Labubu's stock price soared by 10%.

Pop Mart's stock price on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange showed a sharp increase. This was due to a large-scale buyback of its own shares (buyback): the company spent $32 million on this to support the market.

In recent months, investors have been concerned that the hype surrounding the toothy monsters has subsided, as the company's value has decreased by 40% since August 2025. The management decided to halt the decline and prove that the business is in good shape by buying back shares for the first time in two years.

Bezos's Blue Origin has announced the launch of a satellite communication network with more than 5,000 satellites, which will be used by government agencies, data centers, and businesses.

The project is called TeraWave and will serve corporate customers — data centers, government agencies, and large companies, Blue Origin said.
The network will include 5,280 satellites in low Earth orbit (data transfer speed up to 144 Gbps) and 128 in medium Earth orbit (up to 6 Tbps).

The satellite constellation is scheduled to be deployed in the fourth quarter of 2027. The company did not specify how long it will take to build the entire network.
Blue Origin announced the launch of TeraWave a few months after the rebranding of another Jeff Bezos company's satellite internet service, Amazon.

Its project is called Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper), which is planned to include over 3,000 satellites in low Earth orbit.

Amazon took 4th place in the ranking of the most expensive brands.

Apple once again became the most expensive brand in the world. The brand value increased by 6% and reached $607.6 billion, which allowed the company to maintain its first place in the Brand Finance Global 500 ranking.

Microsoft took the second place, with its brand value estimated at $565.2 billion, which is the second time in the history of the Brand Finance ranking that a brand value exceeded $550 billion. Google took the third place with an indicator of $433.1 billion, confirming the resilience of technology giants in the face of global competition.

The fourth was Amazon ($369.9 billion).

OpenAI enters the Global 500 for the first time, highlighting how quickly AI-powered brands transform technological leadership into brand equity.

Amazon is planning a second round of job cuts next week as part of its broader goal of trimming some 30,000 corporate workers, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The company in October cut some 14,000 white-collar jobs, about half of the 30,000 target first reported by Reuters. The total this time is expected to be roughly the same as last year and could begin as soon as Tuesday, the people said, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss Amazon’s plans.

Goldman Sachs CEO: AI Won't Cause a "Job Apocalypse".

David Solomon has criticized popular predictions that artificial intelligence will leave people without jobs. According to the top manager, there is no impending catastrophe.

The banker calls what's happening classic "creative destruction": technology has always killed old professions, but created new ones. Goldman Sachs itself has already launched the One GS 3.0 project to automate routine, but the goal is not to reduce the staff, but to expand business opportunities. However, Solomon admitted that the process is difficult: integrating AI in corporations is "expensive, long, and complicated."

CEO's forecast for 2026: the market is waiting for a "recalibration of expectations." The euphoria will subside, and the pace of technology adoption may slow down as companies realize the real challenges of transition.

OpenAI will dramatically slow down hiring due to AI's efficiency

Sam Altman said that the company plans to "dramatically slow down" the rate of staff expansion. The reason is the development of neural networks, which allows you to do much more with fewer forces.

The CEO of OpenAI stressed that we are not talking about a complete hiring freeze, the company still needs people. The new strategy is to avoid aggressive recruitment so that you don't have to have "uncomfortable conversations" about layoffs when the AI takes over some of the tasks.

Already, 66% of customers use AI to search for products.

75% find these tools useful when making their choices. However, 92% still read reviews and view photos of real customers before placing an order, according to a study by Bazaarvoice.

The impact of AI is reflected in consumer behavior. 72% of respondents use AI specifically for product recommendations. 45% of respondents reported purchasing products based on recommendations provided by AI tools.

However, trust in AI remains limited at the final stage: 67% of respondents stated that they are not ready to make purchases directly through AI interfaces, and many of them prefer to visit brand and retailer websites.

Advertising in ChatGPT is expensive.

$60 per 1,000 views — this is the price that OpenAI wants to set for advertising in the chatbot, according to The Information citing sources. However, the first advertisers will only receive "general" performance data, such as the number of integration views or clicks.

Ads in ChatGPT will start appearing for users in the United States in the near future, but they will not be shown to users under the age of 18 or in chat rooms where sensitive topics such as health are discussed.

OpenAI is secretly developing a biometric-based social network.

To get inside, users will have to confirm their identity through Face ID or iris scanning (World project technologies). This is reported by Forbes sources.

A team of 10 people is working on the prototype. The main idea is to create a space exclusively for "real people," as opposed to competitors like X, which suffer from a large number of fake accounts and spam. It is likely that the social network's functionality will be closely linked to AI-powered tools for generating photos and videos.

The launch date has not yet been determined.

Microsoft is revising its plans to integrate AI into Windows 11.

The company has decided to reduce the scale of use of the Copilot AI assistant, focusing on developing more specialized functions. The changes are related to the desire to make AI more practical and user-friendly.

The company now intends to optimize AI by removing redundant features and making the system more personalized. In place of Copilot, Microsoft is going to develop Recall, a task and note management tool that will aim to simplify data handling.

ChatGPT has started testing ads with a minimum budget of $200,000.

OpenAI has started limited beta testing of ads in ChatGPT, inviting a small group of brands with a budget of at least $200,000 to participate. According to ADWEEK, the launch is taking place in a closed format and under strict control.

The results of the beta test will determine whether advertising will become a full-fledged part of the ChatGPT business model or remain a niche experiment. Market sources report that the actual entry threshold for some advertisers may be as high as $250,000.

Elon Musk became the first person in history to have a net worth exceeding $800 billion.

According to the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires global ranking, Musk, the richest person in the world, has a net worth of $852.5 billion.

This result was achieved through the merger of SpaceX, a space exploration company, and xAI, an artificial intelligence startup. The combined company is valued at $1.25 trillion. Prior to this merger, Musk owned approximately 42% of SpaceX and 49% of xAI.

Microsoft launches a marketplace for media content licenses for training AI models.

Publisher Content Marketplace is a platform where publishers will be able to offer licensed access to their content to developers of AI-based solutions. On PCM, it is possible to set your own conditions and rates for access to materials, as well as to track their actual use.

The project is being developed in collaboration with major media companies, including Vox Media, The Associated Press, Condé Nast, People, and Yahoo.

The initiative is based on the desire to equalize the interests of publishers and developers. Thus, the former will retain ownership of the materials and control over the terms of their use, while the latter will receive structured access to high-quality information for training their models.

🇩🇪 Germany tells Amazon to stop price caps for third‑party sellers
Germany’s cartel office ordered Amazon to stop imposing price ceilings on online retailers on its German marketplace and demanded €59M it says Amazon gained from anti‑competitive conduct. (Source: Reuters via Boursorama)

Why it matters: marketplaces that compete with sellers can’t also “steer” seller pricing without triggering regulator backlash.

👉 Seller takeaway: expect more scrutiny on price‑parity and pricing controls. Build pricing strategy that survives rule shifts (and diversify channels).

The documentary "Melania" by Amazon MGM Studios, which focuses on the life of US First Lady Melania Trump after her return to the White House, has been released.

The project has become a record-breaking expensive for the documentary genre: the total costs are estimated at $75 million. About $40 million Amazon paid for the rights to the film, with Melania Trump herself receiving $28 million of this amount, and another $35 million was spent on marketing and distribution. At the same time, analysts expect that from a commercial point of view, the tape is unlikely to pay off.

However, it seems that it was more important for Amazon to demonstrate its loyalty to the current administration. The NYT reports that Melania herself produced and edited the film, which resulted in a lack of artistic and journalistic integrity.

Former Amazon Executive Traded Office Job for Tulip Farm and Found True Happiness.

For decades, Andrew Miller lived the life of a classic workaholic: waking up at 4 AM and working 70-hour weeks. By the age of 50, he faced professional burnout and realized he was doing the wrong thing.

As a result, he quit the corporation and started his own farm. Now he grows tulips on an area comparable in size to 17 football fields.

Andrew himself says that he has finally found harmony by changing the rhythm of the metropolis for a quiet life among flowers.

Unlike retailers and marketplaces that have introduced agentic assistants, traditional financial services systems have built decades of trust with consumers by providing security and oversight for automated purchases.

This suggests that consumers place their trust not so much in agentic AI as a technology but in their ability to supervise and reverse automated buying decisions. Nobody wants an agent to buy the wrong-colored sofa or a parka with broken zippers, and financial services institutions have a long-established playbook for processing returns, reimbursements and refunds.

That’s why shoppers get more cautious with merchants with consumer-facing agentic tools. Among people who use AI within a merchant’s app or website, 58% would rather keep control, using AI to browse, then completing the purchase themselves, rather than letting a merchant’s agent complete the purchase.

In other words, consumers are more likely to trust payment providers than merchants to make autonomous purchases. Among shoppers open to using generative AI (a precursor to agentic that doesn’t have full autonomy or the ability to independently make buying decisions), the most trusted assistants don’t belong to retailers at all. Just over 1 in 4 consumers said they would trust autonomous AI from their digital wallet provider the most, while nearly 1 in 5 said they would trust it when offered by Chase, Bank of America, Discover or another credit card issuer. Just 16% said they would put the most trust in agents offered by the merchants they shop with.

OpenAI has started implementing ads in ChatGPT.

The first ads appeared in the interface of the free version and the Go tariff for some users in the US. The company claims that the innovation does not violate privacy: advertisers receive only generalized statistics and do not see the history of correspondence.

Targeting works in real time — for example, when discussing cooking, the system will offer food delivery services, however, in dialogues about politics or health, advertising is completely prohibited.

Advertising revenues should compensate for the enormous costs of computing power.

What’s at stake for merchants.

That hesitation matters for merchants, especially as retailers and marketplaces race to build agentic AI directly into the shopping experience. Take, for instance, grocery giant Kroger. In November, the company announced that it was partnering with Instacart to provide “agentic shopping experiences” for its customers.

“Interacting with an AI agent makes shopping and meal planning as simple as a conversation, helping customers build their basket or offering meal suggestions, truly understanding what matters most to them,” Kroger Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer Yael Cosset said in a statement about the announcement.

Retail giant Amazon sits in an interesting spot, thanks to its Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform. Amazon executives are betting that shoppers will eventually come around on agentic commerce.

“It has a chance to be good for customers, has a chance to be really good for eCommerce,” Amazon President and CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s last earnings call in October.

He added that while Amazon’s marketplace is already great for customers who are shopping with a specific purchase in mind, agentic assistants will be able to play the role that an in-store salesperson would usually take on.

From Etsy’s vantage point, shoppers aren’t fully comfortable with agentic commerce yet, but momentum is building.

Amazon will launch a marketplace where publishers can sell their content to AI companies, according to Reuters.

Amazon expects the marketplace to become one of its key AI tools.

➡️ The information came amid negotiations between publishers and AI companies on the rules for using online content, both for training models and for generating responses to users.

Publishers are pushing for payment for use, expecting that payments will increase as the volume of use of their content increases.

Research: Neural networks make you work harder, not less.

Scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, came to a paradoxical conclusion: the introduction of AI does not unload employees, but only increases the load. For eight months, the authors observed a technology company and found out that access to neural networks creates a productivity trap.

Employees who have been paid for their subscriptions have started volunteering to take on tasks that were previously outsourced, such as designers writing code and researchers doing engineering. The desire for maximum efficiency has led to people sending prompts even during meetings and lunch breaks. As a result, the workday is not shortened, but rather condensed.