AMD shares drop as forecast comes up short of some expectations.

Advanced Micro Devices reported fourth-quarter earnings that topped expectations, but the company’s first-quarter forecast fell short of what some analysts were expecting amid an AI spending boom. The stock fell Tuesday as much as 8% in extended trading. For the first quarter, AMD said it expects US$9.8 billion in revenue, plus or minus US$300 million, versus expectations of US$9.38 billion. Some analysts, however, were expecting AMD to provide stronger guidance as customers continue to ramp up spending for the chips necessary to power AI models. The chipmaker has recently announced some big customers, including ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Oracle. AMD plans to ship a new integrated server-scale AI system called Helios later this year. AMD CEO Lisa Su said on an earnings call that the company was in “active discussions” for additional Helios or MI450 chip sales. “The ramp is on schedule to start in the second half of the year, and MI450 is doing great,” Su said. https://tinyurl.com/2a6s8j4u

Uber reports 20% higher revenue as growth accelerates.

Uber reported 20% higher revenue for the fourth quarter, and a big jump in operating profits, as its business showed signs of acceleration, particularly on the food delivery side. Uber projected a slight slowdown in growth in the first quarter, however. Uber shares were trading down 3.7% in trading on Wednesday afternoon. Uber’s gross bookings—the dollar volume of all the trips booked on its platform—rose 22% year on year, up a percentage point from the third quarter. That growth was particularly evident on the food delivery side, where gross bookings rose 26% compared with 20% on the larger ride-hailing side. Revenue—the amount that Uber keeps after paying drivers their cut—rose 30% on the delivery side and 19% on ride hailing side. Profits from delivery also grew at a faster pace, although ride-hailing still made twice as much money as delivery. Uber’s free cash flow—cash from operations, less capital expenditures—jumped 65% to US$2.8 billion. https://tinyurl.com/y2ymxzny

Nvidia to delay new gaming chip due to memory chip shortage.

Nvidia won’t release a new graphics chip for gamers this year due to a deepening global shortage of memory chips, prompted by the AI boom, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. It would be the first year in three decades that Nvidia hasn’t released a new graphics processing unit for gaming. Nvidia got its start in the early 1990s by designing graphics chips for videogames and consoles before it expanded into high-performance AI computing chips in the early 2010s. Memory chips are a key component of GPUs, which are widely used both in servers for AI and in computers for gaming. Nvidia is prioritizing using its limited supply of memory chips to fulfill demand for AI chips. Nvidia is also slashing production of its current line of gaming chips—the GeForce RTX 50 GPUs—because of the memory shortage, one of the people said. Prices of Nvidia’s latest gaming GPUs have already risen at retail stores and websites due to their scarcity over the past year. https://tinyurl.com/48r8cpck

SpaceX seeks FCC approval to launch 1 million satellites for orbital data center.

SpaceX has asked for permission to launch as many as 1 million satellites into space to function as a massive orbital data center, according to a company filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The filing outlines a plan for a satellite system that would be far larger than has ever been publicly detailed by SpaceX or any other company. Only about 25,000 satellites have ever been launched into orbit in history, according to the European Space Agency. “By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance cost, these satellites will achieve transformative cost and energy efficiency while significantly reducing the environmental impact associated with terrestrial data centers,” SpaceX said in the filing from late Friday. The SpaceX filing did not include details such as the size of the satellites, their cost, or when they would be launched. Space firms sometimes ask for permission to launch more satellites than they actually wind up releasing. Musk has said that space-based data centers will be more economical than those on Earth due to more abundant solar energy and cheaper cooling. https://tinyurl.com/3pnechrz

AWS CEO Says data centers in space are a long way off.

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said that existing technology is “pretty far” from making data centers in space possible, just as Elon Musk has been pitching the idea as part of the logic for merging SpaceX and xAI. “I don’t know if you’ve seen a rack of servers recently,” Garman said at the Cisco AI Summit in San Francisco on Feb. 3. “They’re heavy. The last I checked humanity has yet to ever build … a permanent structure in space, on the moon or anywhere like that. So maybe. I know Elon says he’s going to launch a million satellites. There are not enough rockets to launch a million satellites yet.” Garman said there were some compelling reasons for data centers in space, including an infinite amount of power and easy cooling. Earlier this week, rocket and satellite company SpaceX announced it was merging with foundation lab xAI, just as SpaceX plans to go public later this year. In a press release announcing the merger, Musk said that in 2 to 3 years, “the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space.” Amazon founder and board chair Jeff Bezos has also expressed optimism about data centers in space, but on a significantly longer timeline than Musk. Bezos, who also founded SpaceX competitor Blue Origin, said last fall that data centers in space could be built within the next 10 to 20 years. https://tinyurl.com/76k4px8h

OpenAI in talks to power Amazon’s Alexa, other AI products.

OpenAI is discussing a commercial agreement with Amazon to develop customized models the e-commerce giant could use to power its artificial intelligence products, including its Alexa voice assistant. It isn’t clear how much of a discount Amazon would get on the technology from OpenAI if it uses the ChatGPT maker’s models for its products. The talks are happening at the same time Amazon considers making an equity investment of tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI, which is also one of its cloud customers. The Amazon-OpenAI relationship represents one of the many circular arrangements in the AI world, where a company (in this case Amazon) would be a customer, investor and vendor of OpenAI. https://tinyurl.com/kbtzd92b

Anthropic releases new AI, hurting financial services stocks.

Anthropic on Thursday released its latest flagship model, Claude Opus 4.6, which the company said is better at longer-duration tasks, according to a blog post. That means the model will be better for tasks like financial analysis, doing research and creating spreadsheets and presentations, the blog post said. The progress Anthropic’s AI has made in finance could prove worrying for firms that sell financial services-related software and data. In the hours after Anthropic’s release, shares of S&P Global fell 3%, while shares of Factset fell 7%. Anthropic also released a “preview” version of Claude, its competitor to ChatGPT, that acts as an assistant that can draft and edit PowerPoint presentations. The company made new updates to its AI assistant for Excel, which helps with building debugging spreadsheets. Claude Opus 4.6 beat out models from OpenAI and Google on the Finance Agent benchmark, which evaluates how well AI performs on core financial analyst tasks, according to data Anthropic published in its blog post. https://tinyurl.com/yrhfymt9

Google’s Gemini app has surpassed 750 million monthly active users.

Google’s AI chatbot Gemini has surpassed 750 million monthly active users (MAUs), according to the company’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings. This figure illustrates the rapid consumer adoption of Gemini, which has quickly become a prominent player in the AI space. Last quarter, Google reported 650 million monthly active users for Gemini, indicating substantial growth in a short period. In comparison, Meta AI has reported nearly 500 million monthly users. However, while Gemini is gaining traction, it still trails behind its biggest rival, ChatGPT, which is estimated to have around 810 million MAUs in late 2025. https://tinyurl.com/2y7zpvx4

Uber to launch Robotaxi services in Hong Kong, Madrid, Houston, Zurich.

Uber Technologies Inc. will expand its robotaxi services to include Hong Kong and Madrid as the ride-hailing giant pours hundreds of millions of dollars into the emerging industry. Robotaxis will also be launched in Houston and Zurich, according to an earnings presentation Wednesday. Hong Kong will be Uber’s first robotaxi market in Asia. https://tinyurl.com/2vecrcc4

PayPal names new CEO as growth efforts struggle.

PayPal named Enrique Lores as its next CEO on Tuesday, saying the company had fallen short of expectations on efforts to jumpstart growth. Lores, who has been the CEO of HP for six years, will replace Alex Chriss, a former Intuit executive who joined PayPal in mid-2023. PayPal shares fell more than 18% in morning trading. Chriss’ turnaround initiatives included getting more customers and online shops to use the company’s checkout buttons. The company said payments growth through PayPal-branded checkouts had slowed to 1% in the fourth quarter, down from 6% the same period year prior. PayPal’s overall net revenue, which also includes behind the scenes payment processing work it does for other companies, grew 4% in the period to US$8.7 billion. One issue for PayPal is that it is one among many popular checkout options, such as Apple Pay—even if shoppers have a PayPal account, they might use another option if a checkout has multiple buttons. PayPal said it plans to make its checkouts more prominent and easier to use. PayPal has also partnered with firms including OpenAI and Google on checkouts inside AI chatbots, which it says is an important long-term opportunity. But PayPal said that AI-powered transactions won’t materially help the company’s growth in 2026, while spending on that area will weigh on margins. https://tinyurl.com/3tvyutfv