January 24, 2026: Stocks Bounce Back In Volatile Week

Last week, Dow Jones fell 0.5%, S&P 500 was down 0.35%, Nasdaq composite lost 0.1%. Stocks bounced back from lows in a very volatile week. Next week, earnings from Microsoft, Meta, Apple will provide investors insight on where we are in the AI trade. Defense, and AI infrastructure remain the clear winners, for now. Thoma Bravo signaled PE appetite to buy quality software assets amidst the ongoing software valuation reset. The defense sector saw its largest IPO ever with Prague-based Czechoslovak Group (CSG) debuting at a €25 billion valuation. BitGo led the crypto sector’s return to public markets, with its stock opening up 25% on its NYSE debut. OpenAI is reportedly seeking US$50 billion at a valuation nearing US$830 billion, even as OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar notes that revenue—now hitting US$20 billion—is scaling 1:1 with compute consumption. Anthropic reportedly trimmed 2025 gross margin expectations as inference costs came in higher than forecast, underscoring that “AI is a COGS story” as much as a product story. Apple is reportedly developing an AI wearable pin for 2027, and pivoting Siri toward a Google Gemini-backed chatbot. Tesla launched limited unsupervised robotaxi rides in Austin. Blue Origin is targeting the enterprise satellite market with TeraWave, aiming for 6 Tbps speeds by 2027. In Canada, the “sovereign capability” trend is gaining massive traction. General Fusion is set to become the first publicly traded pure-play fusion company via a US$1 billion SPAC deal. Dominion Dynamics secured $21 million to build a Canadian “defence neoprime”. Shopify signaled a shift in commerce, integrating native checkouts into ChatGPT and Gemini, with OpenAI taking a 4% cut of merchant sales. Sophic client, Boardwalktech launched its “Verity” platform, leveraging agentic AI to automate complex financial controls for top-tier banks.

General Fusion to go public on Nasdaq via US$1 billion SPAC deal.

Canada’s General Fusion announced today that it has agreed to go public by combining with an American special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Richmond, BC-based General Fusion aims to develop commercially viable fusion power. It plans to merge with Dallas-based Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III (Spring Valley) in a deal that values General Fusion at US$600 million prior to the transaction and could give it up to $335 million in fresh funding. General Fusion claims this transaction would make it the first publicly traded pure-play fusion company—meaning a company solely focused on fusion power.With this transaction, General Fusion is following the same path as Canadian deep tech peer Xanadu, which struck a similar deal in November to go public on the Nasdaq and TSX in late Q1 or early Q2. Prior to this deal, General Fusion had secured more than US$400 million (nearly $600 million) in total funding from private investors and the federal and BC governments. https://tinyurl.com/mvtujvnd

Jetson raises US$50 million Series A to heat more homes efficiently.

Vancouver-based home electrification startup Jetson has raised US$50 million ($69 million) in Series A financing as it looks to sell more energy-saving electric heat pumps across North America. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Eclipse Capital, which backed Canadian-founded chipmaker Tenstorrent, led the round, which Jetson announced today. US investors 8VC and Activate Capital also participated, alongside returning backers Kitchener-Waterloo-based Garage Capital and Vancouver climate tech fund Active Impact. https://tinyurl.com/45y95y5x

Dominion Dynamics raises $21 million to build Canada’s “defence neoprime”.

For Eliot Pence, founder and CEO of Dominion Dynamics, this year’s changing geopolitical circumstances and a flood of federal defence money aligned perfectly with his plans to found Canada’s “defence neoprime”—an explicitly Canadian competitor to big-name defence contractors like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon. Pence’s Ottawa-based company has secured $21 million in seed funding, led by Canadian firm Georgian Partners, with participation from the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) and San Francisco-based Bessemer Venture Partners. Founded in June, the startup has already raised a total of $26 million; Pence did not share its valuation. The sizable early-stage deal, which Pence claimed was massively oversubscribed, comes amid a chilly fundraising environment for young tech startups in Canada. https://tinyurl.com/5d59u3pt

Chata Technologies closes US$10 million Series A to scale deterministic AI model.

Calgary’s Chata Technologies announced the closure of US$10 million ($13.8 million) in Series A funding with plans to leverage the investment toward scaling its proprietary AI across the financial sector. Announced early Wednesday morning, the company saw major investments from private markets asset manager 7Ridge, as well as Izou Partners. https://tinyurl.com/mrerpet6

Sophic Client Boardwalktech, Inc. (BWLK-TSXV, BWLKF-OTCQB) launches Verity, the intelligent controls platform.

Boardwalktech Software Corp., a provider of patented digital ledger and AI enabled enterprise software solutions, announced the launch of Boardwalk Verity™, its next generation Intelligent Controls Platform. Verity modernizes how large enterprises design, automate, test, and continuously monitor operational, financial, and compliance controls across complex, data driven environments. Today, large enterprises often deploy hundreds, or even thousands, of personnel to manually execute and test mandated controls. These manual, point in time approaches are costly, slow, and increasingly misaligned with regulatory expectations. By shifting controls execution and testing from manual processes to AI driven intelligent automation with Verity, organizations can reduce operational and audit costs by millions of dollars annually, dramatically increase testing frequency and coverage, and materially lower operational and regulatory risk exposure. Purpose built for highly regulated organizations, including banks, insurers, and global financial institutions, Verity leverages Generative AI and Agentic AI for controls automation, execution, validation, testing, and continuous monitoring across thousands of business controls. Boardwalk Verity delivers a true end to end controls lifecycle management platform. Enterprises can design, embed, automate, test, and continuously monitor controls directly within mission critical business processes using Verity’s unique AI enabled data management and workflow automation capabilities. Unlike traditional sample based, retrospective testing approaches, Verity enables continuous, real time controls testing and monitoring through Boardwalk Intelligent AI Assistants and AI Agents. The platform delivers full traceability, defensible audit evidence, and immutable audit trails across distributed systems, data sources, and teams, turning controls from a periodic compliance obligation into an always on operational capability. In addition, Verity includes AI driven real time analytics and early warning intelligence that proactively identifies control weaknesses, exceptions, and emerging risks. This enables organizations to remediate issues earlier, shorten audit cycles, improve regulatory confidence, and materially reduce the time and cost associated with both internal and external audits. “Large enterprises are still managing and testing controls using manual methods that are no longer compatible with today’s regulatory expectations,” said Andrew T. Duncan, Chief Executive Officer of Boardwalktech. “Interest in Verity from multiple top five U.S. banks underscores the urgency to modernize controls and compliance. Boardwalk Verity is a first to market platform that unifies AI driven controls design, automated execution, continuous testing, monitoring, and analytics into a single system. It transforms controls from a retrospective audit function into a continuous, AI powered, real time capability that materially reduces risk, cost, and operational friction.” https://t.co/M0apVHuFiz

OpenAI’s Altman meets Mideast investors for US$50 billion round.

OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has been meeting with top investors in the Middle East to line up funding for a new investment round that could total at least US$50 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Altman recently visited the region, where he spoke with investors, including some of the leading state-backed funds in Abu Dhabi, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the information is not public. The ChatGPT maker is looking to raise US$50 billion or more in the round at a valuation of about US$750 billion to US$830 billion, the people said. The talks are early, and the amount could change. OpenAI has also recently held talks with Amazon.com Inc. to raise at least US$10 billion, Bloomberg News has reported. https://tinyurl.com/mr2untmu

OpenAI CFO says revenue has grown with compute.

OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said in a blog post on Sunday that the company’s annualized revenue has grown at approximately the same rate as its consumption of computational resources. Friar said that OpenAI’s compute has tripled year over year—from 0.2 gigawatts in 2023 to 0.6 gigawatts in 2024 and 1.9 gigawatts in 2025—while revenue has similarly tripled year over year—from US$2 billion in annualized revenue in 2023 to US$6 billion in 2024 to more than US$20 billion in 2025. Friar also added in the post that the “next phase is agents and workflow automation that run continuously, carry context over time, and take action across tools.” This includes AI that “manages projects, coordinates plans, and executes tasks” for individuals and AI that “becomes an operating layer for knowledge work” for organizations, she wrote. Friar’s post comes as OpenAI looks to grow its access to computational resources even more. The company has struck deals with multiple cloud providers and chipmakers, including Oracle, Nvidia and Cerebras Systems, in recent months. It has also found new avenues to make money, including, most recently, adding advertisements to its free and cheaper tiers of ChatGPT. https://tinyurl.com/47evc5xs

Anthropic lowered gross margin projection as costs to run AI rose.

Anthropic last month projected it would generate a 40% gross profit margin from selling AI to businesses and application developers in 2025, 10 percentage points lower than its earlier optimistic expectations. The lower-than-expected gross profit margin resulted from the costs of running Anthropic models for paying customers, in a process known as inference, on servers from Google and Amazon. Those inference costs were 23% higher than the company had anticipated, the projections showed. Anthropic calculates gross margins by subtracting inference costs and other costs of selling its products. Its margin still improved from the year earlier. https://tinyurl.com/bdcn23yx

The largest defense IPO ever surges in debut.

The largest-ever defense sector initial public offering surged in its debut in Amsterdam on Friday. Prague-based Czechoslovak Group, valued at €25 billion (US$29 billion), rallied as high as €33 from €25. Known as CSG, the company’s fortunes have been buoyed by the reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Artisan Partners, BlackRock and the Qatar Investment Authority bought €900 million worth of stock, the company said. The sector more broadly has thrived as most European nations set plans to increase their defense spending. European defense and aerospace stocks have jumped 53% over the last 52 weeks. The CEO of the U.S. defense startup Anduril, Palmer Luckey, has said he plans to bring his company public but hasn’t given a timeline. https://shorturl.at/Kj7A9

BitGo jumps in first crypto IPO this year.

BitGo, a crypto custodian, opened up 25% on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday, becoming the first crypto company to go public this year. The company and its shareholders raised US$213 million in its initial public offering, at a price of US$18 per share, giving it a valuation of about US$2.1 billion. It opened trading at US$22.43 per share. BitGo’s performance could bode well for other crypto firms that are preparing to go public. Crypto exchange Kraken and asset manager Grayscale have also filed for IPOs. The crypto markets have cooled since the market fell last October. Bitcoin now trades at US$89,376, down 28% from early October. https://tinyurl.com/n7uysu9b

Geothermal power startup Fervo files for public offering.

Fervo Energy, a startup developing geothermal power projects, filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering, Axios reported. JPMorgan and Bank of America are working with Fervo on the potential offering, Axios reported. Fervo in December said it raised US$462 million in funding led by venture firm B Capital to help build projects such as its Cape Station site in Utah, which the company said would begin delivering 100 megawatts of power to the grid this year. Google also made an investment in the company. Fervo is one of several power companies looking to go public as tech companies race to secure electricity for AI data centers. Renewable power developer Hecate Energy on Friday filed to go public by merging with a blank-check company in a deal valuing it at US$1.2 billion. Representatives for Fervo and Bank of America did not respond to requests for comment. A JPMorgan spokesperson declined to comment. https://tinyurl.com/m4wc43ae

Alibaba prepares chipmaking unit for IPO.

Alibaba Group is preparing to list its chipmaking unit T-Head, taking advantage of strong investor demand for companies developing AI processors to reduce China’s reliance on Nvidia, Bloomberg reported. Alibaba will first restructure the unit as a business partly owned by employees, before exploring an initial public offering, the timing of which is uncertain, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Several Chinese chip designers, including Moore Threads, MetaX Integrated Circuits, Biren Technology and Iluvatar Corex, went public in stock exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai over the past month, as China seeks to indigenize the supply of AI chips. Baidu also is poised to list its chipmaking subsidiary Kunlunxin. https://tinyurl.com/yreww8u3

Private equity giant Thoma Bravo eyes software deals as shares fall.

Private equity giant Thoma Bravo is seeking to capitalise on the recent sell-off in software stocks, preparing what could be a wave of large takeovers. The plunge in software valuations, driven by fear of an existential threat from AI, was creating a “huge buying opportunity”, Orlando Bravo, the firm’s co-founder, told the FT in an interview at the kick-off for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He said the recent correction in the sector was an overreaction by investors worried that big businesses would use AI tools to replace traditional software services. The US-based group is the sector’s largest and most prolific private equity dealmaker, managing more than US$180 billion, and recently raised a US$24.3 billion fund for software deals. Bravo’s comments come after a plunge in software valuations in recent weeks. Software is one of the US stock market’s worst-performing sectors so far this year, with an index tracking the group down about 7 per cent over the past three weeks. Microsoft, Meta and Oracle have fallen 4.2 per cent, 7 per cent and 7.4 per cent, respectively, over the same period, while Salesforce and Adobe have both dropped by about 12 per cent. The PE firm, which last year struck a $12.3bn deal to take HR software giant Dayforce private, believes specialised software companies will be insulated from AI disruption if they are market leaders in specific processes, such as cyber security or payroll technologies. “Software is not at all about the code or about the technology. Software is about your domain knowledge,” said Bravo. “Most software companies know a specific vertical, a specific process, a specific function so well that there are three to five companies in the world that know it, and about 20 individuals in the world that really, really know it. That is the franchise. That is the value. That is what you cannot replicate.” https://tinyurl.com/bdevkdfr

Capital One agrees to buy Brex for US$5 billion, a discount to last private valuation.

Capital One struck a deal to buy payments and credit card startup Brex for US$5.15 billion, the U.S. bank said on Thursday. That is a far cry from Brex’s last valuation of US$12 billion during a 2022 fundraising, though the sale means investors in the nine-year-old startup will be able to cash out of their investments during a sluggish period for initial public offerings. The purchase of Brex, which offers corporate credit card programs and sought to take on American Express, will be funded with an even split of cash and stock, Capital One said in a statement accompanying its latest quarterly results. Venture capital investors Greenoaks and TCV led Brex’s US$300 million fundraising round in 2022. More recently, Brex took on US$235 million of debt from Citi and private equity firm TPG. Brex was generating more than US$700 million in annualized revenue as of September. Brex’s main rival, Ramp, raised money at a US$22.5 billion valuation last summer and US$32 billion valuation in November, after taking business away from Brex and competitors by offering slick software and more credit card rewards. Brex was founded by Brazilian entrepreneurs Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, who ran the startup as co-CEOs until Dubugras stepped aside to serve as chairman in 2024. In a post on X, Brex said it was excited about “the largest bank-fintech deal in history” and the resources of Capital One would allow the startup to invest even more aggressively in automation and AI. In a post on X, Franceschi said he would continue as Brex’s CEO. https://tinyurl.com/37s9z6w3

Yelp to buy AI agent startup for US$300 million.

Recommendation app Yelp on Wednesday said it agreed to acquire AI agent startup Hatch for US$300 million, or roughly 12 times the startup’s annual recurring revenue. Hatch charges a monthly fee for AI-powered agents that can respond to customer inquiries and make appointments. Yelp, which has a US$1.8 billion market capitalization, said it plans to operate Hatch as a standalone business as well as offer Hatch’s services to plumbers, contractors and other professionals that list on Yelp. Automating such tasks is “an area that’s been exploding rapidly pretty much since 2023 or so with the release of ChatGPT….that ignited the opportunity that Hatch was really a first mover on,” said Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. Founded in 2018, New York-based Hatch employs about 150 people. It has raised about US$14 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, Y Combinator and other investors. The deal is expected to close next month. Yelp said it is paying US$270 million in cash and will spend US$30 million for employee retention to be paid out over two to three years. Yelp said Hatch is generating US$25 million annual recurring revenue, up 70% year over year. The purchase price as a multiple of forward revenue is less than some other recent AI startup acquisitions. Hatch’s subscription revenue could diversify Yelp’s business, which is largely based on selling advertising. Yelp in October launched its own AI agents which take calls on behalf of a service provider or restaurant. https://tinyurl.com/yhty22py

Netflix makes WBD offer all cash.

Netflix is converting its offer for Warner Bros. Discovery to make it all cash, but at the same US$27.75 a share level that the companies agreed in early December, both companies said Tuesday. The revised offer reflects pressure from bidder Paramount Skydance, which is offering US$30 a share for all of Warner Bros. Discovery. Netflix is only buying the film studio and streaming operations of WBD, leaving aside its cable channels. WBD plans to spin off the cable channels as a separate company before the Netflix acquisition is completed. Netflix’s original offer was a mix of cash and stock but since the deal was announced, Netflix’s stock price has fallen, reducing the value of the offer. Meanwhile, Paramount has argued that its offer is superior because the cable channel spin off won’t trade at a very high level. https://tinyurl.com/3z9rs8r5

Netflix reports higher than projected Q4 revenue.

Netflix reported 17.6% higher revenue in the fourth quarter, ahead of its projections, and revealed that its ad revenue had more than doubled in 2025 to US$1.5 billion. That was the first time the company had given a precise number for its ad business, which was launched just over three years ago. But Netflix stock fell nearly 5% in after-hours trading after the company forecast that its revenue growth rate would slow to between 12% and 14% for 2026, well below last year’s 16% growth. That growth rate is despite the company’s expectation that its ad revenue would double again in 2026. Netflix also said it now had more than 325 million paid subscribers, the first time in a year it has given a number of subscribers. Netflix used to disclose the subscriber count every quarter but ceased a year ago. https://tinyurl.com/bddmwyj7

Intel’s sales slump persists despite AI growth.

Intel’s fourth quarter revenue fell 4%, the chip firm reported Thursday, at the high end of the company’s projections. The result reflected a 7% decline in its largest unit, through which it sells CPUs for use in personal computers and other consumer products. Intel stock, which has more than doubled in recent years, fell 6.6% in after-hours trading. That decline was partly offset by a 9% increase in its artificial intelligence data center CPU business and a 4% boost in sales from its chip manufacturing arm. Intel projected first quarter revenue would be between US$11.7 and US$12.7 billion in revenue, which would be as much as 7.8% lower than a year earlier. Intel generated US$12.7 billion in revenue in the first quarter last year. Chief financial officer David Zinsner attributed the expected downturn in the current quarter to supply shortages, saying in the company’s earnings release that it expects available supply to be “at its lowest level in Q1 before improving in Q2 and beyond.” https://tinyurl.com/5cy9yp2x

Apple developing AI wearable pin in challenge to OpenAI, Meta.

Apple is developing an AI-powered wearable pin that could be released as early as 2027, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The device would position Apple to compete more effectively with OpenAI, which is planning its own AI-powered devices, and Meta Platforms, which is already selling smart glasses. Apple’s pin is a thin, flat, circular disc with an aluminum-and-glass shell and features two cameras—a standard lens and a wide-angle lens—on its front face, designed to capture photos and videos of the user’s surroundings. It includes three microphones to pick up sounds in the area surrounding the person wearing it. It also has a speaker, a physical button along one of its edges and a magnetic inductive charging interface on its back, similar to the one used on the Apple Watch. Apple engineers are aiming to make the pin the same size as an AirTag, only slightly thicker. https://tinyurl.com/43w3m9bh

Apple plans a conversational Siri, discusses Google TPU deal.

Apple plans to bring more conversational capabilities to Siri, turning it more into a chatbot like ChatGPT, Bloomberg reported. The update, codenamed Campos, will take advantage of Google’s Gemini AI model, part of a deal Apple announced with Google last week, the news outlet said. The Information also reported last week that Apple plans to bring more conversational capabilities to Siri using Google’s technology. Bloomberg also reported that Apple is in talks with Google about using the company’s cloud infrastructure, including its AI chips, tensor processing units, to launch the updated Siri. If those discussions turn into a deal, it would amount to a reversal of Apple’s previous plans, which involved running its AI features only on Apple devices or in Apple’s new private cloud system, called Private Cloud Compute. https://tinyurl.com/mhedw7mf

OpenAI’s first hardware device slated to appear this year.

A top OpenAI executive said the company is planning to introduce its first hardware device in the latter half of 2026. In an interview with Axios at an event in Davos, Switzerland, Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, said the AI startup is “on track” to show the product later in the year. That timing is consistent with past messages from OpenAI about its first device. OpenAI’s hardware devices will be the result of a collaboration between the company and Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief. Last year, OpenAI acquired a device startup that Ive co-founded, io, though Ive still works for his independent design firm, LoveFrom. Lehane declined to discuss what type of device OpenAI’s first hardware product will be. https://tinyurl.com/jrmkz8dc

Google sees surge in developer demand for Gemini.

Google’s Gemini saw a doubling in developer demand during a five month period last year. In August, Google saw around 85 billion requests from developers sent to its Gemini application programming interface, up from about 35 billion in March. Those requests, known as API calls, are the primary method through which Google sells access to those AI models. The growing demand could help lift revenues in Google’s cloud unit, which handles sales of Gemini to developers for the company. Another Google AI offering, Gemini Enterprise, has grown to 8 million subscribers. Gemini Enterprise combines access to the Gemini chatbot with the ability to search across a company’s internal data. It also includes a platform for building and using AI agents. https://tinyurl.com/4y8y8cfh

Blue Origin plans enterprise rival to SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon Leo.

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is planning to build an ultra-fast satellite internet service aimed at large companies, data centers and governments, the company said Wednesday. The service, called TeraWave, would put Blue Origin in competition with SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon Leo. Blue Origin plans to launch the first TeraWave satellites in the fourth quarter of 2027. Unlike Starlink or Leo, which are targeting both individual consumers and enterprise customers, TeraWave is aimed only at large customers who need especially fast internet speeds. Blue Origin said it plans to launch more than 5,000 satellites to support the service, which will provide internet speeds of up to 6 terabits per second. Currently, SpaceX’s Starlink is by far the leader in satellite internet, with more than 9 million customers and billions of dollars in revenue. Amazon Leo has launched 180 satellites and began an “enterprise preview” in November, but has yet to make its service widely available. https://tinyurl.com/yhfd25mf

Elon Musk says Tesla will sell Optimus robots by end of 2027.

Tesla plans to start selling its Optimus humanoid robots to the general public by the end of 2027, CEO Elon Musk said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday. By then, Musk said Tesla expects the robots to be “high reliability, high safety.” While Musk has promised that the Optimus program is the future of Tesla, the company slashed production goals in 2025 due to problems perfecting the robots’ hands and other technical challenges. Musk said Thursday that Tesla was using Optimus for “simple tasks” inside its factories and was hoping to have the robots doing “more complex tasks” by the end of 2026. Musk also shared other optimistic projections for Tesla on Thursday, including that its supervised Full Self-Driving software would receive approval in Europe and China by the end of February. Tesla has blown through several previous timelines shared by Musk for progress on autonomous driving software. https://tinyurl.com/33fzj5ym

Tesla starts limited robotaxi rides without backup humans in Austin.

Tesla has started offering rides to customers in a few of its Robotaxi vehicles without backup human supervisors for the first time, the company’s top AI executive said on Thursday. The move in Austin is a key initial step toward catching up with Alphabet’s Waymo, which offers autonomous rides to customers without backup humans in more than 2,000 vehicles across six U.S. cities. In a post on X, Tesla’s vice president of autopilot and AI software Ashok Elluswamy said Tesla was “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors” and that the “ratio will increase over time.” Elluswamy did not say when Tesla plans to fully remove humans from Robotaxi vehicles in Austin or start doing so in any other cities. Tesla shares were up about 4% Thursday afternoon. Tesla has blown through deadlines that Elon Musk announced for Robotaxi. Musk said in July that Robotaxi would be available to half the U.S. population by the end of 2025, “subject to regulatory approvals.” In October, Musk scaled back that target to eight to 10 U.S. metro areas and said that the company would remove backup supervisors in Austin by the end of the year. But the service is still only available in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area. In California, Tesla is offering Robotaxi rides with humans in the driver’s seat and is operating under a permit that only allows a human driver to drive a traditional vehicle, making the removal of humans more difficult than in Texas. https://tinyurl.com/3a8z5za6

Most of Instagram’s ads ran on Reels in 2025, data shows.

More than half of all ads on Meta’s Instagram ran in the service’s short-form video product Reels in 2025, up from 35% in 2024, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. In the U.S., Reels accounted for 46% of time spent on the Instagram app in 2025, up from 37% in 2024, according to the data that Sensor Tower showed CNBC. On the Facebook app, that figure reached 29% in 2025, up from in 2024. The shift highlights the growing role Reels plays in Meta’s efforts to drive engagement and advertising revenue across its Instagram and Facebook services. Vertical video continues to be a valuable artificial intelligence play for these social media platforms. Companies such as Meta, Google’s YouTube and TikTok rely on recommendation systems powered by AI that surface personalized videos designed to keep users engaged for longer periods of time. https://tinyurl.com/562f9bp9

Musk seeks up to US$110 billion from OpenAI.

If Elon Musk wins his breach of charitable trust lawsuit against OpenAI, the company should have to give up between US$65.5 billion and US$109.43 billion to Musk, lawyers for the billionaire argued in a court filing Friday. Microsoft, which Musk alleges aided and abetted OpenAI’s breach of fiduciary duty, is on the hook for between US$13.3 billion and US$25.06 billion, Musk’s lawyers argued. Though Musk only donated about US$38 million to help establish OpenAI, his lawyers argue that OpenAI should have to forfeit all of the benefits they gained as a result of those donations. The estimates of those benefits that Musk’s lawyers cited in their recent filing came from C. Paul Wazzan, an expert witness that Musk’s lawyers retained. Wazzan is an economist at Berkeley Research Group, an economic consulting firm. He arrived at the figures by taking the OpenAI nonprofit’s share of OpenAI’s business and assuming that Musk contributed between 50% and 75% of that value. https://tinyurl.com/3jpudef9

ChatGPT checkouts to take 4% cut of Shopify merchant sales.

Shopify has told merchants that use its commerce software that it will open up sales through AI chatbots like ChatGPT later this month, according to its site and communications with sellers. Merchants will pay OpenAI a 4% fee on sales made through ChatGPT’s checkout feature, a Shopify spokesperson confirmed, on top of typical transaction fees Shopify charges such as payments processing. OpenAI, Google and Microsoft have all announced chatbot checkout features in recent months. Beginning Jan. 26, Shopify will begin making its merchants’ products available for purchase through the checkout features in AI apps including ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode and Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, the company told merchants. As part of that rollout, most Shopify merchants’ product details will be available to the AI apps through a data-sharing setup that Shopify announced late last year. Merchants’ products will be available for purchase by default in AI checkout features that don’t charge an additional fee. For now, sales made through Google and Microsoft’s chatbot checkouts will not carry additional fees, the Shopify spokesperson said. For checkouts that charge a fee, such as ChatGPT, merchants will need to opt in to make their products available for purchase. Merchants can toggle AI platforms on or off individually to choose which channels to sell in, but their products will still appear in AI responses with links to their own websites. To keep products from appearing in AI responses, merchants must contact the AI companies or prevent their listings from being indexed by web crawlers. https://tinyurl.com/39re7k3v