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New clinical and real-world data support a subcutaneous treatment pathway from initiation through maintenance treatment, offering dosing convenience for patients and care partners

, /PRNewswire/ -- Eisai Co., Ltd. and Biogen Inc. (Nasdaq: BIIB) announced today that new data presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference® (AAIC®) 2026 in London support that the LEQEMBI® (lecanemab) subcutaneous autoinjector (SC-AI) formulation offers efficacy and safety comparable to intravenous (IV) administration for people with early Alzheimer's disease (AD). The data was featured during the "Lecanemab Subcutaneous Formulation in Early Alzheimer's Disease: Emerging Clinical Evidence and Practical Use Considerations" Developing Topics Session #1-32-FRS-C.

AD is a chronic, progressive disease that requires ongoing treatment. LEQEMBI is an early AD treatment that targets the underlying pathology of the disease, helping to slow cognitive decline and loss of daily functioning. The lecanemab subcutaneous auto‑injector (SC‑AI) was developed to provide a more convenient alternative to intravenous (IV) dosing from the initiation of treatment.

Key Findings
This session presented data from the lecanemab SC-AI development program in early Alzheimer's disease, including pharmacokinetic (PK), pharmacodynamic (PD), efficacy, safety and real-world patient and care partner experience findings. Results showed that once-weekly 500 mg SC-AI achieved drug exposure similar to the approved intravenous (IV) initiation regimen (10 mg/kg every two weeks), supporting the expectation of similar clinical efficacy and safety, independent of the route of administration.

If approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), subcutaneous dosing for initiation may offer a convenient at-home alternative to IV infusion which could support access and delivery of care across healthcare settings.

Data Showed

Bioequivalence Achieved: Once-weekly 500 mg SC-AI demonstrated bioequivalence to the IV initiation regimen (10 mg/kg every two weeks), with an exposure ratio of 104% (90% confidence interval [CI]: 99.1%–109%). Exposure remained consistent across body weight quartiles, demonstrating a stable pharmacokinetic profile in a broad patient population. Efficacy Driven by Exposure, Not Route of Administration: Amyloid removal measured by amyloid PET, clinical efficacy measured by CDR-SB, and the incidence of ARIA-E were driven by lecanemab exposure rather than route of administration. The 500 mg SC-AI initiation regimen achieved exposure comparable to the IV initiation regimen, supporting the expectation of a comparable efficacy and safety profile despite the different route of administration. Consistent Results Across Patient Populations: The 500 mg SC-AI initiation regimen demonstrated consistent exposure, amyloid clearance as measured by amyloid PET, clinical efficacy and safety across body weight groups. In addition, amyloid clearance and clinical outcomes were not meaningfully affected by body weight, supporting the appropriateness of a fixed-dose regimen. Flexible switching between IV and SC administration: Patients may also switch from IV to SC administration, or vice versa, and if a dose is missed patients can take it the next day or up to day six providing greater convenience and flexibility in LEQEMBI administration. Safety Profile Aligned of SC LEQEMBI

Overall safety profile of SC-AI was generally consistent with that observed for the IV formulation. Incidence of ARIA-E with the 500 mg SC-AI initiation regimen was predicted to be similar to that observed with the IV initiation regimen. Injection-related reactions were observed with subcutaneous LEQEMBI, most of which were localized, while systemic reactions were less frequently observed. The incidence of anti-drug antibodies (ADA) was low, at 1.4% in the 500 mg SC-AI group. No neutralizing antibodies were observed, confirming that the low immunogenicity profile was maintained with the SC-AI formulation. Clinical Trial Perspectives and Real-World Evidence: Sustained Clinical Benefit with SC-AI

Data from two U.S. Alzheimer's treatment centers (Alzheimer's Research and Treatment Center, and First Choice Neurology and Visionary Investigators Network) provide early insight into clinical trial and real-world use of subcutaneous LEQEMBI: At Alzheimer's Research and Treatment Center, 28 patients receiving SC administration demonstrated slower cognitive decline as measured by CDR-SB over 36 months relative to a matched Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) natural history cohort. The cohort included 25 patients newly initiated on SC administration and 3 patients who transitioned from IV administration.  In a separate case series from First Choice Neurology and Visionary Investigators Network, 10 of 11 evaluable patients (91%) showed improvement or remained stable on MMSE compared with baseline before maintenance therapy. At this center, patients who had received maintenance therapy with SC administration for at least 6 months were included in the analysis. Patient and care partner surveys in these two sites demonstrated high satisfaction with subcutaneous LEQEMBI administration, with satisfaction rates ranging from 75% to 97%, convenience ratings from 83% to 97%, and willingness to recommend treatment ranging from 92% to 100%. Results presented in this session further reinforce the importance of early and continuous treatment, highlighting how LEQEMBI SC initiation and maintenance administration provides greater optionality for long-term disease management.

Eisai serves as the lead for lecanemab's development and regulatory submissions globally with Eisai and Biogen co-commercializing and co-promoting the product and Eisai having final decision-making authority.

This release discusses investigational uses of agents in development and is not intended to convey conclusions about efficacy or safety. There is no guarantee that such investigational agents will successfully complete clinical development or gain health authority approval.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Eisai Co., Ltd.

Public Relations Department

TEL: +81 (0)3-3817-5120

Eisai Europe, Ltd.  

EMEA Communications Department 

+44 (0) 797 487 9419 

[email protected] 

Eisai Inc. (U.S.)

Libby Holman

+1201-753-1945

[email protected] 

Biogen Inc.

Madeleine Shin

+1-781-464-3260

[email protected]

INVESTOR CONTACTS

Eisai Co., Ltd.

Investor Relations Department

TEL: +81 (0) 3-3817-5122

Biogen Inc.

Tim Power

+ 1-781-464-2442

[email protected]

Notes to Editors

About lecanemab (generic name, brand name: LEQEMBI®)
Lecanemab is the result of a strategic research alliance between Eisai and BioArctic. It is a humanized immunoglobulin gamma (IgG1) monoclonal antibody directed against aggregated soluble (protofibril) and insoluble forms of amyloid-beta (Aβ).

Lecanemab has been approved in 53 countries and regions including Japan, the United States, China, Europe, South Korea, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia, and is under regulatory review in 6 countries. Following the initial phase with treatment every two weeks for 18 months, intravenous (IV) maintenance dosing with treatment every four weeks was approved in 8 countries including the U.S., China, the UK, and others, and applications have been filed in 12 countries and regions. The U.S. FDA approved Eisai's Biologics License Application (BLA) for subcutaneous maintenance dosing with LEQEMBI IQLIK in August 2025. In November 2025, an application for a subcutaneous injectable formulation in Japan was submitted. In January 2026, the Biologics License Application (BLA) for the subcutaneous formulation was accepted in China. In December 2025, lecanemab (IV) has been included in the "Commercial Insurance Innovative Drug List", recently introduced by the National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) of China.

Since July 2020, the Phase 3 clinical study (AHEAD 3-45) for individuals with preclinical AD, meaning they are clinically normal and have intermediate or elevated levels of amyloid in their brains, is ongoing. AHEAD 3-45 is conducted as a public-private partnership between the Alzheimer's Clinical Trial Consortium that provides the infrastructure for academic clinical trials in AD and related dementias in the U.S, funded by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, Eisai, and Biogen. Since January 2022, the Tau NexGen clinical study for Dominantly Inherited AD (DIAD), that is conducted by Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network Trials Unit (DIAN-TU), led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is ongoing and includes lecanemab as the backbone anti-amyloid therapy.

About Protofibrils
Protofibrils are thought to be the most toxic Aβ species that contribute to brain damage in AD and play a major role in the cognitive decline of this progressive and devastating disease. Protofibrils can cause neuronal and synaptic damage in the brain, which can subsequently adversely affect cognitive function through multiple mechanisms.1 The mechanism by which this occurs has been reported not only by increasing the formation of insoluble Aβ plaques, but also by directly damaging signaling between neurons and other cells. It is believed that reducing protofibrils may reduce neuronal damage and cognitive impairment, potentially preventing the progression of AD.2

About the Collaboration between Eisai and Biogen for AD
Eisai and Biogen have been collaborating on the joint development and commercialization of AD treatments since 2014. Eisai serves as the lead of lecanemab development and regulatory submissions globally with both companies co-commercializing and co-promoting the product and Eisai having final decision-making authority.

About the Collaboration between Eisai and BioArctic for AD
Since 2005, Eisai and BioArctic have had a long-term collaboration regarding the development and commercialization of AD treatments. Eisai obtained the global rights to study, develop, manufacture and market lecanemab for the treatment of AD pursuant to an agreement with BioArctic in December 2007. The development and commercialization agreement on the antibody lecanemab back-up was signed in May 2015.

About Eisai Co., Ltd.
Eisai's Corporate Concept is "to give first thought to patients and people in the daily living domain, and to increase the benefits that health care provides." Under this Concept (also known as human health care (hhc) Concept), we aim to effectively achieve social good in the form of relieving anxiety over health and reducing health disparities. With a global network of R&D facilities, manufacturing sites and marketing subsidiaries, we strive to create and deliver innovative products to target diseases with high unmet medical needs, with a particular focus in our strategic areas of Neurology and Oncology.

In addition, we demonstrate our commitment to the elimination of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), which is a target (3.3) of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), by working on various activities together with global partners.

For more information about Eisai, please visit www.eisai.com (for global headquarters: Eisai Co., Ltd.), and connect with us on X, LinkedIn and Facebook. The website and social media channels are intended for audiences outside of the UK and Europe. For audiences based in the UK and Europe, please visit www.eisai.eu and Eisai EMEA LinkedIn.

About Biogen
Founded in 1978, Biogen is a leading biotechnology company that pioneers innovative science to deliver new medicines to transform patient's lives and to create value for shareholders and our communities. We apply deep understanding of human biology and leverage different modalities to advance first-in-class treatments or therapies that deliver superior outcomes. Our approach is to take bold risks, balanced with return on investment to deliver long-term growth.

The company routinely posts information that may be important to investors on its website at www.biogen.com. Follow Biogen on social media – Facebook, LinkedIn, X, YouTube.

Biogen Safe Harbor
This news release contains forward-looking statements, including about the potential clinical effects of lecanemab; the potential benefits, safety and efficacy of lecanemab; potential regulatory discussions, submissions and approvals and the timing thereof including for lecanemab-irmb (LEQEMBI IQLIK); the treatment of Alzheimer's disease; the anticipated benefits and potential of Biogen's collaboration arrangements with Eisai; the potential of Biogen's commercial business and pipeline programs, including  lecanemab; and risks and uncertainties associated with drug development and commercialization. These forward-looking statements may be accompanied by such words as "aim," "anticipate," "assume," "believe," "contemplate," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "goal," "guidance," "hope," "intend," "may," "objective," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "prospect," "should," "target," "will," "would," and other words and terms of similar meaning. Drug development and commercialization involve a high degree of risk, and only a small number of research and development programs result in commercialization of a product. Results in early-stage clinical trials may not be indicative of full results or results from later stage or larger scale clinical trials and do not ensure regulatory approval. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Given their forward-looking nature, these statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties that may be based on inaccurate assumptions and could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in such statements.

These forward-looking statements are based on management's current beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. Given their nature, we cannot assure that any outcome expressed in these forward-looking statements will be realized in whole or in part. We caution that these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of our control and could cause future events or results to be materially different from those stated or implied in this document, including, among others, uncertainty of long-term success in developing, licensing, or acquiring other product candidates or additional indications for existing products; expectations, plans and prospects relating to product approvals, approvals of additional indications for our existing products, sales, pricing, growth, reimbursement and launch of our marketed and pipeline products; our ability to effectively implement our corporate strategy; the successful execution of our strategic and growth initiatives, including acquisitions; the risk that positive results in a clinical trial may not be replicated in subsequent or confirmatory trials or success in early stage clinical trials may not be predictive of results in later stage or large scale clinical trials or trials in other potential indications; risks associated with clinical trials, including our ability to adequately manage clinical activities, unexpected concerns that may arise from additional data or analysis obtained during clinical trials, regulatory authorities may require additional information or further studies, or may fail to approve or may delay approval of our drug candidates; the occurrence of adverse safety events, restrictions on use with our products, or product liability claims; and any other risks and uncertainties that are described in other reports we have filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

These statements speak only as of the date of this press release and are based on information and estimates available to us at this time. Should known or unknown risks or uncertainties materialize or should underlying assumptions prove inaccurate, actual results could vary materially from past results and those anticipated, estimated or projected. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. A further list and description of risks, uncertainties and other matters can be found in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 and in our subsequent reports on Form 10-Q, Except as required by law, we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of any new information, future events, changed circumstances or otherwise.

Digital Media Disclosure
From time to time, we have used, or expect in the future to use, our investor relations website (investors.biogen.com), the Biogen LinkedIn account (linkedin.com/company/biogen-) and the Biogen X account (https://x.com/biogen) as a means of disclosing information to the public in a broad, non-exclusionary manner, including for purposes of the SEC's Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD). Accordingly, investors should monitor our investor relations website and these social media channels in addition to our press releases, SEC filings, public conference calls and websites, as the information posted on them could be material to investors.

References

Amin L, Harris DA. Aβ receptors specifically recognize molecular features displayed by fibril ends and neurotoxic oligomers. Nat Commun. 2021; 12:3451. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23507-z. Ono K, Tsuji M. Protofibrils of Amyloid-β are Important Targets of a Disease-Modifying Approach for Alzheimer's Disease. Int J Mol Sci. 2020;21(3):952. doi: 10.3390/ijms21030952. PMID: 32023927; PMCID: PMC7037706. SOURCE Eisai Inc.

Smaller Industrials Names Seeing Surging Growth: Here's WhyDycom Industries NYSE: DY Chief Executive Officer Dan Peyovich said the company is seeing broad-based demand across fiber, long-haul networks and data center-related services, arguing that the company’s recent backlog growth reflects more than a short-term cyclical upturn.

Speaking with Guggenheim Securities analyst Joe Osha during a company discussion, Peyovich said Dycom’s nearly $12 billion in quarterly backlog reflects multiple demand drivers “coming in now on top of each other” and the company’s ability to supply a large skilled workforce. He said Dycom has more than 20,000 employees across the country and that customers need that workforce to execute ambitious build programs.

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Hidden Gems: 3 Quiet Stocks With Loud Potential“We think that this has a ton of staying power,” Peyovich said. “These build cycles go well into the next decade.”

Long-Haul and Middle-Mile Opportunity Expands Peyovich said Dycom had previously sized the long-haul and middle-mile opportunity at $20 billion over five years, but said that figure has “grown considerably” as customers plan new routes and higher-capacity networks to support data centers and other connectivity needs.

The Top 5 Analysts Ranked by MarketBeat and Stocks They CoverHe said older networks lack the necessary capacity and routes for current and future demand, while customers and hyperscalers are increasingly discussing larger fiber counts. Peyovich said 864-count fiber has become more common, 1,728-count fiber is also common, and some customers are discussing routes with 7,500 to 10,000 fiber counts.

He also emphasized that the opportunity is not only about fiber count, but also route redundancy. That redundancy may include additional conduit in the same trench, a separate trench on the other side of the road or a different route altogether.

Peyovich said the long-haul and middle-mile build cycle remains “extremely early,” with the vast majority of the opportunity still ahead. He said Dycom is already seeing meaningful revenue contributions and backlog from the category, but expects activity to ramp next year and become more significant by calendar 2028.

BEAD Expected to Take Shape in 2027 On the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, Peyovich said Dycom still expects some revenue contribution this year, but described it as upside because approvals and permitting are taking longer than expected.

He said calendar 2027 remains the period when BEAD should “really start to take shape.” Dycom estimates its addressable market from the program at about $17 billion, excluding materials and focusing only on work Dycom can perform. Peyovich said that figure could ultimately be higher and the program could last longer than the currently expected four-year delivery period.

Dycom previously discussed about $500 million of verbal BEAD awards, and Peyovich said that amount has grown. However, he said some awards have not yet moved into contracted backlog because they still need final approvals and must pass through customers’ internal systems.

Peyovich said Dycom will not pursue BEAD work at any price. If competitors bid aggressively at low pricing, he said Dycom will focus on opportunities that provide good returns on people and capital.

Starlink Seen as Limited Threat to Fiber Builds Asked about Starlink and low-Earth orbit satellite broadband, Peyovich said Dycom’s role is tied to growing data consumption and the need for infrastructure to move that data. Even satellite-based services require terrestrial connectivity, he said.

On fiber-to-the-home, Peyovich pointed to BEAD as the most relevant test case because it targets lower-density and harder-to-serve areas. He said low-Earth orbit providers took about 23% to 25% of that opportunity, which he described as a best-case scenario for the technology. He said Dycom does not expect the same level of impact in metropolitan markets.

Peyovich also said fiber-to-the-home programs have significant momentum, with more than 10 million passings completed annually. He said speed matters because the first fiber connection in a market tends to achieve the best penetration, and consumers have shown a preference for fiber’s high capacity and low latency.

Data Center Demand Supports Communications and Power Solutions Peyovich said data center growth is creating opportunities for Dycom both outside and inside data center facilities. On the communications side, he said new and expanding data center markets need to be connected back to long-haul networks, increasing demand for Dycom’s services.

He also highlighted opportunities to connect Dycom’s communications work with its Building Systems segment, including fiber opportunities “inside the fence” at data center sites.

Dycom’s Power Solutions business remains heavily tied to data centers, Peyovich said, with more than 90% of that business in the data center space and the DMV market. He said demand remains “absolutely insatiable,” and Dycom has had to turn away opportunities despite raising the growth outlook for the business to 35%.

Peyovich said Dycom is also seeking additional acquisition opportunities following its acquisitions of Power Solutions and NTI. He said the company is interested in expanding capabilities such as structured cabling and electrical work, while remaining disciplined on deal selection.

Capital Allocation Focuses on Growth and Acquisitions Peyovich said Dycom’s first capital allocation priority is investment in organic growth. After that, he said mergers and acquisitions are the current priority, given the opportunities the company sees. He noted Dycom bought back shares last quarter when it viewed the share price as dislocated, but said M&A is the larger focus today.

He said Dycom’s long-term net leverage target remains around two times, though the company could consider moving toward three times for the right acquisition if it believed leverage could be reduced quickly afterward.

Peyovich repeatedly pointed to Dycom’s skilled workforce as a competitive differentiator. He said the company can train someone with no experience in communications to become a contributor within about six months, while union electrical roles require a longer apprenticeship process. He said the company has invested in benefits, training and a flagship training facility to attract and retain workers.

Looking ahead, Peyovich said Dycom is positioned to benefit from ongoing growth in data consumption, communications infrastructure and Building Systems demand. He said the company aims to continue growing and diversifying, both organically and through acquisitions, while maintaining discipline.

About Dycom Industries NYSE: DYDycom Industries, Inc NYSE: DY is a leading provider of specialty contracting services to the telecommunications industry in North America. The company delivers engineering, construction, installation and maintenance solutions for communications infrastructure, supporting a broad range of network technologies and system architectures. Dycom's services span outside plant construction, cable placement, fiber optic deployment, wireless and wireline network engineering, as well as testing and turn-up services for voice, data and video applications.

Dycom's customer base includes major telecommunications carriers, cable operators, utility companies and competitive local exchange carriers.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].

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Capital One (COF +0.71%) is best known for issuing credit cards. However, it demonstrated that it had wider aspirations when it bought Discover, a payment processing company. Although the merger is complete, the integration process is still a work in progress. July 27 will be a big date to watch, since that's when some Discover products will start being integrated into Capital One's back end.

Finance is hard, technically speaking The finance industry is highly regulated. The technology that supports financial businesses is complex, and each company typically has a proprietary system. Mistakes that affect customers are frowned upon by both customers and regulators. This is why July 27 is so important for Capital One shareholders to watch.

Image source: Getty Images.

While Discover cards will still exist in name, that is when they will start being supported by the Capital One back end. Strong execution will be vital, and it is highly likely that Capital One's tech team is under significant pressure to ensure a smooth cutover. If the transition process goes poorly, Capital One risks losing Discover customers.

However, there's another problem to consider, even if the cut over is flawless. If Discover cardholders don't like the Capital One back end, they might leave. So this isn't just a technical issue; it's also a product issue for the bank. To be fair, Capital One isn't making massive changes to Discover products, but it is making some changes, and more are likely in the future. One possible headache for cardholders is that new cards will be issued for authorized users, with the cards going to the primary account holder. This is being done to protect customers, but it means the primary account holder has to distribute the new cards. Capital One shareholders should probably pay extra attention over the next couple of quarters.

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Capital One has a big opportunity This is the first real test of Capital One's acquisition of Discover. If it goes well, there could be a very bright future ahead. Not only will Capital One have successfully entered the transaction processing business, but it will have added millions of new credit card relationships. If Capital One can retain those relationships, it opens up additional cross-selling opportunities for the bank and card issuer.

As noted, the problem is that the computer systems that support financial businesses are highly complex. So don't underestimate the difficulty and importance of the July 27 transition. Hopefully, Discover customers won't see much of an impact, but if they do, this merger could be far less beneficial than hoped.

Voice recognition technology has a long history of overpromising, so a little skepticism is healthy here. But SoundHound AI (SOUN 0.60%) has turned into one of the more interesting independent players in conversational artificial intelligence (AI). It's the software that lets you talk to a car, a drive-thru speaker, or a customer-service line and actually be understood.

The stock has been on a volatile ride, and it remains a speculative, small-company bet. Still, three developments in its business help explain why some investors think the climb isn't over.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Agentic voice commerce opens a new way to make money The most important shift involves what the company's technology now does. For years, voice assistants mostly answered questions.

SoundHound is pushing into what the industry calls agentic AI -- software that doesn't just respond but takes action on your behalf. At the start of 2026, the company showed off voice agents built into vehicles and TVs that can order takeout, book a restaurant table through OpenTable, pay for parking, and buy tickets, all hands-free.

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Why does that matter for the stock? Because it changes how the company can earn revenue. Instead of only licensing software, sitting in the middle of a purchase lets it participate in the transaction itself. If even a fraction of the millions of cars and devices running its technology start completing everyday errands by voice, it taps a far larger opportunity than selling software licenses alone.

2. SoundHound is no longer a one-industry bet A common knock on smaller AI companies is that they lean on a single customer or single market. SoundHound has spent the past couple of years deliberately spreading out. Its voice technology now shows up on automotive dashboards, in restaurant drive-thrus and ordering kiosks, on the retail sales floor through a new store-associate assistant it unveiled this year, and across businesses' customer service.

That diversification is more than a talking point. When one industry slows -- say, automakers pull back on new features -- another can pick up the slack, which makes the overall business sturdier. To me, a company selling the same core capability into four or five very different industries is simply harder to knock off course than one riding a single wave.

3. Customers are expanding their usage, not just signing up The most encouraging signal for any young software company is when existing customers choose to do more business with it, not less. SoundHound got a clear vote of confidence this spring when Casey's General Stores, one of the largest convenience-store chains in the country, renewed and expanded its partnership, rolling the technology across more than 2,600 locations after its ordering agents had already handled tens of millions of guest interactions. That kind of land-and-expand behavior suggests the product is actually working in the field.

SoundHound has also moved to acquire enterprise conversational-AI company LivePerson, which would plug SoundHound's newer agentic platform into a large base of established corporate customers. Buying reach like that can shorten the path to winning big-ticket enterprise deals.

The risks worth keeping in view Now for the sober side, because it's substantial. SoundHound is still unprofitable and spends heavily to grow, and its stock trades at a rich valuation against a still-modest revenue base -- the kind of situation that can cause shares to fall hard on any disappointment.

A meaningful chunk of the company's ambitious targets leans on acquisitions like LivePerson going smoothly, which is never guaranteed. And SoundHound competes in the same arena as Amazon and Apple, giants with far deeper pockets. Any of those could pressure the story.

SoundHound AI is a classic high-risk, high-reward choice. The bull case rests on real business progress: a shift toward transaction-driven agentic AI, genuine diversification across industries, and customers expanding their commitments. The bear case rests on valuation, cash burn, and deep-pocketed competition.

When Mark Zuckerberg walked into a Los Angeles courtroom on 18 February flanked by an entourage bedecked in Meta Ray-Bans, some people laughed. If this was an attempt at product placement for the company’s newest range of smart glasses, it was jarringly ill-judged: Zuckerberg was about to testify before a jury in a landmark lawsuit that sought to prove that Instagram and YouTube are addictive by design, and he had passed a throng of bereaved parents on his way into the courthouse. But the prosecution team, led by Mark Lanier, were not laughing.

This was a serious trial. For the first time, the most powerful names in social media were being held to account for the inherent design of their platforms, rather than the content hosted on them. They were accused of deliberately and maliciously building products that keep children hooked, with disastrous consequences for the mental wellbeing of young people. It was a landmark case – a big tobacco moment for big tech.

But there were specific reasons why the prosecution was deeply disturbed to see Meta Ray-Bans in court. “We had fought hard for an anonymous jury. We didn’t want the names disclosed in a way where Google could go pull up their Gmails, where Meta could go pull up their Facebook accounts,” Lanier tells me in his warm Texas drawl. “Then Zuckerberg shows up with security guards wearing Meta glasses. They can easily do facial identification and figure out exactly who the jurors are.” This was not product placement, Lanier says – it was the deployment of the most relentless form of digital surveillance the world has ever known.

The prosecution appealed to the judge, pointing out that Zuckerberg’s entourage was breaking rules that forbade cameras in the courtroom. “The judge made them swear that they hadn’t taken any pictures.” Lanier says. “And then they took the glasses off.”

The case of KGM v Meta et al was always going to be as hi-tech as it was high stakes. KGM – also known by her first name, Kaley – claimed that an addiction to social media that had begun with YouTube at age six and Instagram at age nine had caused her to develop body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression. (Snapchat and TikTok, named in Kaley’s original complaint, had settled out of court for an undisclosed sum before the trial began.) Lanier’s team had to convince the jury that Meta and Google had engineered their products to be addictive. It was a test case that could blaze a trail for thousands more to come.

“I’d never been in court before,” Kaley, now 20, tells me in her first newspaper interview. “Seeing all those people, and having all their eyes on me, was very overwhelming.”

Mark Zuckerberg arrives at the Los Angeles court with two members of his entourage, who are wearing Meta glasses. Photograph: Jill Connelly/Getty ImagesLanier knew this was a case like no other – and that his opponents were prepared to use every power at their disposal to win it, including artificial intelligence. Google and Meta have their own AIs: Gemini and Meta AI, respectively. Lanier was determined to beat them at their own game. (A self-described “AI zealot”, his firm employs a team of five whose sole responsibility is to produce a weekly report for him on advances in AI over the previous seven days.) Lanier asked a company called BoodleBox to make him a bespoke AI incorporating a combination of Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT and other existing models. He used it in “30 different ways” for Kaley’s case, he says, but when he tells me about just one of them, my jaw drops.

The jury might have been anonymous, but the legal teams were able to gather a significant amount of data about each member during jury selection, Lanier explains. “We have questionnaires they filled out that tell us their age, their gender, their occupational history, their family status. But it gives us more insight: it asks, who are three people you most admire and why? Who are three you least admire and why? How do you feel about this or that on a scale of one to 10?” Armed with a dossier of information, Lanier’s AI created models of every juror, “a demographic and psychological exemplar” of each one that allowed him to try out potential arguments on individual members. At the end of each day in court, he would feed the transcripts to his AI shadow jury and ask questions. What did juror number 11 think of the witness? What did juror number seven think was important? Where did juror number three get confused? “Pretty cool,” he grins.

AI can be used for good or abused for evil, Lanier says – just like litigation, which he has been practising for 42 years, or religious faith, which guides everything he does. A devout Christian, Lanier believes he is on a divine mission to take on companies that enrich themselves by exploiting the vulnerable.

“The opposing side had unlimited resources. They had dozens of lawyers in the courtroom. To call it a David versus Goliath storyline is maybe giving too much credit to David, but it’s the best descriptor I can give,” he says; the disparity between him and his opponents was even larger than the biggest mismatch in biblical history. “This was a righteous case, without a doubt. It was a holy war.”

Lanier with his daughters Rachel (on left) and Sarah (right), who worked with him on the case, on the steps of the courthouse. Photograph: Ted Soqui/EPA/ShutterstockOn 25 March, when the (real, human) jury returned its verdict, Lanier stood on the steps of the courthouse alongside two of his five children – daughters Sarah and Rachel, who worked with him on the case – and hailed “a righteous moment”. The jury had found Google and Meta liable on all counts and had awarded Kaley $6m: $3m in compensatory damages and an extra $3m in punitive damages, because Meta and Google were found to have “acted with malice, oppression or fraud”. Meta will shoulder 70% of the bill, with Google picking up the rest. But these damages are only the beginning: more than 2,000 similar lawsuits are now being brought against social media companies, accused of harming the mental health of children with products that are addictive by design, using the legal route Lanier proved viable in Kaley’s case.

Ever since they stood behind Trump at his second inauguration, the power of the tech titans has seemed ever more unassailable. (Lanier tells me big tech now hires one lobbyist for every six members of the 441-strong US House of Representatives.) But Kaley’s legal victory is a reckoning – one that could threaten the entire social media business model.

“Politicians will never hold these people accountable. The only thing they fear is a jury,” Lanier says. “I get 12 ordinary people, and they’re empowered. And when they hear that evidence and they take their oath seriously – bam! – they can do something.”

I meet Lanier in Yarnton Manor, a grade II-listed estate in Oxfordshire, built in 1611 by Sir Thomas Spencer, a distant ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales. He lounges on a teal sofa in one of the wood-panelled rooms, sometimes with a leg dangling over the sofa’s arm, sometimes hugging one of the velvet cushions, often leaning forward to gesticulate in animated ­excitement as he shares a biblical reference or damning piece of trial evidence. It’s a swelteringly hot day in late May, and Lanier, 65, flew in from Houston yesterday, but he looks fresh as a daisy. He only needs four hours’ sleep a night. “Sleep’s a bonus, but not one that’s necessary.”

Lanier’s charitable foundation bought Yarnton in 2021 and turned it into a centre for religious study. He preaches in a Baptist church every Sunday; he has another study centre in Houston. “In the US at least, Christian faith has a bad reputation of being vibrant only among uneducated, unenlightened, bigoted, narrow-minded people. Those of us who hold on to a faith are responsible for trying to bring out the good that can come from it – not the holier-than-thou stuff that seeds division,” he says. “I’m a lawyer who has funded all of this by trying to grab hold of people whose conduct has been destructive.” He draws a rectangle in the air above his head, tracing the corners of the ornate coved ceiling. “It was the Johnson & Johnson case that bought this,” he grins. “My wife and I call this the J&J Manor House.”

Before he took on Google and Meta, Lanier was involved in some of the most high-profile landmark litigation cases in the history of big pharma. In 2018, he won $4.69bn (reduced on appeal to $2.12bn) for 22 women with ovarian cancer and their families after Johnson & Johnson failed to warn them of the carcinogenic risk associated with the talc in their Baby Powder. Natural talc is often mined within close proximity of carcinogenic asbestos; Lanier argued that Johnson & Johnson had known this for decades without warning the public. (Johnson & Johnson said in 2018: “J&J’s baby powder is safe and does not cause cancer. Studies of tens of thousands of women and thousands of men show that talc does not cause cancer or asbestos-related disease.”) In 2019, he won an 11th-hour $260m settlement from opioid manufacturers and distributors on the eve of what would have been the first federal trial in the history of the opioid epidemic.

Lanier’s “bread and butter”, he says, involves ubiquitous, household-name products that can cause serious harms, which the companies behind them know about but choose not to act on. “Normally, I want an eye-popping verdict that causes Wall Street to recoil and causes in-house lawyers to lose their jobs and companies to respond differently,” Lanier told a podcast recently.

When he began his career, at a big Houston law firm, he just liked winning. He learned the psychological skills and rhetorical techniques that helped him excel in court: how to make things memorable, how to read a room and change the energy in it, “how to make word choices that will trigger visceral reactions, how to use story to bypass people’s natural defences”. But after five years of straight wins, he lost – in a case where he knew his client was in the wrong. Licking his wounds on the drive home, he had an epiphany. “I thought, what am I doing? Did I almost take my gifts, my talents, my skills and wield an injustice?” Aged 29, Lanier started his own firm so he could pick what he considered to be “righteous” cases. “You can do horrible things with this power, or you can do good.”

Lanier estimates that settlements from drug companies following his landmark opioid litigation are now in excess of $10bn. His victory in the Johnson & Johnson case opened the floodgates to tens of thousands of claims from people with cancer and their families – including one currently in the high court of England and Wales, with more than 7,000 claimants. J&J deny the allegations.

In the wake of Kaley’s win against Google and Meta, the former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen claimed that Meta could be on the hook for $1tn in future damages from tens of thousands of people who have been harmed by the use of their platforms as children. This might be an overestimation, Lanier says. “But tens of billions, easy. Part of it also is: are they willing to make real change? Reasonable change is something that a lot of us would put a high value on.”

At the time of the Johnson & Johnson verdict, Lanier remarked that suing in an initial test case with only a small cluster of plaintiffs allowed him to maximise the emotional impact of claimants’ stories on the jury. “It’s easier to get justice in small groups,” he said. “In small groups, people have names, but in large groups, they’re numbers.”

Kaley was a lone plaintiff, and a reluctant trailblazer. It was her mother who brought her case to the attention of lawyers. (Kaley was identified only as KGM in court because the alleged harms took place when she was a child.)

“I was really scared,” Kaley tells me in a video call; she has chosen to keep her camera switched off. “I had a lot of anxiety around the thought of them deleting my accounts as a punishment. And that did end up happening, at least with Snapchat.”

There’s a duality to the way Kaley speaks: giving evidence in the trial has prepared her to be able to answer difficult questions about the most challenging parts of her life, and that, combined with her low voice, can make her sound older than her 20 years. But her responses are often brief and staccato, and she sometimes struggles to find the right words, like a teenager.

Brought up by a single mother in Chico, California, along with an older brother and sister, Kaley grew up with learning disabilities, in a household without much disposable income. By the time she was nine, she had uploaded hundreds of videos to YouTube, and soon had dozens of accounts on both YouTube and Instagram. “I liked that I could post my own stuff and see how many likes I got. I liked being able to see what my friends were up to.” When Kaley wasn’t posting, she was scrolling. She stopped engaging with her family. She no longer left her home. Once, she spent more than 16 hours on Instagram in a single day.

“I was on it every day from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. I was on my phone during class – I would get in trouble, I got bad grades because I was not paying attention.” She was terrified at the thought of anything happening to her phone. “If I was walking next to a lake or something, I’d be so scared that I was going to drop my phone and lose my social media.”

Her mother tried to intervene, activating screen time limits or confiscating Kaley’s phone altogether. “But I would freak out,” Kaley says. “I had withdrawal symptoms. It was just so hard to do anything else.” She would get up in the middle of the night to search for her phone, or “beg and beg and cry” until she got it back. When her mother removed Instagram from Kaley’s phone, Kaley sneaked a hand-me-down phone from her older sister so she could download the app again without her mother knowing.

Almost as soon as she joined Instagram, Kaley started playing with filters, enlarging her eyes, shortening her nose. “I’d take a selfie with a filter on, and then see myself – how I actually looked – and I would just feel really ugly,” she says. “It made me get all these new insecurities, and to see myself in a way that others didn’t actually see me.” Aged 10, Kaley started to cut herself. She went on to be diagnosed with depression, anxiety and clinical body dysmorphia.

Lanier didn’t want Kaley to sit through the entire trial. She gets easily distracted, he says; plus, it was his job to convince the jury that she had been seriously harmed by Google and Meta’s products. He didn’t want her to come away from it believing she was irredeemably damaged.

Delivering his opening statement, Lanier stacked three wooden ABC toy blocks on top of each other. “I thought, I will tell the jury this case is as simple as ABC – Addicting the Brains of Children,” he explains. “There’s a principle in psychology and learning called cognitive ease: we automatically assign credibility to the things we more easily understand. There’s a principle in rhetoric: the power of threes. Threes just seem to resonate within our soul and minds. ABC, one, two, three.” (In his opening statement at the Johnson & Johnson trial, Lanier used ABC Scrabble tiles to impress upon the jury that “Asbestos, Breathed or internalised, causes Cancer”.)

Then Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt delivered his opening statement, pushing back. “Was it Instagram or other causes?” he asked. He told the jury the root of Kaley’s mental health issues lay in her chaotic upbringing; that her home life and learning disabilities meant these problems would be inherent in her life anyway. Lanier bats away this idea. “Just because someone has a headache doesn’t give you the right to bash them over the head with a rock and say, ‘They already had a headache! Don’t blame me!’”

Lanier was not allowed to respond to the defendants’ opening statement in court. But as he walked out of the courthouse that day, he spoke to the throngs of media waiting there. “The next morning we get to court, and the bad guys want to have a discussion with the judge off the record.” In the judge’s chambers, he says, Meta’s team complained that Lanier’s rebuttal to their opening statement was being widely reported in the press, and called on the judge to prevent him from speaking to journalists.

Once again, Lanier deployed the power of three. “I said, ‘First of all, I didn’t do it in court – I’m on the sidewalk outside. Second of all, you’ve instructed the jury not to read any of the media. Third of all, the defendants in this case are social media. They’re producing press releases! They’re putting posts on Instagram!” (While the trial was ongoing, Meta had worked hard to spread the message that the company took the welfare of young people seriously, both on their own platforms and in their wider communications with the public.) “It makes my little comment on the courthouse sidewalk pale in comparison.’” Meta’s lawyers ultimately backed down. “The judge said, ‘You do realise there are four billboards up around the courthouse with your ads on them talking about how you care for children in all you do – and you’re complaining about Mr Lanier?’”

Lanier photographed in the library of Yarnton Manor, Oxfordshire. Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The GuardianThe bereaved families outside the courthouse each day – some waving placards that read “We are KGM” – wanted the wider context of Kaley’s struggles to be recognised. But the defendants had argued that Lanier should not be allowed to mention other young people who had suffered harm as a consequence of social media use. “They wanted to make her the exception,” he says. “The sad part is, we’ve got a generation of Kaleys. Go to a restaurant and look how many people are sitting there in her age range like this …” He takes his phone from the coffee table and hunches over it. “It’s such a waste of human capital. All to make money flow to a handful of rich white guys who want to run the world.”

Parents buy the phones those kids are hunched over, I say. Shouldn’t they be able to establish and maintain ground rules? Lanier smiles. “It’s very naive to think that we have such awesome parents in this world that they can stand up against the trillion-dollar companies – with their algorithms and their deceitful tools – and be well enough informed to fight the most aggressive technology in the history of human civilisation. Kids get on YouTube at school. Kids go over to their friends’ houses. Kids have lunch with other kids. Does parenting make a difference? Of course it does. Can parents beat the machine? No way.”

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Lanier was also not allowed to talk about the content hosted on social media; in the eyes of the law, YouTube and Instagram are not publishers, so are not responsible for the content they host. “But the content is part of what they use to addict you.” Imagine going into a bookshop and idly picking up a book from one of the display tables, he says, only to see every book on every table change to be something statistically proven to be interesting to people drawn to that kind of book – including some that might shock, enrage or titillate you. Touch another title, and all the books change again, as the bookshop narrows down your interests as effectively as it can. Unlike bookshops, the social media algorithms want you to browse for ever.

“The algorithms are amoral – they’re machines. They’re relentless. You’ll never find them wavering, or low on energy, or distracted. And their entire design is to try to keep your attention on their platform. They are scary.”

Meta and Google were damned by their own documents: the millions of pages of evidence the judge required them to hand over, and a few others leaked by whistleblowers. “Through the industrious hard work of a lot of young lawyers reading, and the industrious hard work of AI, we were able to find the lines of gold.” Lanier says it was an embarrassment of riches.

Internal documents showed the companies had deliberately sought out “casino science” to turn their products into what Lanier calls “addiction machines”. Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok all use intermittent variable rewards, giving their users little unpredictable dopamine hits, just like slot machines with their micro-payouts that keep you sticking around for a big jackpot that may never arrive, endlessly scrolling on your phone instead of pulling a handle. A 2012 Google memo about YouTube said its “goal is not viewership; it’s viewer addiction”. Another document from Google referred to its products as “slot machines”. “These are attention casinos,” it read. “The house always wins.”

There were documents from Google and Meta revealing the “dark patterns” they deploy to manipulate their users’ behaviour. Take the features Kaley’s mother wanted to use to protect her daughter: they were not easy to find, and were switched off by default. “You’ve got to determine there’s a protective feature, go find it and toggle it on,” says Lanier. “The toggle itself is subject to dark patterns: people will toggle differently if there’s a blue dot when you toggle, versus if it doesn’t change colour.”

This makes me think of my own efforts to control my Instagram feed, by toggling the button requesting that it doesn’t show me suggested content. I have to go into my settings and toggle it again every 30 days, and given that it doesn’t change colour, I’m never really sure that it has worked. “It’s insidious,” Lanier says. “And let’s say, as a parent, you do this for your kid. Did you set a calendar reminder to go back to your kid’s phone 30 days later when it defaults back?” Even if you were organised enough to do this, he adds, the platforms change their settings so often that it’s impossible to keep up.

There was a Meta document from 2018 that read: “If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens”; a YouTube slideshow featuring children as young as four and the suggestion that parents could use the platform as a “digital babysitter”; a 2019 research report commissioned by Meta that found teens had “an addicts’ narrative about their Instagram use”, and that “they wish they could spend less time caring about it”.

Then there was the testimony given on the stand. In a memorable exchange with Lanier, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said that 16 hours a day on the platform might be “problematic”, but he would not call it an addiction. “You can call it problematic use. You can call it tweedledee,” Lanier says. “The issue wasn’t the magic word ‘addiction’ – it was the harm.”

But the prosecution had to prove that Kaley’s use of social media caused the harm done to her mental health, and that was a challenge. “Social media companies have seeded the literature with stuff that says their product’s beneficial. For decades, big tobacco said, ‘Tobacco doesn’t really cause lung cancer – look at all these studies!’ And what you didn’t know is big tobacco had ghostwritten them or funded them,” Lanier says. A psychiatrist and a therapist both testified that, in Kaley’s case, her body dysmorphia was caused by her social media use. “The other side argued it was the residuals of bad parenting.” The sad part, Lanier says, is that Meta’s own documents show they know that when adolescent girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds with existing mental health challenges spend extended periods on social media, their mental health deteriorates.

When Zuckerberg took the stand – the first time he had testified in front of a jury – Lanier put it to him that he “saw dollar signs written on the backs” of vulnerable kids. He presented Zuckerberg with an internal document, which showed that, in 2015, a third of all 10- to 12-year-olds in the US used Instagram, even though under-13s were not supposed to have accounts, and an email from an executive that said, “Mark has decided the top priority for the company is teens.” Zuckerberg said this was no longer the way the company operated, and that he had worked for years to address “problematic use” of his platforms “because it’s the right thing to do”.

At the end of questioning, six prosecution lawyers unrolled a 50ft-wide collage of some of the hundreds of selfies Kaley had posted on Instagram. Urging Zuckerberg to look at the heavily filtered images, Lanier asked him if Meta had ever investigated Kaley’s account for problematic use. Zuckerberg did not answer.

Lanier had planned to question YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on the stand, but ran out of time – the judge had given the prosecution only 43 hours to try the case. “I decided I didn’t need him,” Lanier says. But Google is just as culpable as Meta in Kaley’s case, he adds. “YouTube was a gateway drug.”

Time pressure was one of the reasons why they decided to settle with Snapchat and TikTok before the case came to trial. “I could have hit a good verdict against them,” Lanier says, a little wistfully. He planned to compare the safety features that are present in the Chinese version of TikTok and that aren’t present in its international platform: a limit on night-time use, no infinite scroll, mandatory time-outs once users have been on the app for a certain amount of time, and the deployment of AI to determine if users are children, “based upon factors including what you’re looking at, the size of your finger when you’re scrolling, how fast you scroll. There are tons of ways that they are required to be safer over there.”

Google claimed that the entire case misunderstood YouTube; that it is a streaming platform, not a social media site. “You have an ability to message, to like or dislike, to comment, to follow. It’s not just media – it’s social media,” Lanier declares. But just in case that argument wasn’t enough, the prosecution team asked Google’s very own AI what it thought. Gemini’s response was unequivocal – YouTube is social media.

On hearing the verdict, Kaley’s overriding feeling was relief – for herself, and for all the people who can now follow her. “I knew it meant that other cases would get to go to court, so I was feeling happy for the other families.” The thousands of cases that were poised to be brought against social media companies should she win have now been set in motion. She hasn’t received any damages yet; Google and Meta are appealing, and Lanier says the process will take seven years. “However long it takes is however long it takes,” Kaley says. “I’m OK with it.” Despite her ongoing struggles with her self-image, Kaley’s victory has helped her recognise the contribution she can make to the world, and how much people value her.

Should the case end up at the supreme court, Lanier doesn’t think that the politically appointed judges will be swayed by seeing this as a partisan issue. “It crosses the political aisle. Typically, Republicans are friendly to big business in the US, but some of the most stalwart folks on this are Republicans. It matters to anybody who’s a parent.”

Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The GuardianIn the meantime, Lanier is helping other legal teams who are bringing cases against social media companies, while his firm is fielding new inquiries from people who say they have been harmed by compulsive social media use. “Those that have legitimate cases that I can do, I’ll represent. It’s got to be a child that was addicted. We’ve got to have some counselling or psychiatric records. If it wasn’t bad enough to go see a professional, then it’s not bad enough to bring a case. Within the framework of that, I’ll take those cases.”

Why does the focus have to be on kids? “Children’s brains are still developing, and the last part to develop is that ability for self-control that sees future consequences. With adults, it’s going to be hard to win. The jury’s going to think, You’re an adult, you ought to be able to weigh the consequences,” Lanier replies. “The problem is, once you get addicted, addictive pathways are easily transferable to other addictions. The child who’s addicted to social media can easily become addicted to pornography, sex, gambling, pills. Your body’s ultimately just craving the dopamine.”

Of course, Lanier will not be the lead lawyer on the thousands of new cases being brought against Google, Meta, Snapchat, TikTok and other social media companies. He is clearly very good at what he does, with the skills to win against giants in big pharma as well as big tech. I wonder whether his trailblazing victory for Kaley can be replicated in other courtrooms, by other lawyers.

“That’s a fair question,” Lanier replies. “Embedded in it is a kind of compliment – so thank you, that’s kind. Does the skill of the lawyer make a difference in these cases? Yes, it does. Am I the only lawyer who can win these? Absolutely not. I’m not necessary – but I’m useful.”

In June, Keir Starmer announced a social media ban for under-16s, due to take effect in early 2027, after nine out of 10 respondents to a government survey supported it. Lanier thinks Starmer’s plans are “brilliant. It eats away at the fabric of our society if children have access to materials that they are not mature enough to handle.”

“I think it’s the first step in the right direction,” Kaley says. “But kids are sneaky and they might still find a way to get back on it.”

Some who oppose the ban – including the campaigner Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter, Molly, took her own life after being deluged with suicide and self-harm content – say the only way to protect children is to force social media companies to change their business models, which rely on addictive features and algorithmically driven content. Litigation may be the only way to bring those changes, Kaley says. “They’re only going to change if somebody forces them to.”

Lanier’s firm is now working on a claim against OpenAI brought by bereaved parents who say ChatGPT was instrumental in their son’s suicide. He also has a forthcoming suit against Roblox, the most popular online game platform among eight- to 14-year-olds in the UK. “It’s a breeding ground for child exploitation, a forum that allows child predators to thrive and to connect,” he says. The addictive features of the platform will be part of that case, too.

Kaley tells me she has no idea what the future holds for her. She is still on social media, in the places that haven’t banished her in retaliation for taking legal action against them. She still posts selfies and videos; she thinks she always will, even though she hopes not to one day. “It’s very difficult.”

Lanier is considering writing a book about Kaley’s case. A documentary might be in the works. He has already starred as himself in a movie, the 2011 Chris Evans film Puncture (released as Injustice in the UK). It tells the true story of Michael Weiss, the Houston-based lawyer behind a class-action lawsuit against hospital syringe distributors in the US; after Weiss died from a drugs overdose in 1999, Lanier took on the case and won a landmark settlement in 2004.

Lanier is the first to admit that, in the past at least, he loved attention. “When I was a younger man, probably the quickest way to get hurt was to get between me and a camera,” he says, a twinkle in his eye. Perhaps that’s why, despite everything he has learned, Lanier is still on Instagram.

“I do a video thought for the day, five days a week, based on some biblical idea. They get posted on there for distribution and availability,” he says when I bring this up. “I’m not someone who thinks that social media is inherently evil. It’s like any tool: it can be used for good and it can be used for evil.”

His 15-year-old granddaughter watches his videos, he tells me. So how does Lanier see the future for her, and his 11 other grandchildren? Is the digital world going to be safer for them following Kaley’s victory?

“The optimist in me says yes. The realist in me says not so fast.” He leans forward. “Mark Zuckerberg has immense power, and power is as addictive as any drug. Do we really think that he’s going to readily abandon a portion of his power? The realist in me says this is going to be a war that will last my lifetime – and the lifetime of others.”

In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email [email protected], and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Jul 12, 2026, 5:49 a.m.

3 min read

Summary

A controversial proposal known as BIP-110, which would temporarily restrict non-financial data on the Bitcoin blockchain, faces an early August deadline with miner support still below 1%.The measure would tighten limits on OP_RETURN and other data-carrying methods for one year, a move backers say would refocus Bitcoin on payments but critics argue improperly censors valid, fee-paying transactions.With major figures like Michael Saylor and Adam Back opposing the plan and both miner and node adoption stuck in the low single digits, BIP-110 appears likely to create only a small minority chain rather than a network-wide change.An infamous proposal to purge non-financial data from the Bitcoin blockchain is heading toward a hard deadline in early August, and the initial support it has gathered from miners is less than 1% so far - a signal of outsized opposition despite the immense social chatter around the topic.

BIP-110, formally titled the Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork, is basically a fight over what Bitcoin block space is for.

Bitcoin transactions can carry money and extra data. An OP_RETURN section is the obvious “note field” for small bits of data within transactions, and data pushes are another route - where users can place larger chunks of raw data inside Bitcoin script or witness data. Ordinals, inscriptions and some token schemes use those paths to put images, text or token metadata onchain.

BIP-110 would temporarily tighten those paths for one year. It would cap OP_RETURN at the old small size, block most arbitrary data chunks above 256 bytes, and restrict some script formats used mainly for data storage.

Supporters say this keeps Bitcoin focused on payments and lowers node burden, but critics think it turns a policy fight into a consensus rule and tells users which transactions are “acceptable.”

Two of Bitcoin's most influential figures came out against it on Saturday. Strategy founder Michael Saylor posted that "there are 110 things more dangerous to Bitcoin than spam," arguing the proposal "turns a spam dispute into a consensus change that would invalidate some currently valid, fee-paying transactions." The precedent, he wrote, is the real danger.

There are 110 things more dangerous to Bitcoin than spam.

BIP 110 turns a spam dispute into a consensus change that would invalidate some currently valid, fee-paying transactions.

That precedent is the danger. We should save our energy for threats that really matter. $BTC https://t.co/LoSkl9XSo1

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) July 11, 2026 Adam Back, the Blockstream co-founder whose hashcash design is cited in the bitcoin white paper, made a similar case at greater length, addressed to the newcomers backing the proposal.

"Bitcoin respectfully says no to what you want," he said, adding that their real recourse, if unconvinced, is to group together and fork away, but that "bitcoin won't be joining it."

The support data shows what the broader market really thinks. BIP 110 does not rely on the usual path of overwhelming miner approval, but uses a user-activated soft fork, a mechanism in which nodes enforce a rule whether or not miners agree, set to a 55% miner-signaling threshold rather than the traditional 95%.

Backing is absent even at that significantly lower bar.

Miner signaling has never risen above about 1% in any period and stands at zero in the current one, with no major mining pool behind it, according to the BIP 110 signaling monitor.

Among the nodes that store and relay the chain, adoption sits in the low single digits, carried almost entirely by Bitcoin Knots, an alternative to the dominant Bitcoin Core software.

The deadline arrives regardless. The current signaling period runs from block 957,600 to 959,615, and a voluntary lock-in deadline falls at block 961,542 in the following period, expected in early August.

Nodes running BIP 110 software would then begin rejecting any block that does not signal support, with activation projected near September. In practice, a rule enforced by a few percent of nodes and almost no miners does not change Bitcoin for everyone but would split off a minority chain.

As such, Bitcoin's resistance to change is not written down anywhere, but is the product of thousands of independent operators who each have to opt in as a means of consensus.

The underlying spam concern is real. Blocks have carried more non-financial data since the October change, and reasonable people see that as a drift from Bitcoin as money toward Bitcoin as a database. But Bitcoin changes only when the network agrees to run the change, and on the evidence so far, it will not run this one.

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Digital Assets: Quarterly Review and Outlook Q2

Digital Assets: Quarterly Review and Outlook Q2

Digital assets posted a third consecutive quarter of losses in Q2 2026, the longest losing streak since the 2022 bear market, as institutional capital rotated into AI equities and Bitcoin ETFs recorded their largest quarterly outflow since launch. Our report examines what drove the divergence, where structural adoption continued regardless, and what Q3 signals to watch.

Jul 10, 2026

Digital assets posted a third consecutive quarter of losses in Q2 2026, the longest losing streak since the 2022 bear market, as institutional capital rotated into AI equities and Bitcoin ETFs recorded their largest quarterly outflow since launch. Our report examines what drove the divergence, where structural adoption continued regardless, and what Q3 signals to watch.

Why it matters:

Digital assets posted a third consecutive quarter of losses in Q2 2026, the longest losing streak since the 2022 bear market, as institutional capital rotated into AI equities and Bitcoin ETFs recorded their largest quarterly outflow since launch. Our report examines what drove the divergence, where structural adoption continued regardless, and what Q3 signals to watch.

8h05 ▪ 6 min read ▪ by Ghiles A.

Summarize this article with:

The cryptocurrency market has experienced mixed developments in recent days, but Ether stood out with a 3% increase between Thursday and Friday. This rise occurs in a context marked by the growth of tokenization, the successful launch of Robinhood Chain, and continued purchases by several companies. Despite this favorable dynamic, surpassing the 1,800-dollar threshold remains out of reach. On-chain data and indicators from derivative markets still show signs of weakness, limiting short-term growth potential.

In brief Ether advanced 3% in one week, supported by the rise of Tokenization and institutional purchases. Robinhood Chain has already attracted 106 million dollars in deposits and strengthens the Ethereum ecosystem. Ethereum retains 47% of the real-world assets (RWA) market, confirming its lead in tokenization. On-chain indicators and derivative markets remain weak, hindering a sustained breakthrough above 1,800 dollars. BitMine has accumulated 198,370 ETH in 30 days, illustrating continued purchases by institutional investors. Ether Rallies as Tokenization and Robinhood Chain Drive Fresh Optimism The recent rise of Ether is first based on the rapid development of initiatives related to asset tokenization. Robinhood notably launched Robinhood Chain, a layer 2 solution using ETH as the native gas token. This new infrastructure quickly strengthened user interest in the Ethereum ecosystem. At the same time, the platform is expanding its offer of tokenized stocks to an international clientele, consolidating the adoption of EVM-compatible infrastructures.

Here are the main figures illustrating this dynamic:

106 million dollars in deposits already recorded on Robinhood Chain. 120 countries now have access to the tokenized stocks offered by Robinhood. 47% market share for Ethereum in the real-world assets (RWA) sector. 260 billion dollars of total value locked (TVL) on Ethereum. 210 billion dollars capitalization for Ether, a level below the network’s TVL. Tokenization thus continues to strengthen Ethereum’s dominant position in the real-world asset market. Apart from stablecoins, assets like Tether Gold (XAUT), Ondo US Dollar Yield (USDY), and Franklin Templeton iBENJI government bonds illustrate this evolution. Tokenized stocks STRCx from Strategy and CRCLon from Ondo also rank among the main sector references.

This dynamic feeds specialist analyses. Leon Waidmann, research director at Lisk, believes the gap between the network’s total value locked and Ether’s capitalization reflects a relatively lower valuation than observed during the 2022 bear market. This interpretation fuels debate on the asset’s current positioning without changing the network fundamentals.

On-Chain Indicators Continue to Limit the Recovery Despite this improvement in Ether’s price, several indicators show network activity remains less dynamic than before. Layer 2 solutions continue their development, and institutional investments hold steady, but overall demand on the blockchain remains limited. The 2026 bear market reduced activity across several segments, while some competing blockchains strengthened their presence in synthetic perpetual futures and automated yield vaults.

The main on-chain data illustrating this slowdown of activity on Ethereum are as follows:

11 million dollars in weekly revenue generated by DApps, compared to 20 million dollars in Q1 2026. Sky: 3.1 million dollars in weekly revenue. Titan Builder: 2.4 million dollars in weekly revenue. Chainlink: 1.1 million dollars in weekly revenue. Active addresses dropped from 5.4 million to 3.2 million, confirming the decline in on-chain activity. Weekly revenues of Ethereum DApps, in USD (left) vs active addresses (right). Source: DefiLlama
This evolution limits Ether’s ability to immediately extend its rebound. Even if tokenization fundamentals remain solid, network usage metrics do not grow at the same pace. Investors therefore continue to monitor these indicators to determine if the recent price rise can be accompanied by a sustained recovery of activity on Ethereum.

Institutional Purchases Provide Fresh Support to the Market Derivative markets also provide a more measured signal. According to Laevitas data, the annualized funding rate of Ether perpetual futures contracts fell back to 3% on Saturday, after reaching 12% the previous day. This level remains below the neutral threshold set at 6%, indicating weaker demand for long positions. This development suggests that operators remain cautious despite the recent price rise.

Annualized funding rate of ETH perpetual futures contracts. Source: Laevitas
At the same time, institutional flows continue to support the market. Arkham Intelligence identified a withdrawal of 20,500 ETH, representing about 36 million dollars, from Galaxy Digital to a new wallet. This movement corresponds to a pattern previously observed during purchases attributed to Tom Lee via BitMine Immersion. Over the last thirty days, BitMine has accumulated 198,370 ETH, bringing the total value of its reserves to 10.3 billion dollars.

These acquisitions offer additional market support, although they are not enough to erase the more cautious signals seen on technical and on-chain indicators. Tokenization continues to expand use cases for the network, while institutional investments maintain steady demand. However, actual blockchain activity remains below the levels observed at the beginning of the year.

Future movements will therefore depend on the balance between these factors. If tokenization continues its development and institutional purchases hold steady, Ether could maintain a solid base. Conversely, a sustained recovery will also require improvement in on-chain indicators and derivative markets to confirm a return of broader demand across the ecosystem.

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Journaliste et rédacteur web passionné par l’univers des cryptomonnaies et des technologies Web3. J’y traite les dernières tendances et actualités afin de proposer un contenu de haute qualité à un large public du secteur.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

Dogecoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) experienced another subdued week, with cumulative weekly net inflows reaching $0 for the period from July 6 to July 10, according to recent figures from SoSovalue. This marks the second consecutive week without any fresh capital entering Dogecoin-linked ETFs.

Institutional demand stagnatesDogecoin ETFs have alternated between periods of zero inflow and minor positive net flows, signalling cautious market sentiment and an absence of major buying pressure. The previous week had already delivered a net negative outflow, a trend not seen since January, when the week ending January 23 also recorded negative weekly flows for these products.

The affected investment vehicles include the offerings from digital asset managers Bitwise, Grayscale, and 21Shares. These firms oversee various Dogecoin ETFs that allow investors to gain exposure to the prominent memecoin without directly holding the asset.

Recent data indicates that the total cumulative net inflow for Dogecoin ETFs has reached $11.77 million, while the products currently manage $10.23 million in net assets. This total represents just 0.09% of Dogecoin’s current market capitalization.

A lack of new inflows could indicate a pause in institutional interest toward Dogecoin-related funds. Market participants are now waiting for a fresh narrative or catalyst that could trigger renewed investment activity in the asset.

Date/PeriodDogecoin ETF Net FlowCumulative Net Inflow (Total)Net AssetsJuly 6 – July 10$0$11.77 million$10.23 millionWeek ending July 2Negative––Week ending January 23Negative––ETF product updates and benchmarksIn product news, 21Shares, a Switzerland-based provider known for offering a range of cryptocurrency exchange-traded products, will restructure its Dogecoin ETF’s pricing benchmark. The company has announced intentions to license market index data from FTSE for improved pricing transparency.

Mini dictionary: 21Shares is a Swiss-based investment firm that offers cryptocurrency ETPs (exchange-traded products), providing institutional and retail investors access to digital assets via traditional equity markets.

The decision to adapt its pricing model arrives amid stagnant inflows and reduced excitement for Dogecoin across institutional products. Market watchers are awaiting signs of renewed interest to help drive participation.

Market sentiment remains weakDogecoin has lacked a strong narrative in recent weeks, which has contributed to muted performance within investment vehicles tied to the asset. The broader cryptocurrency market continues to be characterised by declining valuations, with a majority of altcoins trading close to multi-year lows.

Despite the lack of enthusiasm, certain indicators point to reduced volatility compared to earlier in the year. Crypto derivatives markets are displaying more stable trends, with a shift away from short-term speculation and a rise in longer-term positions.

Market sentiment has also shown marginal improvement. The Fear and Greed Index, a commonly watched metric for gauging investor sentiment in cryptocurrency markets, increased to 32, classified as “fear”, after remaining in the extreme fear range for more than 40 days. The index has not exceeded the neutral 50-point threshold since November, suggesting traders are no longer panicking but remain cautious about potential upside.

Dogecoin ETFs have alternated between weeks of zero and modest positive net flows, underscoring cautious institutional sentiment and the absence of new market drivers for the meme-inspired cryptocurrency.

At the time of reporting, Dogecoin had gained 1.45% over the past 24 hours, trading at $0.075.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Meta Platforms (META +6.16%) is one of the big spenders in the artificial intelligence (AI) race. Its capital expenditures in 2026 will total between $125 billion and $145 billion. At the midpoint, that estimate would be 88% higher than last year's figure.

However, investors have reason to be skeptical that this will result in a meaningful payoff.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who currently has a net worth of $231 billion, admitted that the company's AI bets "haven't come to fruition yet." He said that during an internal town hall on July 2, Reuters reported.

The social media stock dipped 5% that day, although it's up 19% in the month of July (as of July 10).

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Not living up to the hype Meta has been one of the fastest companies to commit fully to AI. Earlier this year, the business laid off 8,000 employees, translating to 10% of its workforce. It also moved 7,000 people into different AI roles. One of the goals was to develop and implement AI agents throughout the organization, an objective that so far has failed to live up to expectations.

Zuckerberg said notable progress should be made in the coming months. But based on the immediate negative share-price reaction, investors were less enthusiastic.

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The slow AI headway is giving shareholders flashbacks to late 2021, when the business changed its name from Facebook to Meta Platforms. The company believed that the metaverse would replace mobile internet as the next major computing platform, a strategic pivot that Meta has since scaled back.

Investors haven't been pleased with Reality Labs' financial performance. This segment of Meta posted a cumulative operating loss of $77 billion during the five-year period from the start of 2021 through 2025. But this dollar figure is peanuts compared to the money being allocated to AI.

Zuck's gamble makes sense With a world-class advertising platform and 3.56 billion daily active users across its family of apps, Meta aims to leverage AI not only to boost engagement and drive higher ad revenue, but to also bring personal superintelligence to everyone around the world. This gives the business a different position than its hyperscaler peers, which largely sell AI and other computing capabilities to enterprise clients.

Meta's huge AI spending makes sense, since the company wants to lead the AI revolution from an individual's perspective. However, Zuckerberg's comments about AI progress being slow have three implications for the broader AI secular trend.

It's almost impossible to precisely measure early results from AI implementation, even for a dominant technology business. Worries about AI agents replacing jobs appear to be overblown right now. And no one has any idea what the ultimate payoff will be from the unprecedented AI spending taking place.

It has certainly been a case of the Mondays for Monday.com (MNDY 1.44%) this year, as the stock is down more than 40% in 2026.

The work operating system company has been caught up in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) downturn, and investors sold the company off hard in February after it projected that its Q1 2026 revenue would come up just short of analyst expectations. It actually beat those original analyst revenue estimates by a wide margin ($342.9 million) when it reported its Q1 results in May, and it also raised its full-year guidance. This helped the stock rebound off its lows, but it is still down more that 70% in the past year.

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AI fears loom Monday.com's sell-off this year has largely been driven by fears that artificial intelligence (AI) would disrupt its business model. The company is largely a visual interface that helps customers automate workflow tasks. One of its advantages is that it's a drag-and-drag tool that doesn't require technical expertise to set up. And while the company has introduced AI tools, including AI agents and even a vibe (AI-assisted) coding tool, investors fear that similar tools will replace it.

The company's growth remains strong, with its Q1 revenue climbing 24% to $351.3 million. Its growth was led by existing customers, with net dollar retention at 110%. Any number above 100% represents growth from clients who have been customers for at least a year after churn. Meanwhile, net dollar retention among larger clients was even more robust, at 114% for customers with more than 10 users and 116% for customers with annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $50,000 or more.

Looking ahead, the company forecast Q2 revenue of $338 million to $340 million, representing 18% to 19% growth. It projected full-year revenue of between $1.466 million and $1.474 million, above its prior guidance of $1.452 billion and $1.462 billion.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Monday.com continues to deliver solid revenue growth, and its AI solutions, especially Monday Vibe, are performing well. Meanwhile, the sell-off has left the stock incredibly cheap. It now trades at a price-to-sales (P/S) ratio below 3 times and a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio below 19 times, for a company still projected to grow revenue by nearly 20%.

An investment in Monday.com comes down to the core SaaS debate. Will organizations just build it themselves, or do they still value the updates, security, maintenance, and compliance that come with getting it from dedicated providers? Organizations have always been able to develop their own software, and AI makes it easier, but is the cost worth it? I have serious doubts, and as such, think the stock is a buy at these depressed levels.

Capri's Turnaround Is Taking Shape, But Is the Stock a Buy Yet?Capri NYSE: CPRI executives said the company is entering a more focused phase after the sale of Versace, with management emphasizing growth plans for Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo, store renovations, tighter product assortments and a stronger balance sheet.

Speaking at Bernstein’s Retail Forum in New York, Capri Chief Executive Officer John Idol and Chief Financial Officer Tyler Reddien outlined the company’s efforts to reposition Michael Kors, expand Jimmy Choo and return the business to growth. The discussion was hosted by Bernstein analyst Aneesha Sherman.

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Tapestry Stock Drops After Strong Quarter and Raised OutlookIdol said Capri ended the year with “a little over $200 million in debt,” giving the company flexibility to invest in its remaining two brands. He said management believes Michael Kors can return to approximately $4 billion in revenue from an estimated $2.93 billion this year, while Jimmy Choo can grow to $800 million from roughly $600 million.

Michael Kors Repositioning Remains in Early Stages Idol said Capri decided to take a “more modern lens” to Michael Kors in an effort to attract younger consumers, including Gen Z and parts of the millennial cohort. The company has leaned into the “Jet Set” concept, which Idol described as a mindset tied to travel, style and aspiration.

After a Huge Rally, Is There Any Upside Left for Ralph Lauren Stock? The company has also shifted its marketing strategy through “hotel stories” campaigns, including Ibiza, Rome and Saint-Tropez, while increasing its use of social media. Idol said Michael Kors now has more than 400 influencers working with the brand.

On product, Idol said Michael Kors has narrowed its full-price focus around three handbag icons: Nolita, Hamilton and Laila. Those groups now represent about 50% to 60% of full-price sales, he said. The company has reduced SKUs, sharpened storytelling and introduced more accessories priced under $200 to appeal to younger shoppers.

Idol said Michael Kors had raised prices by 20% to 25% coming out of COVID, which contributed to lower sell-throughs and higher markdowns. The brand has since moved closer to its historical pricing in the full-price channel, which he said has improved full-price sell-throughs and average unit retails because the company is taking fewer markdowns.

“We’re still in the very early innings,” Idol said of the repositioning, adding that the full-price channel comped positive in the most recent quarter. He said wholesale, which had lagged full-price stores, also showed an “incredible lift” last quarter and is showing similar trends this quarter.

Outlet Business and Back-Half Growth Idol said the outlet business has been the weaker part of Michael Kors because it had not received enough new product innovation. New outlet product begins arriving more broadly in August, including three new icon groups, one of which, Sammy, has already landed and is “fast becoming the best-selling group inside the stores,” he said.

Capri has also reduced promotional activity and third-party sales as part of what Idol called “quality of sales initiatives.” He said the company walked away from about $150 million in sales tied to those initiatives, which management believes is better for the long-term health of the brand.

Reddien said unit growth is expected to decline in fiscal 2027 due to the quality-of-sales initiative, but he expects the company to return to unit growth in fiscal 2028 and beyond as new products resonate with customers.

Idol said the company expects growth in the back half of the fiscal year as the impact of quality-of-sales initiatives diminishes after being anniversaried in October and November. He also cited new product flow in handbags and footwear, higher marketing spend and social media initiatives as factors supporting the outlook.

Jimmy Choo Gains Momentum in Accessories Idol said Jimmy Choo is already back to growth and is seeing strong momentum, especially in accessories. He said accessories are growing at a double-digit rate and described the category as “the hottest part of Jimmy Choo right now.”

The brand is selling products across a broad price architecture, including $5,000 Bonbon bags, the Cinch group priced between $2,000 and $2,500, and newer Bar and Curve groups priced under $1,500. Idol said the broader range has helped as luxury consumers become more selective.

Jimmy Choo is also expanding beyond its traditional image as a red carpet, wedding and special-occasion brand. Idol pointed to casual footwear, sneakers, jellies, loafers, kitten heels and block heels as areas that are resonating with younger consumers. He said casual footwear now accounts for more than 20% of Jimmy Choo’s business, with room to grow.

Reddien said Capri expects Jimmy Choo to return to profitability in fiscal 2027 and sees opportunities to expand margins through top-line growth, store productivity, gross margin improvement and SG&A leverage. He noted that about 50% of Jimmy Choo production is done in-house, creating opportunities to improve factory efficiency.

Margins, Stores and Capital Allocation Reddien said gross margin expansion remains the largest opportunity for Michael Kors, driven by new products, higher full-price sell-throughs and higher average unit retails. He also cited production efficiencies, product engineering, improved store productivity and SG&A optimization as contributors to margin improvement.

Management also emphasized store renovations. Idol said the renovated Michael Kors store at Rockefeller Center is up almost 30% in sales. At Jimmy Choo, he said the renovated Madison Avenue store increased from $2.5 million to almost $6 million in trend over about 18 months.

Reddien said Capri’s capital allocation priorities are to invest in the business and return value to shareholders. The company has announced a $1 billion share repurchase program, with a significant portion expected to be completed this fiscal year. Idol added that Capri plans to spend $300 million, with most of that directed toward renovating the Michael Kors fleet, along with investments in IT and other areas.

Consumer Outlook Mixed by Region Idol described consumers as “choiceful,” saying shoppers across income levels are being more thoughtful but are still buying when products offer design, quality and value. He said the North American consumer remains relatively healthy, despite pressures from higher costs for fuel, groceries and rent.

In Europe, Idol said Capri has become more cautious over the past 90 days, citing war-related effects on tourism and reduced Middle East tourist traffic. He said the company has substantial business with Middle East tourists at both Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo. Idol was more optimistic about China, where he said the consumer is beginning to improve, and said Japan has remained solid.

Looking ahead, Idol said Capri is at “the beginning of an inflection” for Michael Kors, though the turnaround will take time. He also said Jimmy Choo has the potential to reach $800 million in revenue, with $100 million of that growth expected to come from accessories.

About Capri NYSE: CPRICapri Holdings Limited NYSE: CPRI is a global luxury fashion company that designs, markets and distributes a range of premium lifestyle products. The company's principal brands—Michael Kors, Versace and Jimmy Choo—offer handbags, ready-to-wear apparel, footwear, watches, jewelry, fragrance and other accessories. Capri Holdings combines in-house design talent with international sourcing, manufacturing and retail operations to deliver collections that reflect each brand's distinct heritage and aesthetic vision.

Formed in 2018 through the rebranding of Michael Kors Holdings following the acquisition of Versace, Capri has since integrated Jimmy Choo into its portfolio.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].

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Sui, a Layer 1 blockchain developed by Mysten Labs and known for its scalability features, is gaining momentum as new data from its AI-powered network test reveals record-breaking transaction processing speeds. The SUI token, the native asset of the network, is trading at $0.7464 with a 24-hour volume of $157.76 million, pushing its market capitalization to $3.02 billion. After climbing 1.34% in the last 24 hours, analysts are watching closely for a potential bullish breakout.

SUI price approaches resistance, eyes breakout targetAs SUI steadily recovers from previous dips, crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe observed that the coin maintains a bullish momentum. He noted that sustained buying activity and increasing trading volumes reflect growing investor confidence in the blockchain’s future. If SUI surpasses the pivotal $0.82 resistance level, analysts believe the price could retest the $1 mark, with $1.20 identified as a further upside target.

Sustained accumulation and a surge in trading activity could pave the way for SUI to break above $0.82 and initiate a new uptrend, potentially pushing the price to $1 and higher resistance levels at $1.20.

Key resistance points remain at $0.82, $1.00, and $1.20, historically significant marks from previous rallies. Market sentiment and overall strength in assets like BTC are contributing to renewed optimism.

Investors and traders are closely following SUI price action, looking for technical confirmation of a breakout that could establish a new bullish trend.

Price LevelStatusSignificance$0.82ResistanceBreakout trigger$1.00ResistancePsychological mark$1.20ResistancePrevious rally peakAI-powered Sui network test sets TPS recordSui recently completed a high-profile experiment using its Tunnels AI agent, aiming to showcase the network’s scalability under AI-driven workloads. The initial target for the test was 1 million transactions per second (TPS), a figure that would already place Sui at the top tier among blockchains. However, the AI agent achieved 6,086,766 TPS in the test environment, demonstrating the network’s capability to handle unprecedented throughput levels.

These results highlight Sui’s aim to support large-scale, high-performance Web3 applications that leverage artificial intelligence. The test was conducted off-mainnet, but developers view it as a major step toward bringing advanced AI and agentic operations to decentralized networks. The platform’s commitment to integrating artificial intelligence is seen as a driver for both price and technological growth.

Mini dictionary: Tunnels AI agent — An artificial intelligence-driven module developed for Sui to automate and maximize blockchain throughput by orchestrating high-frequency transaction processing. AI agents like this serve as a proof of concept for advanced smart contract and infrastructure automation within Web3 ecosystems.

Outlook: Adoption, upgrades, and key levelsBeyond technical performance, Sui continues to work on implementing AI enhancements across its network. The blockchain’s ability to achieve high TPS figures and support complex, AI-driven applications may attract further attention from developers and investors.

The next moves for SUI depend on a successful breach of the $0.82 resistance. If achieved, traders might expect moves toward $1.00 and $1.20. The broader market trend, especially upward momentum in BTC, could also play an important role in the asset’s trajectory.

Investors will monitor ongoing network developments, trading dynamics, and sentiment shifts as they assess the prospects for continued bullish price action.

Network scalability and AI integration will be crucial drivers for SUI’s appeal among both developers and financial markets, making the project a focal point in ongoing blockchain innovation discussions.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Shares of Oklo (OKLO 0.95%) sank 27% in the first half of 2026, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The nuclear reactor upstart is seeing enthusiasm for the sector wane after a monstrous run in 2025. It is also taking advantage of its high price to sell more shares to raise funds. Even though shares are up 386% in the last five years, they are still down 71% from the highs set back in 2025.

Here's why Oklo stock has fallen so far this year, and whether now is a good time to buy the dip.

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Major dilution and long timeline to commercialization Oklo is a research firm working to bring new nuclear reactor designs to market. It has a design for a reactor called the Aurora Powerhouse, which it wants to sell for direct electricity generation in data centers and industrial use cases, keeping these electricity-intensive systems from burdening the grid that powers homes and consumer use cases.

The problem is, Oklo's reactor design has not yet been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the United States, which means it is still likely years away from building the Aurora Powerhouse for clients. It is working on radioisotope production and nuclear fuel recycling, but these are subscale opportunities compared to actually building and operating nuclear reactors.

With no revenue today, Oklo is burning cash and has had to raise capital to shore up its balance sheet. To do so, it has sold shares of its common stock, a dilutive strategy that typically puts pressure on the share price. Shares outstanding have more than doubled in the last few years. Free cash flow is now negative $154 million over the last twelve months, the worst cash burn in the company's history.

On top of the specific business concerns, Oklo was a major beneficiary of the hype cycle for nuclear energy stocks tied to artificial intelligence (AI) electricity needs. Now, this hype is beginning to fade, causing stocks like Oklo to fall in 2026.

Image source: Getty Images.

Should you buy the dip? The positive thing for investors is that Oklo had over $2 billion in cash and equivalents on its balance sheet at the end of Q1, and likely an even higher figure at the end of Q1. This will give it many years of runway to secure its reactor design approval before running out of funds.

On a negative note, nuclear energy has and will likely continue to be a tough sector to operate in. The industry moves slowly, making it tough for a start-up like Oklo to bring a new product to market in a timely manner. With a market cap still at $8.5 billion and no revenue, Oklo stock is likely one you shouldn't buy the dip on this year.

Polymarket’s 5-minute Bitcoin prediction markets have become the crypto world’s fastest casino, and the house advantage belongs to whoever has the fastest bot. The platform’s binary contracts, which let traders bet on whether Bitcoin will be up or down at the end of each 5-minute window, have racked up $4 billion in cumulative trading volume since launching on February 12, 2026.

Traders are synchronizing Polymarket positions with spot Bitcoin trades in the final seconds of each 5-minute interval, effectively nudging the price just enough to tip the contract outcome in their favor. In English: they’re buying the prediction market equivalent of “Bitcoin goes up,” then actually pushing Bitcoin’s price up with a well-timed spot trade right before the clock runs out.

The speed gap is the whole game High-frequency trading firms, AI-powered bots, and algorithmic agents have flooded into Polymarket’s shortest-duration product. The first week alone generated roughly $200 million in volume, a pace that made clear this wasn’t a niche curiosity.

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Retail traders trying to compete face a brutal math problem. Market spreads on these contracts range from 2 to 5 cents, which might sound trivial until you consider the contracts are priced around $0.50. The standard fee runs approximately 1.56% at the $0.50 pricing level. Reported average win rates for live trading bots tell the story with uncomfortable clarity: 25% to 27% below breakeven.

How the manipulation works A trader takes a position on Polymarket predicting Bitcoin will finish the 5-minute window above its starting price. With seconds remaining, that same trader places a spot Bitcoin buy order large enough to push the price in the desired direction. The Chainlink oracle that Polymarket uses for price resolution and settlement captures that final-second price, the contract resolves in the manipulator’s favor, and the payout arrives.

For the prediction market industry, the manipulation concerns raise questions about settlement mechanism design. Using a single price snapshot from a Chainlink oracle at the exact end of a 5-minute window creates a precise target for manipulation. Alternative approaches, like using a time-weighted average price over the final 30 seconds, could raise the cost and complexity of gaming the settlement.

The bigger picture for prediction markets The 5-minute Bitcoin contracts have cannibalized longer-duration contracts on the platform, pulling volume and attention toward the shortest possible timeframes.

What this means for investors For retail traders tempted by the apparent simplicity of a binary up-or-down bet, the combination of spreads, fees, and speed disadvantages creates a structural edge for automated participants that individual traders cannot realistically overcome. The $4 billion in cumulative volume proves demand exists. The question is whether that demand can be served in a way that doesn’t systematically disadvantage the majority of participants.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

In the last week of June, XRP printed its weakest price since late 2024, briefly touching $1.01 before stabilizing in the $1.05 to $1.13 range where it has traded through early July. The token is down more than 25% for the year and roughly 65% below the $3.65 cycle high it set in July 2025. On the same June days that the chart broke down, tokenized real-world assets on the XRP Ledger crossed $3.5 billion, more than triple the level at which they started the year, spot XRP exchange-traded funds extended a net inflow streak that would reach eight consecutive weeks, and Ripple stood weeks away from full European authorization under MiCA.

Summary

Ripple has delivered record institutional growth in 2026, but XRP remains more than 25% lower this year and near multi-year lows. The article examines both sides of the debate: whether Ripple’s expanding infrastructure will eventually lift XRP or whether the company and token have permanently diverged. Upcoming CLARITY Act votes, ETF flows, XRPL upgrades, and institutional adoption could determine whether the gap between Ripple and XRP finally closes. That is the whole story in one paragraph, and it is genuinely strange. By any operational measure, the 12 months behind Ripple are the most productive in the company’s history: a settled SEC case, launched ETFs, a $1.25 billion prime brokerage acquisition, membership in the clearing infrastructure of American equities, a stablecoin with $18 billion in quarterly transfer volume, and regulatory licenses stacking up on three continents.

By the only measure most holders care about, the same 12 months are the worst since the 2022 bear market. The gap between what Ripple built and what XRP is worth has never been wider, and how that gap closes, upward through the price or downward through the narrative, is now the central question hanging over the fourth largest ecosystem in crypto.

This feature lays out both sides honestly: the case that the infrastructure eventually drags the token up, and the case that the token and the company have simply decoupled, with the price telling the truer story.

The year Ripple built: an inventory It helps to see the accumulation in one place, because no single item explains the disconnect. The pattern does.

Legal closure came first. The SEC’s enforcement case against Ripple, filed in December 2020, formally concluded in 2025 with a financial settlement, ending the overhang that had defined the token’s American existence for half a decade and building on the 2023 court finding that programmatic exchange sales of XRP were not securities transactions.

Then distribution. Spot XRP ETFs launched in November 2025 across 5 providers and have accumulated roughly $1.49 billion in cumulative net inflows since. May 2026 was the strongest month of the year with $118 million, including a record $60.5 million week.

The streak ran 8 consecutive weeks into July, as crypto.news reported, before showing its first daily pauses, and assets under management sit near $1.05 billion, about 1.5% of the token’s market capitalization, led by Bitwise at $331 million, Canary at $265 million, and Franklin at $262 million.

Then market plumbing. Ripple closed its acquisition of prime broker Hidden Road in October 2025 and rebranded it Ripple Prime. On March 2, 2026, Ripple Prime joined the participant directory of the National Securities Clearing Corporation, placing an XRP-linked institution inside the DTCC complex that clears the bulk of American equity trading and safeguards roughly $100 trillion in assets. DTCC has since named Ripple Prime to the working group of more than 50 firms shaping its tokenization service for Russell 1000 stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries, scheduled for October 2026.

Then the ledger itself. XRPL tokenized assets grew from $991 million on January 1 to $3.5 billion by midsummer. In early May, JPMorgan, Mastercard, Ondo Finance, and Ripple completed the first cross-border tokenized US Treasury redemption on the XRPL, settling in under 5 seconds. Daily transactions hit 3 million on March 15, roughly three times mid-2025 averages.

A protocol amendment from XRPL version 3.1.0 that would enable fixed-term lending through Single Asset Vaults is under validator vote, and support has been climbing toward the 80% supermajority it needs, a governance process crypto.news has tracked as it approaches the threshold.

Then the stablecoin. RLUSD reached a $1.72 billion market capitalization in under a year, moved more than $18 billion in the first quarter alone, and Ripple hedged the strategy in July by joining Open USD, the consortium dollar token backed by Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and more than 140 other companies.

Then the licenses. A full Electronic Money Institution approval from Luxembourg in February, UK Financial Conduct Authority permissions in January, and the full MiCA Crypto-Asset Service Provider license on July 6 that opened all 30 countries of the European Economic Area, arriving days after the transition deadline locked unlicensed competitors out of the bloc.

Any one of these, delivered into the 2024 market, would have produced a rally measured in double digits. Delivered into 2026, the entire list produced a chart that goes down and to the right.

The year XRP traded: an autopsy The price ledger is shorter and harsher. XRP closed 2025 near $1.90 after the July peak at $3.65, rallied to about $2.40 in the new year, then spent 2026 in decline: a sharp February selloff that prompted Standard Chartered to cut its year-end target from $8 to $2.80, a spring of lower highs between $1.28 and $1.50, a June that opened near $1.30 and closed near $1.04, and a July that has been a daily fight to defend the $1 line.

The token trades below every major moving average, with the 20-day near $1.11, the 50-day near $1.20, and the 200-day near $1.52. Relative strength readings in the low 30s mark the deepest oversold territory of the cycle.

Two facts about the decline matter for interpreting it. First, it was market-wide. Bitcoin fell from above $100,000 to below $62,000, briefly touching $58,000. Ethereum, Solana, and BNB fell comparably or worse; total crypto market capitalization shed $2.3 trillion over 8 weeks, and digital assets posted a third consecutive losing quarter, the longest streak since 2022, as institutional capital rotated toward AI equities. Everything outside Bitcoin and Ethereum lost roughly 23% in 6 months. XRP’s beta to that drawdown was high, as it always is, because the token falls harder than Bitcoin when sentiment turns.

Second, and more uncomfortable for the bull case, none of the good news interrupted it. The full MiCA license produced a 3% weekly decline around the preliminary approval and indifference at the final one. The DTCC milestone passed without a candle. The Treasury redemption pilot with JPMorgan, arguably the most institutionally significant event in XRPL history, is invisible on the chart.

The one catalyst the market visibly responds to is legislative: the token jumped 4.5% within an hour of the CLARITY Act clearing committee on May 14, and it sagged when the July 4 signing target slipped, price action crypto.news examined as the delay sank in. The market has, in effect, told everyone what it is waiting for, and it is not another license.

What the forecasters did with the same facts The professional forecasting record around XRP in 2026 is itself evidence of the disconnect, because analysts looking at identical data have produced the widest dispersion of targets for any large-cap asset.

Standard Chartered entered the year at $8 for 2026 and cut to $2.80 in February after the selloff, a 65% downgrade in a single revision, while explicitly leaving its 2030 target untouched at $28. The bank’s stated logic was that regulatory clarity, institutional involvement, and new investment products justify higher long-term valuations, but near-term price action would remain correlated with the broad crypto market. That is the lag thesis and the beta thesis coexisting in one research note.

Bitwise carries a $4.94 year-end forecast. JPMorgan’s contribution is conditional rather than directional: $4 to $8.4 billion of first-year ETF inflows if the CLARITY Act passes, with no comparable estimate under failure. Algorithmic models cluster far lower, in the $1.70 to $2 band, essentially extrapolating the chart. The professional consensus for year-end sits above $2, which would require a 77% rally from current levels in under 6 months, a move the asset has produced before but only during regime changes in sentiment.

Forecast dispersion this wide is unusual for an asset of this size, and it maps precisely onto the two readings of the disconnect. Analysts weighting the infrastructure see multiples of the current price; models weighting the tape see the current price as fair. When the same inputs produce a $1.70 answer and a $28 answer depending on the discount rate applied to institutional adoption, the market is not confused. It is unpriced, waiting on the one variable, classification, that neither the company nor the chart can supply.

The bear reading: the token and the company are different assets The uncomfortable thesis deserves its full strength. Ripple’s success and XRP’s value are linked by a mechanism, and the mechanism is thin.

Ripple the company earns revenue from payments, custody, prime brokerage, and stablecoin float. Almost none of that revenue requires the XRP price to be anything in particular. The company’s own announcements make the point unintentionally: the MiCA license release mentions XRP essentially once, in the boilerplate.

Ripple Payments has moved more than $100 billion across 60-plus markets, but most of that volume settles in fiat or RLUSD, and where it does route through the XRP Ledger, the burned fee per transaction is a fraction of a cent. 3 million daily transactions at those rates destroys token supply at a pace measured in rounding errors. The stablecoin strategy, on this reading, actively competes with the bridge-asset story that once justified the token: every corridor that settles in RLUSD is a corridor that does not need XRP volatility risk.

Supply mechanics deepen the skepticism, and they deserve their own accounting. Ripple releases up to 1 billion XRP from escrow every month under a schedule set in 2017, relocking the majority into new escrow contracts while a smaller portion enters circulation through sales and ecosystem distributions. The market has watched this metronome for years, and its psychological weight exceeds its mechanical weight: even in months when net new supply is modest, the release event itself gives traders a recurring reason to expect selling, and expectations of supply function like supply. Set the monthly release against the demand side and the imbalance is stark. The entire ETF complex has absorbed roughly $1.49 billion over 8 months, an average of around $6 million of daily buying, in a token that trades north of $1.4 billion in daily volume.

Institutional flows at that scale can support a floor; they cannot fight a distribution schedule and a bear market simultaneously. The bear case does not need Ripple to fail. It needs only for the demand mechanisms to keep growing slower than the supply mechanisms, which is a fair description of every month of 2026 so far.

There is also the exchange migration to consider from the skeptical side. Tokens leaving exchanges for ETF custody are commonly read as bullish scarcity, but a share of that movement is simply the same speculative holders changing wrappers, retail selling spot that funds buy into trusts, with no net new demand created. The flow data cannot distinguish conviction from repackaging, which is why the bears discount it. The comparison Brad Garlinghouse himself invited when he attacked Michael Saylor’s leverage model cuts both ways, as crypto.news observed: both Strategy and Ripple sit atop enormous token treasuries whose value depends on a market they are simultaneously supplying.

On this view, the 2026 chart is not a mispricing. It is the market correctly concluding that owning XRP is not owning Ripple, that the institutional build-out accrues to Ripple’s private shareholders, and that the token’s fair value is whatever speculative demand plus modest utility demand will bear in a risk-off tape. The disconnect is not a gap waiting to close. It is the honest spread between an equity story and a token story that were never the same story.

The bull reading: infrastructure is demand with a lag The counterargument does not deny any of that. It argues the causality has a delay measured in years, and that 2026 is the trough of the lag, not the verdict.

Start with the demand channels that did not exist 18 months ago. ETFs holding $1.05 billion sound small against a $69 billion market cap until you note the direction and the constraint: 8 straight weeks of net inflows through the worst quarter since 2022, from a buyer base that is still legally capped. Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and most insurance portfolios cannot allocate to an unclassified asset at all.

That is precisely the constraint the CLARITY Act removes by making XRP a digital commodity under CFTC oversight, and it is why JPMorgan and Standard Chartered independently project $4 to $8.4 billion in first-year inflows under passage, a 5- to 8-fold expansion of the current ETF base. The bill’s merged draft is due the week of July 13, with floor action targeted a week later. The single largest catalyst in the token’s history has a date range attached to it.

Second, the utility story is finally measurable instead of theoretical. Tokenized assets tripling to $3.5 billion, a functioning institutional redemption pilot with the largest bank in America, a lending protocol approaching validator approval, and RLUSD volume in the tens of billions are all activity that lives on the ledger whose native asset is XRP.

The fee-burn mechanism is tiny per transaction, but the investment case was never fee burn; it is that reserve requirements, liquidity provisioning, and settlement paths on a busy institutional ledger create structural demand for the asset that denominates it. Japan already offers the proof of concept, where SBI’s remittance corridors made the country the one place XRP is used at scale in production, a story crypto.news has documented, and Europe post-MiCA is the first market since Japan where Ripple holds the full regulatory stack to attempt a repeat.

Third, the on-chain footprint of conviction is visible even at the lows. Whale accumulation ran through the spring, with roughly 450 million XRP moving through Binance in a 10-day stretch in March, wallet creation hit a 3-month high near 5,000 per day in late June, and large-holder balances rose while retail sentiment collapsed. Someone with size is treating $1 as a level to buy, and the historical pattern in this asset is that accumulation phases at multi-month lows precede the violent repricings the token is famous for. July, for what it is worth, is historically XRP’s strongest month, averaging around 10% gains, though seasonality in a fear-gripped market deserves limited weight.

The bull synthesis: the company spent 2026 building the pipes, the law that fills them sits 3 weeks from a vote, and the price is a coiled spring compressed by macro conditions that have nothing to do with Ripple. Standard Chartered, even after cutting its 2026 target to $2.80, left its 2030 target at $28, which is the lag thesis expressed as a forecast.

The map of the battlefield at $1 For traders, the disconnect compresses into a few price zones that both camps agree on even while disagreeing about everything else.

Support is a dense band between $1.00 and $1.06, where a thick concentration of historical buying has absorbed every test since late June, including seven separate probes of the $1.04 to $1.06 area. Beneath it, the map goes dark: a decisive daily close below $1 opens territory the token has not traded since 2024, with the next meaningful demand zone estimated between $0.80 and $0.90. The bounce attempts of early July have built a sequence of higher lows above $1.03, and the immediate breakout zone sits at $1.056 to $1.066, where a surge of volume, at one point 1,400% above the hourly average, marked the strongest buying of the month.

Resistance begins where the moving averages live. The 20-day average near $1.11 and the descending channel midline have capped every rally attempt; above that, $1.18 to $1.20 is the zone that separates a technical bounce from a trend change, since it contains the 50-day average and the highs of the last failed breakout. A move through $1.20 would be the first structural repair of the year. The level that matters for the larger argument is further up: analysts broadly treat $1.65 as the line above which the downtrend that began at $3.65 would formally be broken.

The holder structure beneath those levels is where the two theses interact most directly. Exchange balances have been falling as tokens migrate to ETF custodians and cold storage, whale addresses have grown through the decline, and the retail cohort, measured by funding rates and sentiment indexes reading extreme fear, is maximally absent.

That configuration, shrinking liquid supply against a depressed price, is the classic setup for violent moves in both directions: thin order books amplify whatever catalyst arrives. A CLARITY passage into this structure would meet little overhead supply until the mid-$1.20s. A failure into this structure would find equally little bid support below $1. The market has arranged itself for an outsized reaction to a binary event, which is rational, because that is exactly what the calendar is offering.

What would actually settle the argument Disconnects resolve through evidence, and four specific markers will decide which reading was right.

The CLARITY floor vote before the August 7 recess is the binary. Passage activates the constrained buyer base and converts the classification question from risk to fact; failure removes the identified catalyst and hands the bear thesis another year of confirmation. Nothing else on this list matters as much.

XRPL settlement disclosures are the slow variable. Europe will produce client announcements through the fall; the tell is whether named institutions settle on the ledger or through RLUSD and fiat rails that bypass the token. Every disclosure is a data point for exactly the mechanism the two camps dispute.

ETF flow behavior around the $1 level tests the institutional bid. The first net outflow day arrived on June 30 as the quarter closed. If inflows resume through a flat tape, the allocation story survives the drawdown. If outflows follow the price down, the ETF base was momentum money wearing an institutional costume.

The lending amendment vote tests whether the ledger’s institutional roadmap ships. Validator support has been grinding toward the 80% threshold; activation would open uncollateralized fixed-term credit through Single Asset Vaults, the first XRPL primitive aimed squarely at the institutional DeFi demand the bull case requires.

One more marker sits outside the token entirely: Ripple’s own capital decisions. The company has explored an initial public offering intermittently, and hints have circulated that XRP holders might somehow participate in a listing. Nothing concrete has emerged, and nothing should be assumed, but the scenario clarifies the stakes of the disconnect better than any chart.

If Ripple lists, the market will finally price the company and the token side by side, in public, every trading day. Either the equity valuation validates the institutional story and drags attention back to the ledger that underpins it, or investors will buy the company and continue ignoring the token, at which point the decoupling thesis stops being a thesis and becomes a quote on two screens. The company has every incentive to make the token matter before that comparison goes live.

For holders, the practical takeaway is about position sizing against a calendar, not about conviction in either narrative. The next 26 days contain the merged CLARITY draft, a possible floor vote, the July escrow release, continuing ETF flow data, and the validator vote on the lending amendment. That is an unusual density of resolution for a single month. The disconnect between Ripple’s year and XRP’s year has been stable precisely because nothing forced the two stories to reconcile. The Senate schedule is about to force it.

The widest gap in crypto right now is not between any two tokens. It is between a company having its best year and a token having its worst, wearing the same three letters. Markets close gaps like this one eventually, and they are indifferent about the direction. 26 days of Senate calendar will supply the first, and probably decisive, piece of the answer.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has revealed that his company also shut down after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued it in 2020. He highlighted how they faced a dilemma after the Commission sued them, seeing as the government had unlimited resources to see the lawsuit through to the end.

Ripple CEO Says The Crypto Firm Almost Shut Down In an appearance at the KU School of Business, Garlinghouse said that they almost decided to shut down the company after the SEC sued them. He noted that the government had “infinite power and resources,” signaling that they faced a tough decision about whether to challenge the lawsuit.

The Ripple CEO further remarked that shutting down the company would likely have been an easier choice. Under such a scenario, he said that they would have simply distributed their XRP holdings to shareholders on a pro rata basis and informed the SEC that they no longer held ay XRP since the Commission said it was a security.

However, he added that such a decision would have been a bad outcome, seeing as hundreds of people would have lost their jobs. In line with this, he said he was glad they did not make such a decision, although it wasn’t easy at the time. The SEC sued Ripple in 2020 over the sale of XRP, and both sides eventually settled the long-running lawsuit last year after the Trump administration took office.

It is worth noting that the SEC had also sued Garlinghouse and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, claiming that they had sold XRP as an unregistered security. However, Judge Analisa Torres eventually ruled that XRP was not a security in itself. Interestingly, the Ripple lawsuit judge recently handed Kalshi a major loss in its case against New York, ruling that New York state gambling laws apply to Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts.

XRP Community Member Reflects On The Journey Commenting on how far Ripple and XRP have come, community member BankXRP noted that Ripple’s U.S. business is fully back and that the company has secured licenses across multiple jurisdictions. As CoinGape reported, Ripple recently secured a new EU license, making it MiCA-compliant.

I remember December 2020 like it was yesterday.

SEC sues Ripple. Exchanges start delisting XRP overnight. Coinbase, one by one, others follow.

XRP is done. It’s over, sell before it goes to zero. Ripple is finished, the SEC just killed it.

For almost 2 years, that was the…

— 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸XRP (@BankXRP) July 11, 2026

Meanwhile, BankXRP added that institutional partnerships are stacking up globally for the crypto firm, while banks are building on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) rather than just talking about it. “The same “dead” project people wrote off in 2020 is now sitting at the center of institutional adoption,” he said.

The XRP community member also declared that bear markets and lawsuits do not kill real conviction; rather, they just test who actually understood the thesis in the first place.

For more on regulated crypto firms, please check out Best Regulated Crypto Exchanges in Europe in July 2026 – MiCA Compliant List

The United Nations has formally expanded its use of blockchain technology to deliver humanitarian aid, implementing a broad deployment of digital payment solutions based on the Stellar network. The initiative transitions from initial pilot programs into live, real-world implementation across multiple countries.

UNDP adopts Stellar for global aid deliveryThe United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), a leading agency focused on poverty reduction and sustainable development, has introduced blockchain-based payment pilots in 17 countries. Five of these pilots—in Haiti, Syria, Kenya, Guatemala, and Gambia—are actively facilitating aid distribution and cross-border remittance flows via the Stellar network.

The next step for UNDP is to integrate these digital payments with over 170 of its country-level programs or representative offices. This move could significantly expand the organization’s reach and efficiency in distributing assistance.

The UNDP aims to standardize digital aid flows using Stellar’s blockchain, setting a benchmark for transparency, speed, and cost-effectiveness in humanitarian finance.

Partnerships and platform benefitsStellar, developed by the Stellar Development Foundation, is a decentralized blockchain designed to facilitate affordable, fast, and auditable financial transactions globally. It enables instant payments, supports stablecoins and asset issuance, and is particularly suited to emerging markets with its 3-5 second transfer completion times and minimal transaction fees.

Key partners in the project include UNDP itself, the Stellar Development Foundation, local non-governmental organizations, and various regional payment gateways. Their collaboration seeks to deliver not only humanitarian aid but also a model for compliant wallets, robust KYC/AML protocols, and the availability of stablecoins on the Stellar network.

Mini dictionary: Stellar Development Foundation, the non-profit behind Stellar, works to expand access to low-cost global payments and financial services using blockchain technology.

Developers working with Stellar view this partnership as an opportunity to further deploy tailor-made wallets, introduce compliance tools, and issue local stablecoins for direct aid transfers.

Impact on stakeholders and regulatory frameworkFor financial institutions, custodians, and exchanges, the initiative promises new fiat channels as on and off-ramps in regions with previously limited digital infrastructure. This gives real-world credibility and measurable use cases for public blockchain payments in the humanitarian sector.

At the same time, investors and institutional players can track transparent and auditable streams of aid, enhancing trust in the system. Regulators also gain a model for supervised digital asset payments within an established global framework.

Bringing digital payments to over 170 UNDP offices could create a unified standard for humanitarian aid, potentially inspiring other agencies to adopt similar systems.

CountryStatusMain Use CaseHaitiActive pilotHumanitarian aid distributionSyriaActive pilotAid payments/remittancesKenyaActive pilotHumanitarian remittancesGuatemalaActive pilotAid distributionGambiaActive pilotRemittance paymentsChallenges and future outlookUNDP’s move with Stellar marks a departure from earlier periods of retail-driven blockchain adoption, which focused largely on speculative trading. Instead, the current shift is driven by direct use-value and the goal of global financial inclusion.

Despite the positive momentum, several challenges remain. These include ensuring compliance with varied local laws, overcoming barriers in internet access, and maintaining liquidity for widespread, effective use.

If the Stellar network is successfully rolled out across most UNDP programs, it could establish a standard for digital payments throughout the United Nations system. Other agencies might then replicate this approach for more transparent and efficient aid delivery worldwide.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Fintech

10 July 2026 | 19:31 Hyundai Card settled a $20,000 intercompany transfer between U.S. and Mexico affiliates in about seven minutes using USDT on Avalanche, with a European pilot involving Visa and Circle scheduled for late July 2026.

The pilot matters not because of the amount moved, but because it treats stablecoins as corporate treasury infrastructure rather than as a crypto investment product.

Key Takeaways $20,000 converted to USDT on Avalanche, settled in an average of 7 minutes, versus 3 to 4 hours through interbank rails. Participants included Hyundai Card, Hyundai Motor America, Hyundai Motor Mexico, Tether, Ava Labs, and Axiym. European subsidiaries, multi-currency, with Circle (USDC/EURC) and Visa as partners, scheduled to begin end of July 2026. South Korea’s Foreign Exchange Transactions Act does not recognize stablecoins as a legitimate cross-border payment instrument. Seven Minutes From Dollars to Dollars Hyundai Motor America converted $20,000 into USDT, transferred the tokens over Avalanche to Hyundai Motor Mexico, and the Mexican entity converted the stablecoin back into fiat on arrival. End-to-end, including verification and reconversion, the process averaged seven minutes. The same transaction routed through correspondent banking would ordinarily require three to four hours at minimum, with additional intermediary hops and per-hop fees.

The important qualifier from Hyundai Card is that this was an actual intercompany settlement, not a sandbox test with synthetic funds. Real corporate money moved between real subsidiaries for a real reconciliation purpose. That distinction is what separates this from the dozens of blockchain proofs of concept that never leave a lab environment.

Why Avalanche, and Why It Matters for Enterprises Hyundai is not using Avalanche the way a retail wallet user would. The architecture Ava Labs offers to corporates is the Subnet, a permissioned environment where only approved validators process transactions and where the parent company can dictate the rules of the network.

For a multinational, three properties of this design carry weight: Validator geofencing. European transactions can be routed exclusively through validators located in approved jurisdictions, which addresses data-residency requirements under EU compliance frameworks. Gas abstraction. Instead of forcing every subsidiary to hold AVAX to pay for transactions, the parent can operate a corporate-funded or zero-gas model. Subsidiaries interact with the rail as if it were an internal system. Access control. Whitelisted wallets and pre-approved smart contract interactions replace open-network exposure. Few, if any, of these features exist in the same form on an unpermissioned public chain. They are the reason enterprise stablecoin pilots have tended to converge on subnet-style or permissioned architectures rather than on unmodified Layer 1 rails.

The Compliance Layer Is the Real Product The technology piece of a seven-minute cross-border transfer is not, on its own, novel. What Hyundai Card actually built, and the reason the pilot is being treated as significant, is the compliance scaffolding around the transfer.

According to the company’s disclosure, Hyundai Card led reviews of accounting treatment, tax exposure, legal standing, and internal-control frameworks across both jurisdictions before running the transfer. The design depends on whitelisted corporate wallets, KYC and AML controls at the entity level, pre-approved smart contract access, and stablecoins whose issuers, Tether and Circle, can freeze tokens if a compliance event occurs.

That last property is a feature for a corporate treasurer and a bug for a decentralization purist. For Hyundai, the ability to freeze tokens in a compromise scenario is precisely what makes the rail acceptable to auditors and internal risk committees.

The Accounting Question the Press Release Skips Stablecoins are pegged to fiat, but under standard IFRS treatment they are generally not classified as cash equivalents, because they are not central-bank legal tender. The likely accounting path for the $20,000 in the Hyundai pilot is a three-step recognition: short-term digital asset or financial instrument on the sending side, intercompany receivable and payable during the transit window, and cash on the receiving side after reconversion.

The seven-minute transit window is significant, and not merely for its speed. A short window sharply reduces the risk of a realized FX difference materializing between the moment the asset leaves one balance sheet and the moment it arrives on another. In a three-to-four-hour correspondent transfer, that risk is measurable. In a seven-minute settlement, it is close to negligible.

This is where the reduction in settlement time translates into a specific accounting benefit, not merely a convenience.

Phase Two Changes the Test The U.S. to Mexico pilot moved dollar value between two dollar-linked entities. That is the easiest possible test case. The European phase, with Circle and Visa as new partners, changes the economic question.

Circle can support a dual-stablecoin structure using USDC on the dollar side and EURC on the euro side. That opens the possibility of on-chain foreign-exchange conversion through stablecoin liquidity pools or through Circle’s own settlement routes, rather than through bank-provided FX spreads. Visa’s contribution is corporate payout infrastructure: prefunding, fiat exit routes, and integration with local bank account rails.

The real measurement in Phase Two is not settlement speed, which has already been demonstrated. It is whether the total cost of a multi-currency intercompany transfer, including FX conversion, comes in below the equivalent bank-provided route.

The Korean Regulatory Contradiction The pilot’s commercial ambitions must be weighed against South Korea’s regulatory stance, which is where the true tension in this narrative lies.

Korean authorities have moved to exclude dollar-backed stablecoins including USDT and USDC from the recognized scope of corporate digital-asset activity. The Foreign Exchange Transactions Act does not formally recognize stablecoins as a legitimate means of cross-border payment. The Bank of Korea has consistently leaned toward a central-bank digital currency and bank-issued deposit tokens as its preferred settlement instruments rather than private stablecoins.

That preference is already operational. The BOK’s Project Hangang has moved into its second phase, expanding to nine commercial banks and adding P2P transfers and AI-agent payment capabilities, while the Digital Asset Basic Act that would govern private stablecoin issuance remains delayed.

Against that backdrop, a Hyundai Motor Group subsidiary is running production-ready stablecoin remittance rails using USDT and preparing to test USDC and EURC. The commercial pull of faster and cheaper settlement is running ahead of the domestic regulatory framework, and the pilot effectively puts corporate weight behind the argument that Korean rules need to be updated.

The framing here is not that Hyundai is defying regulators. It is that a multinational operating under multiple jurisdictions is building infrastructure for a use case its home regulator has not yet blessed, and doing so publicly.

The Limits of a $20,000 Test The pilot proves that a $20,000 intercompany transfer can settle in seven minutes with full compliance review across two jurisdictions. It does not prove that the same architecture scales to hundreds of transfers per day across a dozen currencies with FX efficiency intact. Phase Two is designed to test exactly that.

It also does not resolve the accounting classification question in a way that generalizes to every corporate. IFRS treatment of stablecoins remains an evolving area, and the answer for a Korean conglomerate operating in the U.S. and Mexico may not translate directly to a European manufacturer operating in Asia.

If the European phase shows a favorable cost result once fees, spreads, and reconversion are aggregated, the case for corporate stablecoin treasury rails moves from operational curiosity to competitive necessity. If it does not, the pilot remains a speed story rather than a cost story.

The distinction matters because CFOs approve budgets against cost savings, not against settlement latency.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Always conduct your own research before making decisions related to digital assets or corporate treasury strategies.

Author

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.

CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD 5.85%) has been a winner for investors in recent years -- over the past three, it's soared more than 400%. This is as the cybersecurity giant has increased revenue and benefited from renewed interest in keeping systems, networks, and data safe. In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is more regularly used, threats are multiplying, and customers are turning to CrowdStrike for protection.

The company also demonstrated its strength and the fidelity of its customers by facing an enormous challenge two years ago -- the world's biggest information technology outage -- and going on to grow. CrowdStrike recently announced record new annual recurring revenue and record free cash flow.

So it's no surprise that CrowdStrike stock continued its gains into this year and now is up 69% for 2026. With a stock price trading at more than $700 just a few months ago, the company announced a stock split -- a move to bring down the per-share price -- and completed the operation at the start of this month.

At the new, lower price, is CrowdStrike a buy? Let's find out.

Image source: Getty Images.

What's a stock split? First, a quick note about stock splits. While they do bring the per-share price down, they don't alter the total value of the company or anything fundamental. The purpose is to make a particular stock more accessible to a wider range of investors -- those who may not have several hundred dollars or a thousand dollars to invest. Fractional shares exist, but they aren't available at every brokerage, so they may not be an option for some investors.

A stock split involves offering more shares of a particular stock to current shareholders. This brings down the value of each share, but the value of the shareholder's entire holding remains the same. The change in the price depends on the ratio of the split.

CrowdStrike completed a 4-for-1 split on July 2, bringing the stock down to about $190.

Since stock splits don't change fundamentals, they don't actually make a stock cheaper in terms of valuation -- so if you consider a stock pricey right before such a move, it will continue to be pricey after the operation.

Today's Change

(

-5.85

%) $

-11.60

Current Price

$

186.80

Stock splits and performance All of this means that, though stock splits may make it easier to get in on a certain stock, they aren't a reason to buy -- and therefore, they don't have any real impact on stock performance. That said, when management decides on a split, it suggests confidence about the future, with the idea that the stock may go on to gain again from its new lower price. So we might see this as positive as long as the rest of the picture is bright.

CrowdStrike's one big weakness is that the stock is expensive, trading at 161x forward earnings estimates. But in certain cases, when considering high-growth tech stocks, it may be worth looking beyond valuation: These metrics don't measure growth a few years down the road, and this could change the whole picture.

A key transition point for CrowdStrike CrowdStrike is a particularly good example of this because the company may be in the early stages of its growth. Today, the cybersecurity market has reached a period of transition, as I mentioned briefly above. The proliferation of AI is fantastic in many ways, but one negative aspect is that it's leading to additional cybersecurity threats.

A low single-digit percent of organizations have a significant cybersecurity strategy right now, according to CrowdStrike. This opens up an enormous growth opportunity for the cybersecurity giant.

Meanwhile, CrowdStrike also benefits from AI as it incorporates the technology in its Falcon cybersecurity system, so that it can better anticipate threats and offer a solution that's perfectly adapted to each customer's needs. Falcon offers many modules, each specializing in a certain area, and module adoption rates have been strong. For example, the adoption rate for six or more modules climbed to 51% in the latest quarter.

So, is CrowdStrike a buy now? If you're a value investor, the pricey nature of this stock means it's not the right choice for you. But if you're a growth investor who doesn't mind looking a few years down the road to revenue growth potential, CrowdStrike is a great stock to buy and hold.

More Sea to See™ con un nuevo diseño de barco que permite contemplar el océano como nunca antes

Para ver un video de la presidenta Christine Duffy presentando el Carnival Destiny, haga clic aquí.
Para ver un video de la ceremonia de corte del acero del Carnival Destiny, haga clic aquí.

, /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- Hoy, todo fue alegría en Monfalcone, Italia, cuando Carnival Cruise Line marcó un hito importante con la tradicional ceremonia de corte del acero para su barco más nuevo, el Carnival Destiny, que llegará en el verano de 2029 como el primero de tres barcos de su próxima generación, denominada oficialmente "Ace Class". El evento, celebrado en el astillero Fincantieri, reveló el nombre del barco y presentó un holograma en 3D que ofreció un primer vistazo al futuro de los cruceros de Carnival.

En la imagen, de izquierda a derecha: Biagio Mazzotta, presidente de Fincantieri; Josh Weinstein, director ejecutivo de Carnival Corporation; Cristiano Bazzara, director del astillero de Monfalcone; Christine Duffy, presidenta de Carnival Cruise Line; Pierroberto Folgiero, director ejecutivo y gerente general de Fincantieri; Micky Arison, presidente de la junta directiva de Carnival Corporation; y Luigi Matarazzo, director general de la División de Buques Mercantes de Fincantieri.

El Carnival Destiny llegará en el verano de 2029

El director del astillero de Monfalcone, Cristiano Bazzra, junto con la presidenta de Carnival Cruise Line, Christine Duffy, sostienen la primera pieza de acero para celebrar el inicio de la construcción La colaboración de Carnival con Fincantieri, líder mundial en la construcción naval, se remonta a hace más de 30 años, con el Carnival Destiny original, que marcó el inicio de una nueva era al convertirse en el crucero más grande del mundo en ese momento. En la actualidad, ese legado continúa con una clase diseñada para redefinir la experiencia de los pasajeros.

El Carnival Destiny incorporará una nueva forma de disfrutar del océano desde el barco y se convertirá en el megabarco con mayor apertura visual hacia el exterior que navega por los mares. Contará con una cantidad sin precedentes de camarotes con balcón y vista al mar, una cubierta tipo "lanai" renovada y más de 4.5 acres de vidrio, incluidas amplias paredes de vidrio de varios pisos, lo que permitirá disfrutar de vistas panorámicas en todo el barco. En conjunto, estos elementos permitirán disfrutar de vistas al mar desde más lugares a bordo, lo que mantendrá el océano siempre a la vista y redefinirá la forma en que los pasajeros se conectan con el mar.

El Carnival Destiny también ofrecerá un cambio radical en la forma en que los pasajeros interactúan a bordo. Más del 70 % de sus espacios y atracciones serán conceptos totalmente nuevos para Carnival, que abarcan experiencias gastronómicas renovadas, bares y salones de última generación, entretenimiento inmersivo y vibrantes espacios al aire libre.

"El Carnival Destiny se basa en un legado que ya transformó el mundo de los cruceros en el pasado y reinventa lo que los pasajeros pueden experimentar en el mar", afirmó Christine Duffy, presidenta de Carnival Cruise Line. "Con este barco, realzamos una vez más la experiencia de los pasajeros al crear una embarcación que transmite una mayor sensación de amplitud y que, al mismo tiempo, ayuda a los pasajeros a sentirse más conectados y, en definitiva, a divertirse más".

Carnival Destiny navegará hacia destinos de la "Paradise Collection" de Carnival, la mayor oferta de destinos exclusivos del sector de los cruceros en el Caribe, las Bahamas y México. Se publicarán detalles adicionales sobre las características y experiencias del Carnival Destiny más adelante este año y la entrega del barco está prevista para el verano de 2029. Se prevé el lanzamiento de otros dos barcos de la "Ace Class" para 2031 y 2033.

Para obtener más información sobre Carnival Cruise Line y reservar unas vacaciones en crucero, llame al 1-800-CARNIVAL, visite www.carnival.com o comuníquese con un asesor de viajes.

ACERCA DE CARNIVAL CRUISE LINE
Carnival Cruise Line, parte de Carnival Corporation (NYSE: CCL), es la línea de cruceros más grande en dos continentes, América del Norte y Australia, y se enorgullece de ser conocida como "la línea de cruceros de Estados Unidos", así como de transportar a más estadounidenses y prestar servicio en más puertos de origen estadounidenses que ninguna otra. Carnival transporta a más de seis millones de pasajeros al año y, en 2023, se convirtió en la primera empresa de cruceros en superar los 100 millones de pasajeros en total. Al operar desde 13 puertos estadounidenses y dos australianos, así como desde Europa en temporadas, Carnival recibe a más de 95,000 pasajeros en sus barcos todos los días del año, emplea a más de 50,000 personas de 120 nacionalidades.

Desde su fundación en 1972, Carnival no ha dejado de revolucionar el sector de los cruceros y ha popularizado las vacaciones en crucero como una opción de viaje asequible y divertida. La flota de 29 barcos de Carnival refleja un emocionante período de crecimiento que continúa con la incorporación de cinco barcos hasta 2033: un cuarto y quinto barco de la clase Excel previstos para 2027 y 2028, respectivamente; seguidos de otros tres nuevos barcos de una nueva clase innovadora actualmente en desarrollo. La novedad más reciente de Carnival para sus pasajeros es su nuevo y exclusivo destino, Celebration Key, en Gran Bahama, que se estrenó en 2025 para sumarse a la "colección Paradise" de la empresa, una selección de joyas del Caribe.

FUENTE Carnival Cruise Line

Constellation Energy (CEG +0.26%) is an independent power producer. That said, it is also one of the largest nuclear power providers in the United States. When nuclear power was all the rage among investors, the stock's price rallied, and its price-to-earnings ratio skyrocketed to nearly 50x. That wasn't a realistic valuation for the business, but the subsequent stock decline has changed the math. Here's what you need to know.

Constellation Energy gets better and cheaper The big story with Constellation Energy is that it sells power outside of the regulated framework. That means it can ink deals directly with customers at market rates. Notably, it recently agreed to sell nuclear power to Meta (META +6.16%) under a 20-year contract, helping to support that technology giant's AI ambitions. However, it also just penned a nuclear power deal with Walmart (WMT +1.51%), supporting the world's largest retailer's goal of increasing its use of clean energy.

Image source: Getty Images.

The Meta deal came during a period when anything related to nuclear power was a hot commodity on Wall Street. But that enthusiasm has waned, leading to a deep price decline. Constellation Energy's P/E ratio is now a far more reasonable 21x. Only the Walmart deal shows that AI isn't the only growth driver, a fact further supported by the company's purchase of Calpine, which expanded its footprint in the natural gas power space.

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At this point, Constellation Energy is helping to solve the AI power crunch and doing a whole lot more, as well. What's important to recall is that AI's power demand is part of what is driving overall electricity demand. Notably, electricity demand increased by 10% between 2005 and 2025 and is expected to increase by 60% between 2025 and 2045. This isn't an industry-specific event, and Constellation Energy has created a business that can benefit from the big picture changes taking shape, not just artificial intelligence.

Not cheap, but still attractive To be fair, with a 21x P/E ratio, it would be hard to call Constellation Energy cheap. That said, the average utility stock has a P/E ratio of about 20x, so Constellation isn't exactly expensive, either. And its ability to sign long-term contracts at market rates, unlike regulated utilities, gives it more growth appeal. If you are looking for a way to benefit from AI's demand crunch, now is the time to give Constellation Energy a second look.

Reuben Gregg Brewer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Constellation Energy, Meta Platforms, and Walmart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Archer Aviation (ACHR 2.47%) has made meaningful progress over the past year. The company is advancing toward FAA certification, building out manufacturing capacity, and still expects to begin commercial operations in 2026. But there are still challenges.

Archer's biggest challenge at the moment is that it still generates very little revenue. During the first quarter of 2026, the company clocked just $1.6 million in sales while posting an adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) loss of $172.5 million. Management expects another adjusted EBITDA loss of $170 million to $200 million in the second quarter.

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To be sure, those losses aren't surprising for a pre-commercial aerospace company. It's actually to be expected. The problem is that commercialization is proving slower and more expensive than many expected, and some investors are starting to grow impatient.

Fortunately, Archer ended the first quarter with approximately $1.8 billion in liquidity, giving it one of the stronger balance sheets in the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) industry. But Wall Street expects the company to burn roughly $600 million this year and another $740 million in 2027 before free cash flow potentially turns positive later in the decade. Indeed, this is the kind of thing that can frustrate already-impatient shareholders, even if the company does boast a rather large war chest.

Certify this! Every milestone Archer achieves still depends on regulatory approval, too. And until the FAA certifies the Midnight aircraft (the company's all-electric air taxi), the company cannot begin large-scale commercial operations in the United States. Even if certification arrives on schedule, Archer Aviation still has to ramp up manufacturing, expand charging infrastructure, train pilots, and prove there is enough customer demand to support its business model.

Meanwhile, competition is not going gently into that good night. Rival Joby Aviation continues to make progress toward commercialization, while a handful of other aerospace companies and start-ups are pursuing the same urban air mobility market. And while Archer benefits from partnerships with some major players, including Stellantis and United Airlines, the commercial eVTOL industry remains largely unproven.

Of course, none of this means Archer is destined to fail. In fact, the company has arguably become one of the industry's strongest players. Its manufacturing partnership with Stellantis, sizable cash position, and continued certification progress give it advantages that many of its competitors lack.

Image source: Getty Images.

Even so, price matters. And today, investors are still paying for a business that has yet to generate meaningful commercial revenue and will likely continue consuming hundreds of millions of dollars before becoming self-sustaining. That's a risky combination, particularly if certification timelines slip or commercialization takes longer than expected.

Ultimately, this is not a stock I would rush out to buy, even after it's lost more than 60% of its value over the past year and trades at what some believe to be attractive levels. The truth is, until Archer demonstrates that it can transition from a development-stage company into a profitable commercial aircraft manufacturer, I'd remain on the sidelines.

And if you already own the stock, you have to decide whether it's worth sticking it out for another year or two and hoping for the best instead of allocating that capital to much more attractive investment opportunities with far less risk and far more upside potential.

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

© Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images

The headline number is not a forecast or a promise. It is what Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM | XOM Price Prediction) has already put through the register across the past two fiscal years, and it explains why the market is willing to pay nearly 23-times trailing earnings for a business tied to a commodity that just fell 21.2% in a single month.

The Number ExxonMobil generated $52 billion in operating cash flow in fiscal year 2025, on top of $55 billion in fiscal 2024. That two-year haul is the cash flow story amounts to the total the title refers to, and it is a reported figure straight out of the company’s audited statement of cash flows, not guidance and not consensus. Free cash flow for 2025 landed at $23.61 billion after $28.36 billion in capital expenditures.

What It Means Operationally, that cash paid for everything at once. ExxonMobil returned $17.23 billion in dividends and completed $20.27 billion in share repurchases in 2025, while lifting capex 19.30% year over year to fund growth in Guyana, the Permian, and Golden Pass LNG. Exxon’s dividend has now been raised annually for 43 consecutive years, with management raising its payout in Q4 2025 by 4%.

Underneath the top line, the business is leaner than it was. Cumulative structural cost savings since 2019 reached $15.60 billion, against a $20 billion target by 2030. Advantaged assets (Permian, Guyana, LNG) accounted for 59% of 2025 production, up roughly 7 percentage points year over year. Full-year upstream production hit 4.7 million oil-equivalent barrels per day, the highest in more than 40 years.

Exxon’s Q1 2026 report showed the same engine still running. Adjusted EPS came in at $1.16 versus a $1.01 consensus, and underlying earnings ex-items were $8.77 billion against $7.58 billion a year earlier. Reported net income of $4.18 billion was distorted by $3.88 billion in unfavorable mark-to-market derivative timing and $706 million in Middle East supply-disruption losses.

Market Reaction XOM stock closed at $137.09 on July 2, 2026, up 15.45% year to date and 27.36% over the trailing twelve months. Over five years the stock is up 160.87%. The last month has been softer, with shares off 8.34% as WTI slid from a June 3 print of $99.76 to $71.87 on June 29.

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Bull Case I think Exxon’s bull case rests on the durability of that cash engine at prices well below where it was minted. ExxonMobil has committed to $20 billion in buybacks in 2026, with cash capex guided to $27 billion to $29 billion. The company already put $4.9 billion of buybacks through in Q1 2026 alone.

Growth capacity is measurable. Guyana ran at a record above 900,000 gross barrels per day, Permian output hit a Q4 2025 record of 1.8 million boed, and Golden Pass LNG loaded its first Train 1 cargo in April 2026. CEO Darren Woods told analysts that Train 1 alone will lift US LNG exports by “about 5% relative to 2025 US exports” and, once all three trains are online, by roughly 15%.

Overall, I think the important thing to note is that this company’s balance sheet backs the plan, with debt to equity at 0.168, net debt to EBITDA of 0.548, and interest coverage of 56.28x.

Bottom Line For long-term holders, ExxonMobil is delivering the two things retirement-focused investors care about: a 3.03% yield backed by 43 straight years of dividend growth, and a buyback program funded out of cash the business actually earned. Exxon’s Q2 2026 dividend of $1.03 per share was payable June 10, 2026 to holders of record on May 15, 2026.

With WTI back near $71.87 and a $170.29 average analyst target sitting above the current price, the next test is whether Q2 earnings show the underlying earnings line holding up while the derivative and Middle East items fade. That is where the cash flow story either extends, or stalls.

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Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Less than a year ago, NuScale Power (SMR +0.11%) was the poster child of the artificial intelligence (AI) energy craze. The nuclear energy stock catapulted to an all-time high of $57.42 on Oct. 16, 2025.

The rally, however, fizzled out even faster than it built up, with NuScale shares slumping 61% in just the last quarter of 2025 and failing to recover since. The stock has now fallen 75% in one year and is trading below $10 as of this writing.

Make no mistake: The AI power narrative isn't hype. AI data centers consume astronomical amounts of power, putting immense pressure on existing grids. This has forced governments and corporations to seek reliable, low-carbon energy alternatives to meet their growing power needs without abandoning their carbon-emission goals.

Yet NuScale became a victim of its own circumstances. A perfect storm of weak operational numbers, class action lawsuits, and its largest shareholder, Fluor, cashing out after the stock's rally sent the stock crashing.

That said, what NuScale is building holds solid potential to fill the global energy gap. Does that make the nuclear energy stock a bargain buy under $10, or is it still a value trap?

Image source: Getty Images.

What exactly does NuScale Power do? Let's first understand what NuScale's business is.

Founded in 2007, NuScale is developing small modular reactors (SMRs). They are designed to be simpler, safer, more scalable, and more cost-effective than traditional nuclear reactors. SMRs are also largely factory-built, which means shorter construction and installation times.

Its core patent is the Nuclear Power Module (NPM). Each individual module is a self-contained reactor capable of generating 77 megawatts electric of carbon-free electricity. Several NPMs can be grouped together to build a power plant that can then be installed virtually anywhere that requires round-the-clock, reliable energy, such as data centers.

NuScale's SMR design is already approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the company has advanced from the research and development stage and has started production of the first modules.

So why is the seemingly promising nuclear energy crashing? There are three problems here.

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Where's the customer? The core thesis of buying NuScale is that tech giants and utilities will buy its modules and reactors and lock in several years of contracts. The company, however, hasn't yet entered into any binding contract with any customer to deliver NPMs.

Payment milestones, but no revenue NuScale has signed ENTRA1 as its exclusive global partner to develop and commercialize power plants using NPMs, but ENTRA1 hasn't yet signed any binding power purchase agreements. Moreover, NuScale is bound to pay ENTRA1 milestone fees for each NPM or NuScale product that could be used in a power plant. There's no revenue guarantee here, and this bizarre arrangement has even prompted several investor class action lawsuits.

Nothing concrete before 2030 Even with all the design and regulatory approvals, NuScale doesn't expect to deliver its first NPMs before 2031. That's if there aren't any delays or complications in design, development, and production.

I'd steer clear of NuScale Power stock, even at under $10 per share, until the company can prove its technology is commercially viable.

© inray27 / Shutterstock.com

$2.6 trillion. That is what Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) is worth as of July 2, 2026, sitting on 10.76 billion shares at a closing price of $242.67. The figure is a market cap, not a reported financial.

What makes this the number to watch is what is happening underneath the hood. Indeed, the parts of Amazon growing fastest are now the ones with the highest margins, and the empire built on retail is being repriced as an artificial intelligence infrastructure business.

What It Means Behind Amazon’s $2.6 trillion valuation is a Q1 2026 report that changed the growth math. Revenue landed at $181.52 billion, up 16.61% year over year. Earnings per share came in at $2.78 against a $1.653 estimate, a 68.18% beat and the fifth consecutive EPS beat. Investors should note that net income of $30.25 billion included $16.8 billion in pre-tax gains from Anthropic holdings, a non-recurring item. The cleaner read is operating income of $23.85 billion, up 29.6% year over year, with the corporate operating margin at 13.1%.

On the horizon, I think the real repricing catalyst is AWS. Cloud revenue reached $37.59 billion, growing 28%, the fastest pace in 15 quarters, at an operating margin of 37.7%. Amazon’s chips business (Graviton, Trainium, Nitro) crossed a $20 billion annual run rate at triple-digit year-over-year growth. Advertising services generated $17.24 billion in the quarter, up 24%, and now runs at a trailing rate above $70 billion. Unit growth in stores hit 15%, the highest reading since the end of COVID lockdowns.

Market Reaction Shares of AMZN stock are up 6.9% over the past week and 5.13% year to date, but down 5.4% over the past month. The stock closed at $259.67 the day the Q1 earnings report was filed on April 29, 2026, ran to $271.17 one week later, then cooled to today’s $242.67. Over one year the stock is up 10.34%, and over ten years it is up 568.81%.

Bull Case The bull case is that Amazon is being paid like a mature retailer while operating like a growth infrastructure company. At 32 trailing earnings and 31 forward earnings, the multiple sits alongside quarterly earnings growth of 74.8% and return on equity of 24.3%. Operating cash flow rose 52.99% year over year to $26.03 billion. International operating income grew 40% year over year, and North America’s operating margin expanded to 7.9% from 6.3%.

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The company’s AI backlog is the piece long-term holders should focus on. AWS has locked in roughly 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity for OpenAI through 2027 and up to 5 gigawatts for Anthropic, with Meta also on the customer list. Amazon Bedrock processed more tokens in Q1 than in all prior years combined, and customer spend on Bedrock grew 170% quarter over quarter.

CEO Andy Jassy framed it plainly: “We’re in the middle of some of the biggest inflections of our lifetime, we’re well positioned to lead, and I’m very optimistic about what’s ahead for our customers and Amazon.”

Analyst positioning matches the setup. Of the analysts covering the name, 15 rate it Strong Buy, 47 Buy, 4 Hold, and none Sell, with a consensus target of $312.99.

Bottom Line The $2.61 trillion price tag is only heavy if AWS decelerates – right now it is doing the opposite. Amazon guided Q2 2026 revenue to $194 billion to $199 billion, or 16% to 19% growth, with operating income of $20 billion to $24 billion against a year-ago figure of $19.2 billion.

That guidance assumes Prime Day falls in Q2 2026. The near-term catalysts on the calendar (Prime Day, the Q2 earnings report, and the start of a 1 million-plus NVIDIA GPU deployment in 2026) will test whether the AI infrastructure narrative can pull the multiple higher. For retirement-focused holders, the question is whether the second-largest company in America is still compounding like a growth company at a $2.61 trillion market cap. This quarter says yes.

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Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.