Larry Dignan

Tesla will unveil Gen 3 version of Optimus robot in the first quarter with plans for mass production. In Tesla's fourth quarter earnings deck, the company noted:

"We made further progress on the Optimus program in 2025. In Q1 of this year, we plan to unveil the Gen 3 version of Optimus, which will include major upgrades from version 2.5, including our latest hand design. The Gen 3 is our first design meant for mass production. Preparations are underway for the first production line, including supply chain readiness, with start of production planned before the end of 2026 and eventual planned capacity of 1 million robots per year."

Meta's capital expenditures in 2026 will be between $115 billion and $135 billion, well ahead of Wall Street estimates. Let that sink in. Now let this sink in: Meta spent $72.22 billion on capex in 2025. Superintelligence isn't cheap kids. However, Meta appears to be able to pay the tab. Fourth quarter revenue was up 24% and net income was up 9%. Just imagine how much money Meta would have if it didn't have that metaverse money pit. For what it's worth (not much), Meta's Reality Labs had a fourth quarter operating loss of more than $6 billion.

Consumer confidence has tanked and now borders pessimism. What's perhaps scarier is that AI-driven layoffs aren't even factored in yet. The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell by 9.7 points in January to 84.5 (1985=100), from an upwardly revised 94.2 in December. Consumers were pessimistic about the present situation and future. Consumer confidence is now at 2014 levels. The Expectations Index, which is based on the short-term outlook for income, business and labor conditions, was 65.1, well below the 80 mark that usually signals a recession ahead. Write-in responses revolved around inflation in fuel, food and groceries and healthcare. War was also cited. Given the latest round of layoffs it's not likely that consumer confidence is going to get off the mat.

Amazon said it is cutting 16,000 jobs. The company posted the employee memo on its site. Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, said the company is offering most US workers 90 days to lok for a new roll internally. A key quote: "Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm – where we announce broad reductions every few months. That’s not our plan." However, Galetti noted that every team needs to make changes as conditions change.

Baker Hughes, best known for its energy infrastructure, is seeing a data center boom. The company, which was a SuperNova Award winner in 2023, said power systems orders were $2.5 billion in 2025 with $1 billion tied to data centers. The company said it is selling its NovaLT industrial gas turbines in oil and gas, industrial and data center markets. "Given its abundance, cost-effective reliability and comparatively lower emissions profile, natural gas continues to play a central role in powering data centers. Looking ahead to 2040, we expect global natural gas demand growth of approximately 20%," said Baker Hughes President Lorenzo Simonelli.

Texas Instruments said industrial, automotive and data center combined made up about 75% of revenue in 2025, up from about 43% in 2013. "Our customers across all regions are increasingly turning to analog and embedded technology to make their end products more reliable, more affordable and lower in power. This drives growing chip content per application or secular content growth, which will likely continue to drive faster growth in these end markets," said TI CEO Haviv Ilan, speaking on the company's fourth quarter earnings call.

Amazon said it is discontinuing its Amazon One palm authentication system for retailers June 3. Data, including palm scans and transactions, will be deleted.

Amazon's big bet on groceries now revolves around Whole Foods and its own delivery. The company said that it is closing its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations and some of them will become Whole Foods locations. The company said it is prioritizing its brick-and-mortar investments. "While we've seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven't yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion," the company said.

Google added Gemini 3 to AI overviews and added the ability to ask follow-up questions in AI Mode. Aside from retooling Google search, the company is also creating a data flywheel that feeds back into Gemini training. Here's the bet: Google's Gemini app and search will ultimately merge into one experience.

D-Wave announced a bevy of deals and advances at its Qubits 2026 conference in Florida. D-Wave landed a $10 million quantum computing as a service deal with a Fortune 100 customer, inked a $20 million agreement with Florida Atlantic University for its Advantage2 Quantum Computer, and announced new annealing and gate-model quantum computing technologies as well as a collaboration with Anduril and Davidson on US air and missile defense.

Infosys said it will integrate Cursor AI into its Infosys Topaz Fabric agentic platform. The two companies will also create a center of excellence to accelerate the use of software engineering AI agents.

Corning will provide optical fiber, cable and connectivity products to Meta under a $6 billion agreement. Corning will ramp manufacturing in North America. Meta said the deal will accelerate its data center buildout.