Syz the moment

The AI race just got a lot hotter, and the early leader is feeling the heat. 🔥 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has declared a "code red" to completely refocus the company's efforts on its flagship product, ChatGPT. Here's the critical breakdown you need to know: The Threat: Rivals like Google (Gemini 3) and Anthropic (Opus 4.5) have recently leapfrogged OpenAI's GPT-5 on key industry benchmark tests. The lead is shrinking FAST. The Fix: A "surge" effort is underway to significantly improve speed, reliability, and personalization of ChatGPT. The Sacrifice: OpenAI is delaying other ambitious projects—like AI agents for shopping/health, advertising products, and personalized news (Pulse)—to dedicate resources to the core chatbot. The Stakes: This is a "critical time" for the $500bn start-up, grappling with intense competition, soaring data center costs, and the non-stop battle for top AI talent. Stats That Matter: ChatGPT still has a dominant market share with over 800 million weekly users. BUT, users are now spending more time chatting with Google's Gemini than with ChatGPT (per Similarweb data). ChatGPT already accounts for roughly 10% of global search activity and is growing quickly. The Bottom Line: The AI frontier is moving at warp speed. As Google integrates its powerful, bespoke-chip-trained Gemini 3 models immediately, OpenAI is forced to pause future innovations to defend its core product. The fight for the AI crown is officially on! Who do you think wins this high-stakes race? 👇 Source: FT

'Surges in Googling do a much better job than valuations at forecasting an imminent fall as the chart’s third column shows. In each case the price of the stock, basket, fund or cryptocurrency dropped considerably over the 12 months following the peak in internet searches.' 'Naturally, such observations do not constitute a rigorous study. There will have been many instances of internet traffic concerning popular investments spiking with no subsequent fall in prices. In fact, searches for 'AI stocks' hit their zenith in mid-August and their prices continued to rise serenely for weeks.' https://lnkd.in/epm6nUdP Source: MastersInvest.com, The Economist

This would be the first time it will have done so in 14 years ... Apple will ship around 243M iPhone units this year vs 235M shipments from Samsung. Bloomberg reported that Counterpoint Research expects Apple to become the No. 1 brand by shipments this year with a 19.4% market share. The report says Samsung’s Galaxy line will grow only 4.6% this year, while iPhone sales are likely to increase by 10% compared to last year.

Yes, Google just leap-frogged nearly everyone. According to Bloomberg’s latest rankings, here’s the current Top 10 richest people in the world: 1️⃣ Elon Musk — $442B 2️⃣ Larry Page — $276B 3️⃣ Sergey Brin — $258B 4️⃣ Larry Ellison — $254B 5️⃣ Jeff Bezos — $251B 6️⃣ Mark Zuckerberg — $225B 7️⃣ Bernard Arnault — $196B 8️⃣ Steve Ballmer — $166B 9️⃣ Michael Dell — $155B 🔟 Jensen Huang — $155B The Google founders jumping to #2 and #3 is a reminder of one thing: AI isn’t just reshaping technology, it’s reshaping the leaderboard of global wealth in real time. Source: Evan

It’s meaningfully better at everyday tasks like working with slides and spreadsheets. The new AI tops coding benchmark, leading in key tests like SWE-bench Verified at 80.9%, Terminal-bench 2.0 at 59.3%, and OSWorld at 66.3%, beating models from Google and OpenAI in coding, agent tasks, and computer use. It features a 200K token context window, uses far fewer tokens for the same work, and costs much less at $5 per million input tokens. Developers can now access it through APIs, apps, and platforms like Amazon Bedrock and GitHub Copilot, with engineers noting its strength on complex bugs. Source: CNBC-TV18

Source: Kalshi

According to Deloitte’s 2025 Black Friday–Cyber Monday survey: 🛍 82% of consumers plan to shop during the week (up from 79% in 2024) 💰 Expected spend is down 4% to an average of $622 💳 64% plan to use credit cards or buy now, pay later (BNPL) options to stretch budgets Both lower- and higher-income households say they’ll cut back It’s also now a true hybrid event: Shoppers expect to split their time 60% online / 40% in store 72% of Gen Z plan to shop in store on Black Friday Gen Z now drives about $20 of every $100 in holiday spend (vs. $4 five years ago) source : Deloitte

• Americas: 4,995 • Europe: 3,476 • Asia & Oceania: 2,068 • Africa & the Middle East: 494 Source: Investing visuals @InvestingVisual, Visual Capitalist