Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

After hitting a 52-week high of $1,255 on June 25, the Micron Technology (MU 1.05%) stock price has since retreated below $1,000. There's a likely mix of factors that have led to that decline and that are keeping the stock price from rebounding, ranging from potential profit-taking to a chip stock sell-off to increased competition from SK Hynix's listing on the Nasdaq.

In the background, however, there was a July 6 announcement from Micron that seemed to get buried.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Micron locks in Ford On July 6, Micron Technology announced that it had entered into a long-term agreement, which it called a strategic customer agreement (SCA), with Ford to help strengthen the automaker's vehicle production. "Producing the high-volume vehicles of the future in the U.S. will require a resilient supply chain," Ford CEO Jim Farley said in the announcement.

Micron didn't offer specifics about the deal's value. But it did say the SCA was part of a collective 16 it discussed in its 2026 third-quarter earnings call.

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In that call, Micron shared that it had strategic agreements, ranging from deals with automakers to hyperscalers, spanning three to five years. From those 16 agreements, it has $22 billion in deposits and financial commitments. In total, those agreements are expected to generate over $100 billion in revenue, a figure that may be conservative.

The news alone didn't push Micron back to its 52-week high of $1,255. But working to lock in future revenue over the years ahead can help it shed its cyclical reputation, building a stronger case for Micron as a long-term investment.

Jack Delaney has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology. The Motley Fool recommends Nasdaq. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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

© Panchenko Vladimir / Shutterstock.com

The VanEck BDC Income ETF (NYSEARCA:BIZD) just delivered a jolt to income investors: its July distribution came in at $0.24 per share, roughly half the $0.48 paid in April. BIZD passes through the dividends of the business development companies it owns, so when the underlying BDCs strain, BIZD’s payout wobbles. With the fund down 14% over the past year and BDCs facing base-rate cuts and spread compression, the question is whether this distribution is a one-off dip or the start of something worse.

How BIZD Actually Pays You BIZD tracks the MVIS US Business Development Companies Index, holding a concentrated basket of publicly traded BDCs that lend to middle-market firms at floating rates over SOFR. When those loans pay interest, the BDCs distribute nearly all of it to shareholders to preserve their tax status, and BIZD passes that income through quarterly. Roughly 90% or more of BDC loan books are floating rate, which is why the Fed’s 75 basis point cut since September 2025, taking the target to 3.75%, hits BIZD’s income at the source.

The Four Holdings That Decide BIZD’s Fate Ares Capital (NASDAQ:ARCC | ARCC Price Prediction), the largest BDC by market cap at $13.48 billion, held its quarterly dividend at $0.48 for the eighth straight quarter. Q1 core EPS of $0.47 fell a penny short, but net investment income of $0.55 per share gives real cushion. Non-accruals ticked up to 2.1% from 1.8%, worth watching, but a $1.8 billion investment backlog and $6 billion in liquidity support the payout.

Blue Owl Capital (NYSE:OBDC) already made the cut official. On May 5, 2026, the board dropped the base dividend from $0.37 to $0.31, a 16% reduction in annualized payout. CEO Craig Packer cited “a more challenging earnings environment driven by lower base rates and tighter spreads.” Adjusted EPS of $0.31 now exactly matches the new dividend, meaning zero buffer. Shares are down 15% over the past year.

Blackstone Secured Lending (NYSE:BXSL) looks like the next domino. NII of $0.77 covered the $0.77 dividend at exactly 100%, down from 104% in Q4. New investments are being originated at 7.7% while assets rolling off yielded 9.1%, which mechanically compresses future income. Non-accruals jumped to 3.1% of fair value from 0.6% a quarter earlier. CEO Brad Marshall’s own words: “non-accruals increased during the quarter from historically low levels.” Another miss, and BXSL follows OBDC.

Main Street Capital (NYSE:MAIN) is the fund’s insurance policy. Distributable NII of $1.00 per share comfortably covers the $0.26 monthly regular plus a $0.30 quarterly supplemental, now paid for 19 consecutive quarters. NAV per share rose to about $33. MAIN’s lower-middle-market focus and equity co-investments generate returns other BDCs can’t match. Retail readers who like this profile may also want our 7 Monthly Dividend Stocks report.

Total Return Reality Check BIZD’s trailing 12-month distributions of $1.52 look generous against a roughly $13 share price, but the fund is down 6% year-to-date on top of last year’s decline. The forward annualized rate has reset to $0.96, so shoppers pricing this off the trailing yield are anchored to a payout that has already stepped down.

The Verdict BIZD’s distribution is at risk of further reduction. OBDC is done cutting for now, but BXSL is running on fumes at 100% coverage with rising non-accruals, and ARCC’s cushion is thinner than a year ago. MAIN is the anchor doing the heavy lifting. For investors who need a predictable check, MAIN offers more coverage than the blended pass-through. BIZD still makes sense for someone who wants diversified BDC exposure and can tolerate a variable payout that reflects whatever the underlying managers can actually earn each quarter.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

, /PRNewswire/ -- Insilico Medicine ("Insilico", 03696.HK), a clinical-stage biotechnology company driven by generative artificial intelligence (AI), and China Medical System Holdings Limited ("CMS", 867.HK/8A8.SG), an open-platform innovative company linking pharmaceutical innovation and commercialization with strong product lifecycle management capability, today announced an additional AI‑empowered drug discovery collaboration targeting a mass-market indication in central nervous system with an innovative mechanism of action (MoA) identified by PandaOmics.

According to the collaboration agreement, the two parties will jointly advance the co-development of the R&D program by combining Insilico Medicine's validated AI platform and AI-enabled innovative drug discovery and development capabilities with CMS's experienced R&D team and deep therapeutic expertise. Insilico Medicine is eligible to receive up to approximately 1.2 billion RMB in milestone payments plus royalties. This partnership marks a deepening collaboration that leverages both parties' complementary strengths across the full value chain—from drug discovery and clinical development to commercialization.

Mr. Lam Kong, the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President and Executive Director of CMS said: "CMS is deeply impressed by Insilico Medicine's capability and productivity in AI drug discovery. We are happy to deepen our collaboration with Insilico Medicine. Insilico Medicine's leadership in AI drug discovery platforms and data-driven R&D is strategically complementary to CMS's capabilities in innovative R&D and clinical translation. In addition, CMS has built solid strengths in clinical development systems and efficiency, regulatory submission expertise, and commercialization network coverage. Our goal never changes: to accelerate the delivery of more clinically meaningful innovations to patients with greater speed and quality, better meeting the growing clinical needs."

"We are delighted to establish another collaboration with China Medical System just three months after our initial announcement," said Feng Ren, PhD, Co-CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Insilico Medicine. "Our existing partnership, announced earlier this year, has been seamless and productive since its inception. In this new program, we value the input from the CMS commercialization team and are proud of the innovative Mechanism of Action (MoA) identified by PandaOmics, which streamlines the development of high-potential drugs, enhancing translational efficiency, and accelerating the transition of molecules from 'proof of concept' to life-changing patient therapies. We will continue to deepen our multi-dimensional collaboration in pipeline and clinical strategy and global partnerships to provide patients with more differentiated and accessible treatment options."

About CMS

CMS (HKEX stock code:867; SGX stock code: 8A8) is a platform company linking pharmaceutical innovation and commercialization with strong product lifecycle management capability, dedicated to providing competitive products and services to meet unmet medical needs.

CMS focuses on the global first-in-class (FIC) and best-in-class (BIC) innovative products, and efficiently promotes the clinical research, development and commercialization of innovative products, enabling the continuous transformation of scientific research into clinical practices to benefit patients.

CMS deeply engages in several specialty therapeutic fields, and has developed proven commercialization capabilities, extensive networks and expert resources, resulting in leading academic and market positions for its major marketed products. CMS continues to promote the in-depth development in its advantageous specialty fields, strengthening the competitiveness of the Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic/gastroenterology/ophthalmology/ skin health businesses, bringing economies of scale in specialty fields.

About Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine is a pioneering global biotechnology company dedicated to integrating artificial intelligence and automation technologies to accelerate drug discovery, drive innovation in the life sciences, and extend health longevity to people on the planet. The company was listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 30, 2025, under the stock code 03696.HK.

By integrating AI and automation technologies and deep in-house drug discovery capabilities, Insilico is delivering innovative drug solutions for unmet needs including fibrosis, oncology, immunology, pain, and obesity and metabolic disorders. Additionally, Insilico extends the reach of Pharma.AI across diverse industries, such as advanced materials, agriculture, nutritional products and veterinary medicine. For more information, please visit www.insilico.com

SOURCE Insilico Medicine

Manuel Alba, a Director at Astera Labs, Inc. (ALAB 1.07%), executed a sale of 8,491 shares of common stock on July 1, 2026, according to an SEC Form 4 filing.

Transaction summaryMetricValueTransaction value$3.9 millionShares sold (indirectly held)8,491Post-transaction shares (directly held)2,351Post-transaction shares (indirectly held)291,863Transaction value based on SEC Form 4 weighted average sale price ($458.38); post-transaction value based on July 1, 2026 market close ($430.86).

Key questionsWhat was the mechanism for this transaction?
The sale was executed automatically under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan that Manuel Alba adopted on May 29, 2025, which allows insiders to schedule trades in advance to avoid concerns regarding material non-public information.How are the remaining shares held?
The vast majority of the reported equity is held indirectly, with 286,863 shares owned by Casa Alameda 2007, LLC, where the Director serves as manager, and 5,000 shares held by a spouse.What is the recent performance context for the company?
As of July 2, 2026, shares were priced at $406.42, following a period of appreciation where the stock delivered a 386% total return in the year leading up to the transaction date.What is the company's current financial profile?
Headquartered in Santa Clara, the company operates in the semiconductor industry with a market capitalization of $70 billion and reported trailing twelve-month revenue of $1.0 billion as of July 7, 2026.Company OverviewMetricValueShare Price (as of market close 2026-07-02)$406.42Market Capitalization$69.7 billionRevenue (TTM)$1.0 billionNet Income (TTM)$267.6 millionCompany SnapshotAstera Labs develops and markets semiconductor-based connectivity solutions through its Intelligent Connectivity Platform, which comprises data, network, and memory connectivity products designed to serve cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure markets.The company generates revenue through a software-defined architecture approach that enables customers to deploy and operate high-performance cloud and AI systems at scale, leveraging proprietary semiconductor technology and integrated software solutions.The company primarily serves hyperscale cloud service providers and enterprise customers requiring advanced connectivity infrastructure for AI and cloud computing applications.Astera Labs is a semiconductor connectivity specialist founded in 2017 that has achieved significant scale with $1.0 billion in TTM revenue and a market capitalization of $69.7 billion. The company's Intelligent Connectivity Platform addresses critical infrastructure bottlenecks in cloud and AI deployments, positioning it at the intersection of two of the highest-growth technology markets. With a lean operational footprint of 440 employees and TTM net income of $267.6 million, Astera Labs demonstrates strong operational leverage and profitability in a capital-intensive industry.

What this transaction means for investorsThis sale ultimately seems like a director trimming a rounding error off a very large win, and the proportions make that clear. Alba let go of 8,491 shares under a plan he set more than a year ago, but he still controls roughly 292,000 shares, almost all of it held through an LLC he manages. Given that the director parted with under 3% of his position on a preset schedule, selling at $458 after this kind of run is nothing to read too deeply into.

That’s also partly because the business is firing on every cylinder. Astera's first-quarter revenue hit a record $308.4 million, up 93% from a year earlier, with PCIe 6 products now more than a third of the mix and non-GAAP operating margin near 36%. CEO Jitendra Mohan tied the growth to demand for the company's connectivity platform and its new Scorpio switches ramping into the second half. Of course, it’s important to watch valuation after this kind of run-up. At a $70 billion market cap after a year in which shares have basically quadrupled, this stock is priced for years of what investors might expect to be flawless execution, so any dwindling expectations could lead to a strong reset in the stock’s price.

Jonathan Ponciano has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Astera Labs. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Amazon (AMZN 0.69%) is reported to have made a shocking decision in recent days. According to CNBC, it is issuing $25 billion in debt to fund its data center build-out. While it doesn't plan to issue any more debt beyond that in 2026, it's a big deal because Amazon's long-term debt has been soaring in the past few years.

Building data centers isn't cheap, and the cash has to come from somewhere, but is this the right move, or should it scare investors?

Image source: Getty Images.

The payoff could be immense In recent years, Amazon's debt load has skyrocketed from the company's historical levels.

AMZN Total Long Term Debt (Quarterly), data by YCharts.

The latest $25 billion sale of debt adds to this total, but Amazon has the cash flow to fund the repayment. The reality is that it's vital for the company to grab as much cloud infrastructure market share as possible in these early days of the AI build-out; it will be more difficult to win clients away from other cloud providers once everyone has their preferred vendor.

The company is currently leading the way among AI hyperscalers in data center construction plans, and it expects to lay out around $200 billion in capital expenditures this year. Over the past 12 months, Amazon generated just shy of $150 billion in cash from operations, so the gap between funds coming in and cash flowing out had to be closed somehow.

AMZN Cash from Operations (TTM), data by YCharts; TTM = trailing 12 months.

As a result, investors should not feel too blindsided by this debt issuance. But is it worth it?

CEO Andy Jassy said in his shareholder letter that the nature of a cloud computing business requires increased capital input when it's growing rapidly. Data centers aren't cheap to bring online, but they do have great payoffs over long time frames. Jassy also mentioned that a significant amount of the new computing capacity that $200 billion will buy is already under contract to customers, so it isn't just taking a leap of faith when building these data centers.

Once the construction is over and the company is benefiting from a much larger cloud computing footprint, its gains in revenue and cash flow will be immense, and should dwarf any concerns about its rising debt load. Current market conditions and demands dictate that management build more data centers, and that's exactly what it's doing.

With Amazon Web Services being a major part of the cloud computing landscape and an important part of the company's overall business, now is a perfect time to buy the stock, as Amazon's growth over the next few years could be immense.

3 Stocks Cashing In on AI While Everyone Watches NVIDIAMasTec NYSE: MTZ said it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Superior Group, an electrical infrastructure contractor focused on data centers and other mission-critical markets, in a transaction valued at approximately $1.65 billion upfront.

Chief Executive Officer Jose Mas said on the conference call that the acquisition expands MasTec’s position in infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital infrastructure. He described Superior as “one of the premier electrical infrastructure contractors” serving hyperscalers, data center developers and mission-critical customers across the United States.

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3 Energy Stocks to Buy as AI Power Demand Surges—and 2 to Avoid“We believe this represents a generational infrastructure investment opportunity for the companies with the capabilities, skilled workforce, and track record to help build it,” Mas said.

Deal Terms and Financing Chief Financial Officer Paul DiMarco said the purchase price consists of $1.175 billion in cash and $475 million in MasTec common stock, along with a performance-based earn-out tied to Superior’s financial results over the three years after closing. MasTec expects to issue approximately 1.2 million shares as part of the equity consideration.

This infrastructure construction stock: Is it ready to pop?DiMarco said MasTec expects to fund the cash portion through cash on hand, borrowings under its existing credit facility and delayed-draw term loan facilities arranged for the transaction. The company expects the deal to close later this month after regulatory clearance.

The upfront consideration represents 6.9 times Superior’s expected 2026 EBITDA, DiMarco said. In response to an analyst question, Mas said MasTec expects the earn-out to add about one additional turn to the upfront multiple, depending on Superior’s performance. He added that the earn-out is uncapped and based on performance targets over three years.

Expected Financial Contribution MasTec said it expects the acquisition to be immediately accretive to revenue, adjusted EBITDA, earnings per share and cash flow from operations.

For 2026, MasTec expects Superior to contribute approximately five months of earnings to consolidated results, including:

$800 million to $900 million of revenue; $100 million to $150 million of adjusted EBITDA; and $0.50 to $0.65 of adjusted earnings per share. For the full year 2026, Superior is projected to generate approximately $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion of revenue and $225 million to $250 million of adjusted EBITDA. Looking ahead to 2027, MasTec expects Superior to generate $2.2 billion to $2.5 billion of revenue and $250 million to $275 million of adjusted EBITDA.

DiMarco said the expectations are preliminary, reflect a conservative approach and do not include revenue synergies, cross-selling opportunities or operational benefits from combining the businesses. Superior will become a new operating group within MasTec, and its results are expected to be reflected in the Power Delivery segment.

Data Center and Power Infrastructure Focus Mas said the transaction strengthens MasTec’s position in markets where power infrastructure, communications infrastructure and data center development are converging. He said MasTec already delivers critical infrastructure that brings power, communications and energy to data center campuses, while Superior adds capabilities “inside the campus” through electrical construction, integrated systems, prefabrication, commissioning support and maintenance services.

Mas said the combination gives MasTec a broader offering across the infrastructure value chain. He said customers increasingly want larger, integrated partners that can self-perform work, mobilize labor at scale and deliver complex projects with speed and reliability.

In response to a question from Citigroup analyst Andy Kaplowitz, Mas said MasTec has historically performed much of the work outside the building, while Superior performs work inside the building. He said the combination could allow MasTec to offer a more turnkey service to customers, including general contractors.

Superior’s Workforce and Growth Profile Superior has approximately 3,000 employees. Mas said access to skilled labor is one of the most important competitive advantages in the industry and described Superior’s workforce as one of the company’s most attractive assets.

During the Q&A, Mas said Superior is currently an all-union business and characterized the transaction as “a bet on labor scarcity.” He said Superior’s workforce has grown almost 400% over the last few years and that the company has shown a strong ability to recruit, train and deploy skilled electrical labor.

Mas also said Superior has grown 100% organically, with no history of acquisitions contributing to its recent expansion. He said the business has operated primarily in three states in recent years, but has signed contracts that will expand it into five states next year, with the potential for additional state expansion after that.

Asked about Superior’s backlog, Mas said MasTec conducted project-by-project due diligence and has “enormous conviction” in its 2027 expectations. He said Superior has five large customers and a blue-chip customer base, adding that MasTec expects backlog to grow significantly through the balance of the year.

Balance Sheet Outlook DiMarco said MasTec expects pro forma net leverage to be modestly above two times at closing, but expects net leverage to decline below two times by the end of 2026 due to the combined company’s expected earnings and cash flow generation.

He said the transaction should generate a low double-digit return on invested capital in the first year and support MasTec’s stated target of 16% in 2028. DiMarco also said MasTec remains committed to maintaining strong liquidity and preserving its investment-grade credit profile.

Mas said the company sees the data center build-out as still being in its early stages, based on conversations with customers, hyperscalers and advisors during due diligence. He acknowledged that the market may see “ups and downs,” but said MasTec remains bullish on the long-term opportunity.

About MasTec NYSE: MTZMasTec, Inc is a diversified infrastructure construction company that provides engineering, fabrication, installation and maintenance services across a broad range of end markets. Its principal activities encompass the development of communications networks, oil and gas pipeline systems, electrical transmission and distribution facilities, industrial installations and renewable energy projects.

The company traces its roots to a small cable installation operation in Miami and has grown through a series of strategic acquisitions to become one of the largest infrastructure contractors in North America.

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].

Should You Invest $1,000 in MasTec Right Now?Before you consider MasTec, you'll want to hear this.

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Strategy founder and chairman Michael Saylor again took to social media on Sunday to offer his latest signal to investors as one analyst sees Saylor’s messaging as needing more clarity to help Bitcoin regain its momentum.

“Orange dots tell only part of the story,” was Saylor’s message on Sunday in a post that accompanied a chart from Saylortracker.com, similar to previous social media messages that have preceded news of Strategy's Bitcoin (BTC) purchases, typically announced the day after his posts.

In recent weeks, the largest digital asset treasury company and a major BTC holder, has moved away from its long-time “never sell Bitcoin” approach to a willingness to sell the biggest crypto as needed to fund dividends for holders of its STRC preferred stock and to replenish its cash reserves. Earlier this month, Strategy sold $216 million worth of Bitcoin, reducing its total holdings to 843,775 tokens, according to a July 6 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Orange dots tell only part of the story.” Source: Michael Saylor

Days earlier, Strategy unveiled a capital framework allowing Bitcoin sales to fund dividends, increased the annual dividend rate on its STRC preferred stock to 12%, and disclosed that its US dollar reserve had grown to $2.55 billion.

Standard Charter’s global head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, believes recent Strategy’s actions — and Saylor's manner of communicating them — “are muddying the waters for BTC near-term.”

“We think effective communication of MSTR’s new strategy (using BTC to back STRC) is key to reassuring markets that wholesale selling is unlikely; this should in turn support BTC prices,” Kendrick wrote in a note to clients on Friday. “Indeed, if this signalling proves effective, it should remove the need for MSTR to actually sell any BTC by supporting STRC’s price,” he said.

StanChart sees inconsistencies in “never sell” approachKendrick said that Strategy’s long-held “never sell” approach limited what the company could with its industry-biggest digital asset treasury.

“The problem with the ‘never sell’ approach is that it limits what MSTR’s BTC holdings can do — or, perhaps more importantly, what they are perceived to be doing,” the StanChart analyst said. “MSTR has started to shift its communication strategy on this in recent months. It has sold BTC twice and recently announced a BTC monetization program.”

Source: Standard Chartered Bank

Still, he sees Strategy’s “market signaling” will improve soon. He expects that to bring clarity to the outlook for Bitcoin, on which StanChart maintains its $100,000 year-end forecast.

Shares struggle from year low ahead of earnings reportInvestors who bought into the Strategy narrative have not had an easy time in the past 12 months. The STRC preferred shares were formulated to hold a price of $100 apiece. Shareholders saw that par value fall to the wayside last month, to the lowest value since the preferred stock was introduced a year ago.

The common shares, trading under the MSTR ticker, have lost more than 70% of their value since July 2025, closing at $94.64 per share on Friday, down from a 52-week high of $457.22.

The company is slated to report second-quarter earnings on July 30, with analysts consensus of $4.28 per share, according to Yahoo Finance data. Earnings have fallen short of analyst forecasts in six of the last eight quarters, according to Fintel.io data, including a 33.76% negative surprise in the first quarter of 2026.

 Magazine: Will the crypto lobby's $189M campaign get CLARITY over the line?

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Mark Schoenberg, Chief Medical Officer, sold 10,000 ordinary shares of UroGen Pharma Ltd. (URGN 4.15%) on July 9, 2026, for a total value of $400,000, according to an SEC Form 4 filing.

Transaction summaryMetricValueTransaction value$400,000Shares sold10,000Post-transaction shares (directly held)119,763Post-transaction value$4.82 millionKey questionsWhat was the mechanism for this transaction?
The sale was conducted under a pre-established Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted on August 15, 2025, which provides for automated execution and represents the concluding transaction of that plan's schedule.What is the scale of the insider's remaining direct investment?
Mark Schoenberg continues to hold 119,763 ordinary shares directly.What financial context does UroGen Pharma Ltd. present at this valuation?
The biotechnology company, which develops solutions for urothelial and specialty cancers, reported trailing 12-month revenue of $140.5 million and a net loss of $133.2 million.How does the current market capitalization compare to the transaction level?
The disposition occurred with the company's market capitalization at $2.0 billion, following a period of performance where shares were priced at $40.23 as of the July 9, 2026 market close.Company OverviewMetricValueShare Price (as of market close 2026-07-09)$40.23Market Capitalization$2.0 billionRevenue (TTM)$140.5 millionNet Income (TTM)-$133.2 millionCompany SnapshotUroGen Pharma develops and commercializes innovative solutions for urothelial and specialty cancers, with primary revenue sources including Zusduri, a sustained-release mitomycin formulation for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, and RTGel, a proprietary reverse thermal gelation hydrogel technology platform.The company operates a commercial-stage biotechnology business model focused on bringing novel therapeutic formulations to market, generating revenue through product sales while continuing to invest in research and development for pipeline expansion.UroGen's primary customers are urology and oncology specialists, with target markets encompassing patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer and other urothelial malignancies requiring adjuvant chemotherapy and specialized treatment modalities.UroGen Pharma is a commercial-stage biotechnology company with a $2 billion market capitalization, demonstrating significant growth momentum with a one-year stock appreciation of 191.31%. The company has achieved meaningful revenue scale at $140.5 million TTM while maintaining a focused pipeline strategy centered on proprietary drug delivery technologies for underserved oncology indications. UroGen's competitive advantage derives from its proprietary RTGel platform technology and its established commercial infrastructure for specialty cancer therapeutics, positioning the company as a differentiated player in the niche urothelial cancer treatment market.

What this transaction means for investorsFirst, it’s important to note that this was the final trade in a 10b5-1 plan Schoenberg set almost a year ago, so the timing was locked in long before Schoenberg could know how the firm was necessarily going to be performing. He still holds nearly 120,000 shares worth close to $4.8 million, and a chief medical officer keeping a stake that size while the company's newest drug is inflecting isn't sending any signal about the science.

The launch of Zusduri, UroGen’s new bladder cancer therapy, is what matters here, and it's going well. UroGen's first quarter revenue jumped 152% to $51 million, as a result of the launch, which brought in $29.2 million and more than doubled quarter over quarter after a permanent insurance billing code kicked in. CEO Liz Barrett called January's J-code "a major inflection point," and unique prescribers jumped to 256 from 102 in a single quarter. More recently, the firm announced that the FDA cleared its investigational new drug application for UGN-501, enabling a planned Phase 1 study in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. It’s expected to begin in the fourth quarter.

Jonathan Ponciano has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Meta Platforms (META +6.16%) just closed out quite an eventful week. Shares of the social media giant jumped about 6% on Friday alone as investors warm back up to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive artificial intelligence (AI) strategy.

The company has given them plenty to work with this year. Growth is accelerating, its new AI lab released its first model this spring, and capital spending guidance now tops $125 billion.

But let's zoom out for a second. How has the stock done over the long haul? Specifically, how much would $10,000 invested in Meta a decade ago be worth today?

Image source: Getty Images.

How the math works out In 2016, Meta -- then still called Facebook -- traded at an average price of about $116 per share. A $10,000 investment at that price would have bought about 86 shares. With the stock trading near $670 as of this writing, those shares would be worth roughly $57,600 today, a nearly sixfold gain.

And dividends sweeten the total a little. Meta initiated its first-ever dividend in early 2024 at $0.50 per share quarterly, and the quarterly payout now stands at $0.525 per share. Those 86 shares would have collected a bit over $400 in dividends so far, bringing the total value to about $58,000.

That works out to a compound annual growth rate of about 19%.

The engine hasn't slowed Of course, none of that return is available to anyone buying today. What matters now is whether the business that produced it is still performing.

What impresses me most is that ten years in, Meta's growth is accelerating, not fading. Revenue rose 22% in 2025 to $201.0 billion, and the growth rate stepped up through the year, from 24% year over year in the fourth quarter to 33% in the first quarter of 2026, when revenue hit $56.3 billion. The formula hasn't changed, either. The company sells more ads, at higher prices, across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Ad impressions rose 19% year over year in the first quarter, the average price per ad rose 12%, and an average of 3.56 billion people used at least one of Meta's apps each day in March.

All that advertising produces enormous profits. Meta's first-quarter operating income rose 30% year over year to $22.9 billion. And shareholders are seeing plenty of the cash. The company spent over $26 billion on share repurchases in 2025, paid another approximately $5 billion in dividends and dividend equivalents, and still ended the year with more than $81 billion in cash and marketable securities.

And the company is spending like it believes the next decade holds more. Meta recently raised its 2026 guidance for capital expenditures to a range of $125 billion to $145 billion, much of it aimed at AI infrastructure. Its second-quarter outlook, meanwhile, calls for revenue of $58 billion to $61 billion.

"We had a milestone quarter with strong momentum across our apps and the release of our first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs," said Zuckerberg in the company's first-quarter earnings release.

That spending is also the market's biggest worry about the stock. If the AI investments don't pay off in continued growth, today's expense ramp could weigh on profits for years to come. This past week, at least, investors treated the spending as a positive.

Today's Change

(

6.16

%) $

38.92

Current Price

$

670.40

Should investors expect a repeat? Sure, the backtest is fun. But nobody should buy Meta stock expecting another 19% a year for a decade. The company is vastly larger today than it was in 2016, and growth can get harder with size. Additionally, competition for attention and ad dollars isn't easing, and regulators around the world continue to scrutinize the company.

But the stock's price doesn't demand a repeat, either. Shares trade at about 19 times forward earnings -- a reasonable multiple for a company that just grew revenue 33% year over year -- even accounting for the risks of a $125 billion-plus spending plan. That valuation multiple, of course, could come down if growth slows, but this multiple also hardly assumes another decade of dominance.

After all, the lesson of the decade-long backtest isn't that Meta was a once-in-a-generation bargain in 2016. It's that an enormously profitable business kept compounding while plenty of investors found reasons to sell along the way.

For long-term investors, I think Meta remains a solid holding today. I just wouldn't let a $58,000 backtest set my expectations for the next ten years.

https://readi.fi/news/blackrock-expands-tokenized-buidl-fund-across-new-blockchains/

BlackRock’s BUIDL, a tokenized U.S. Treasury money market fund on the Avalanche blockchain, has reached over $900 million in assets under management (AUM). This notable increase, from approximately $464 million just a week ago, highlights a significant surge in institutional interest in tokenized assets on Avalanche. The BUIDL fund, maintaining a stable value of $1.00 per token with daily accrued dividends, has become the largest tokenized treasury product on-chain and the biggest real-world asset (RWA) on Avalanche. This development underscores Avalanche’s rising prominence as a key player in the institutional tokenization sector, second only to Ethereum in terms of BUIDL’s AUM.

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Key Takeaways BlackRock’s BUIDL fund on Avalanche has seen its AUM increase from $464 million to over $900 million within a week. The rapid growth in BUIDL’s AUM suggests accelerating institutional adoption of Avalanche for tokenized assets. Avalanche is now the second-largest blockchain for BUIDL by AUM, reinforcing its role as a leading institutional tokenization venue. What to Watch The surge in BUIDL’s AUM could indicate broader institutional adoption of blockchain-based financial products, potentially influencing Ethereum price predictions. Market participants may monitor whether this trend continues and if other blockchains follow suit in attracting large institutional investments. Observers will also be keen to see if BlackRock’s growing involvement in tokenized assets impacts Ethereum-related markets and if similar trends develop within the Ethereum ecosystem.

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Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h August 1 2026 59.5% — — View market → August 1 2026 3.2% — — View market → August 1 2026 30% — — View market → August 1 2026 6% — — View market → August 1 2026 2.2% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → August 1 2026 14% — — View market → August 1 2026 13% — — View market → August 1 2026 1.6% — — View market → August 1 2026 2.8% — — View market → August 1 2026 4.2% — — View market → August 1 2026 6.6% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.3% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.4% — — View market → August 1 2026 0.9% — — View market → August 1 2026 59.5% — — View market →

FICO’s Big Dip Could Be the Best Buying Chance of the YearEquifax NYSE: EFX said it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Círculo de Crédito, which Chief Executive Officer Mark Begor described as the fastest-growing credit bureau in Mexico, for an enterprise value of $750 million.

During an investor update call, Begor said the acquisition would expand Equifax into Mexico, “the second largest economy in Latin America,” and give Círculo de Crédito customers access to Equifax’s cloud-native technology, decisioning and analytics capabilities, EFX.AI technology, and identity protection and fraud prevention offerings.

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3 Stocks Just Announced Intentions to Buyback Near 10% of SharesThe transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Begor said Equifax has been focused on entering Mexico for years, including efforts during prior leadership, and that Círculo became the most attractive entry point after TransUnion acquired majority ownership in another Mexican bureau.

Financial Terms and Expected Impact Equifax said Círculo generated $134 million in revenue for the 12 months ended June 30, up 31%, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 46%. For full-year 2026, Círculo is expected to continue delivering high double-digit revenue growth with mid-40% adjusted EBITDA margins, according to Begor.

4 Undervalued Growth Stocks to Buy and Hold for the Long TermThe $750 million enterprise value represents an 11.7 times adjusted EBITDA multiple at closing based on Círculo’s expected 2026 adjusted EBITDA, Begor said. Including expected run-rate synergies, the multiple is expected to be about 9.4 times at closing.

Begor said the acquisition is expected to be accretive to Equifax adjusted earnings per share in the first full year of ownership and to deliver mid-double-digit returns, which he said would be “well above” Equifax’s cost of capital.

Equifax also said it expects to maintain balance sheet leverage below 3 times while completing the acquisition. Begor said the company expects free cash flow to exceed $1 billion in 2026 and has more than $1.5 billion in financial capacity. He said Equifax can complete the acquisition while continuing share repurchases, though at a slower pace than in the first half of 2026.

Mexico Market and Círculo’s Position Begor characterized Mexico as one of the fastest-growing credit markets globally, with consumer credit growth driven by expanded access to credit, financial inclusion and digitization. He said more than 25% of Mexico’s population lacks access to formal financial products and nearly 44% does not have a bank account.

Círculo is the only credit bureau in Mexico licensed to operate both consumer and commercial credit bureau services, according to Begor. He said the company has more than 1,700 customers across banks, retail, fintech, small business lending, microfinance and telecommunications, along with 2 billion trade lines covering 80 million validated identities.

Begor said Círculo’s growth has been supported by its position in alternative data, including gig economy transactions and utility payment history. He said more than 40% of Círculo’s 2025 revenue came from fintech customers, with that segment growing more than 50%.

Integration Plans and Synergies Equifax said it expects to generate synergies by deepening Círculo’s retail and fintech data position, expanding penetration with large financial institutions, and moving Círculo’s infrastructure onto Equifax’s cloud-native architecture.

Begor said Equifax plans to bring its global platforms and products into Mexico, including its Ignite analytics platform, InterConnect platform, scores, AI capabilities, fraud tools and identity products. He also said Equifax expects some Círculo products and fintech-related capabilities to be deployed in other markets.

The company pointed to its acquisition of Boa Vista in Brazil as a model for the Círculo integration. Begor said Boa Vista has outperformed Equifax’s expectations and gave the company confidence in its acquisition integration playbook.

Questions From Analysts In response to questions about Círculo’s recent growth, Begor said the company has benefited from the rapid expansion of fintechs, retailers and telecommunications providers in Mexico. He said many consumers without bank accounts may first build credit through retail financing, such as appliance or furniture purchases.

Asked about competition, Begor said TransUnion is currently in the Mexican market through its ownership of the previously bank-owned consumer credit bureau. He said Equifax believes Círculo is well positioned because of its data from retailers, fintechs and telecommunications providers.

Begor also addressed Mexico’s data-sharing structure. He said credit bureaus are required by law to share certain trade lines when a credit report is pulled, but positive data is unique to each bureau. He said Círculo’s positive data, more frequent reporting from some contributors and broad contributor base are important advantages.

On regulatory timing, Begor said Equifax believes its approval process could be faster than TransUnion’s recent acquisition process because Equifax has had an application with Mexican regulators for several years to form a credit bureau and has been engaged with them during that period.

Equifax said the Círculo transaction is part of its broader bolt-on acquisition strategy. Including Círculo, Begor said the company will have invested nearly $5 billion in 17 strategic bolt-on acquisitions since 2020, focused on differentiated data, workforce solutions, international markets, and identity and fraud capabilities.

About Equifax NYSE: EFXEquifax Inc NYSE: EFX is a global data, analytics and technology company that specializes in consumer and commercial credit reporting, decisioning tools and identity solutions. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Equifax is one of the three major consumer credit reporting agencies in the United States and provides credit information and related services to lenders, employers, governments and consumers worldwide.

The company's offerings include consumer credit reports and scores, credit monitoring and identity protection services, and a range of business-oriented products for risk management, fraud detection and compliance.

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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While Equifax currently has a Moderate Buy rating among analysts, top-rated analysts believe these five stocks are better buys.

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The AI wave will soon hit public markets with Anthropic and OpenAI set to go public later this year. However, you don't have to wait to invest. This report shows seven AI stocks that you can buy today while the big model providers get ready to go public.

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Microsoft Today

$385.10 +0.74 (+0.19%)

As of 07/10/2026 04:00 PM Eastern

52-Week Range$349.20▼

$555.45Dividend Yield0.95%

P/E Ratio22.92

Price Target$559.84

Microsoft Corp. NASDAQ: MSFT has taken steps to lessen its reliance on frontier AI models, though it's not an outright declaration of protest. In June, the tech giant launched its own proprietary AI models (Microsoft AI or MAI) across select applications in its Office suite.

What this means for the user experience is an open question, but this is a clear margin play for Microsoft. The company competes in multiple areas of the AI infrastructure buildout. In a way that makes this move about controlling the controllables.

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Instead of experiencing death by a thousand cuts from OpenAI and Anthropic (i.e., the frontier models), Microsoft is trying to widen its existing moat and deliver strong returns on investment (ROI) from its AI spend. But will this be sufficient to alter the sentiment towards MSFT, which has declined approximately 20% year-to-date?

Microsoft Expands MAI to Reduce Reliance on OpenAIHere's the news behind the news. Bloomberg reported that Microsoft is quietly routing some Excel and Outlook prompts to MAI, its in-house model family, rather than to OpenAI or Anthropic. Tens of thousands of prompts a week are already running on Microsoft's own tech.

That's still a small slice of total Copilot traffic. OpenAI and Anthropic handle most of it today. But the direction of that travel matters more than the current split, and Microsoft has made its intentions clear.

At Build 2026 in June, Microsoft unveiled seven MAI models, including its first reasoning model, MAI-Thinking-1. The company says it matches Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 on coding tasks. AI chief Mustafa Suleyman put it bluntly: "We pay a lot of money to Anthropic, so our goal is to reduce and ultimately eliminate that cost."

How Microsoft's In-House AI Could Boost Profit MarginsFor investors, an easy way to think about this is as follows. Copilot is a $30-per-seat subscription that, prior to the MAI launch, was running on top of someone else's expensive AI model by default. Every prompt costs Microsoft money to process, and multiplied across hundreds of millions of Office users, that bill adds up fast.

Owning the model instead of renting it changes the equation entirely. Microsoft doesn't need MAI to win over every customer. It just needs MAI to be good enough for everyday spreadsheet formulas and email drafts, at a fraction of the cost.

That's the ROI story. Microsoft won’t win an AI arms race on raw intelligence. But it can compete more efficiently by converting a rented cost center into owned infrastructure.

Microsoft Uses MAI to Strengthen Its AI Competitive MoatMicrosoft chief executive officer (CEO) Satya Nadella has reportedly said he feared Microsoft becoming "the next IBM.” By that, he meant a company that let someone else own the most important layer of technology. MAI is Microsoft's answer to that fear.

Instead of a single point of AI dependency, Microsoft now runs a three-way hedge. It holds a stake in OpenAI, embeds Anthropic's Claude in Copilot, and increasingly leans on its own models where the economics make sense. That flexibility is arguably a bigger moat than any one model's benchmark score.

It also insulates Microsoft from a ticking clock. Microsoft's current discounted OpenAI pricing won't last forever, and that deal isn't set to expire until 2032. Building a credible in-house alternative now gives Microsoft leverage in any future renegotiation, rather than leaving it stuck paying whatever OpenAI or Anthropic decides to charge.

The Bear Case: Risks to Microsoft's AI StrategyBefore getting too bullish, a few caveats are worth weighing. This shift is still incremental, and Microsoft hasn't published any timeline for expanding it further. Most Copilot workloads still run on outside models today.

There's also a quality question. Microsoft's own materials frame MAI as matching prior-generation Anthropic models, not necessarily the current large language models (LLMs). If MAI-powered features feel noticeably worse, customer goodwill could take a hit that outweighs the cost savings.

What It Means for OpenAI and AnthropicThis is a warning shot worth watching. Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO in June, and OpenAI is reportedly preparing a similar filing. Their biggest enterprise distribution partner is now also a competitor, building cheaper in-house alternatives.

That doesn't mean OpenAI or Anthropic are in immediate trouble. Both still handle the bulk of Copilot's AI traffic, and Microsoft has made it clear that it isn't ending either partnership. But the "picks and shovels" trade just got a little more complicated for anyone betting purely on third-party AI labs staying indispensable.

Microsoft Stock Rebounds After Hitting a 52-Week LowMicrosoft hit a 52-week low in late June. The 10% bounce off that level isn’t a sign that everything is perfect, but it does suggest that investors are leaning into the stock’s value proposition.

At around 22x forward earnings, Microsoft is trading at a discount to the S&P 500 and to its own history. An argument could be made that MSFT wasn’t overvalued when the sell-off began in November, and there’s ample reason to believe it’s undervalued now. The relative strength indicator reached oversold territory when MSFT bottomed in June.

But a larger story comes from analysts and institutions. The MSFT consensus price target of $559.84 is approximately 45% below its recent trading range. Plus, out of 48 analysts tracked by MarketBeat, 41 give MSFT a Buy rating, and seven rate it as a Hold. Analysts notoriously don’t like to be wrong, which may explain why some analysts have trimmed their price targets, but the overall sentiment remains bullish.

The same cautious optimism can be found in its institutional ownership. There's no question that buying has slowed in the first two quarters of the year. But buying still outpaces selling, and with MSFT at 22x earnings, this could be an attractive target for money that hasn’t left the market and is looking for growth in the second half.

Should You Invest $1,000 in Microsoft Right Now?Before you consider Microsoft, you'll want to hear this.

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Robotics and automation are rapidly becoming essential infrastructure across healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and many other industries.

"Physical AI" is coming to the United States, and there are four ways that investors can gain exposure to this new robotics revolution. Plus, learn which seven companies are most positioned to benefit as intelligent robots enter the workforce.

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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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Ghiles A.

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.