Hits, misses and what went under the radar
- AI Investment Bubble: Capital is flooding into AI startups at a rate that outpaces both revenues and real-world deployment capacity. Just this year, $350–400B was invested – that’s 3× 2023 levels. Much of it is circular deals — Nvidia invests in OpenAI, who uses the money to buy chips from Nvidia — then both companies’ market valuations increase. Interesting maths. For reference, OpenAI is expected to lose $143B between now and 2029. They’ve already raised $64B in venture funding.
- Social Media Ban (Australia) – Good thing: I’ll just say this: while underage kids drink alcohol every weekend, it’s still a good law. Age gating matters in society. Medically and socially, the jury is in — social media is a net negative for teens. The ban should be until they’re 18. Anyone who disagrees hasn’t done their homework, has been hoodwinked, or doesn’t care about their kids’ brain development. Choose your own path.
- Rise of the Robots: Bigger than Generative AI. This is the real shift. Tesla, Figure, and Unitree are collectively testing over 1,000 robots in real workplaces — logistics, manufacturing, and retail. The Figure Bot worked on the BMW factory floor helping produce 30,000 cars — and is being retired after 11 months of straight work — bruised and battered. This is big.
- Agentic AI Disappoints: As far as I can tell, Agentic AI hasn’t delivered — to expectations, or any real value to anyone organised… yet. The main issue so far seems to be the Take off & Landing problem.
- Data Centre Boom: Data centres are the new oil rigs. Seen as the modern equivalent that power the emergent AI economy. To get a sense of the scale of this boom: in the 30 years since internet browsers arrived, there are currently 5,426 in the USA. As I typed this, a further 3,000 are currently being built. It’s a good time to sell stuff that goes inside them. In gold rushes, people selling picks and shovels are often the ones who get rich!
- The Google Comeback – Search is dead, long live Google: The Code Red worked. Co-founder Sergey Brin came back in a technical role, and now Gemini, Nannobanana 3, and NotebookLM are as good as any generative AI on the market. While the business model might not be as lucrative as search— yet — they are definitely not “Kodak-ing”.
- The Apple AI Flail: We’re still waiting, Apple… where’s your AI effort? No — integrating OpenAI is not really acceptable for a company with your level of resources! Apple Intelligence gone missing. If there’s one company poised to win the digital twin personal AI game, it’s Apple. Maybe they’ll surprise us in 2026? If they don’t, then I’m calling it: Apple has officially entered their “bumper bar era” — annual micro-changes to the exterior and features of their best-selling ‘car’, the iPhone.
- The Rapacious Energy Appetite of AI: AI’s energy and cooling demands are putting the grid and household access at risk. By 2026, data centres will consume about the same amount of electricity as Japan. Let’s hope this creates an economic imperative to expedite more renewable infrastructure.
- Deepfake Security Risk: To use a fav’ tech term — this has received exponential growth! Criminal groups have weaponised off-the-shelf AI tools to impersonate executives, family members, and government bodies. Deepfake fraud is up 300% year-on-year. As expected, those creating the tools didn’t carry the can.
- Billionaire Pushback: Finally, commentators and politicians are starting to go after billionaires — it’s long overdue. Yes, chasing money is fine, but no one needs a billion dollars. For reference, it takes 12 days to count to a million. It takes 32 years to count to a billion. If you earned $10,000 a day for 190,000 years (yes, when cavemen existed), you’d still have less money than Elon Musk… and people can’t afford groceries or rent.
- AI Cold War: China dismantled the “bigger is better” AI narrative, proving high-performance models don’t require infinite capital. They did this in two ways. DeepSeek trained its V3 model for just $6M — a fraction of the $100M+ spent on OpenAI’s GPT-4 — and it uses only 10% of the compute of Meta’s comparable models. Secondly, they’ve focused on niche industrial AI with humanoids and specific use-case physical AI (think AI-powered robots that do specific things in industrial settings), while the US might be chasing rainbows with dreams of AGI.
- Synthetic Web (50%): The internet is no longer a place of people — 51% of all web traffic is now bots, not humans. Over half the articles published from 2025 were completely AI-generated. Not assisted, enhanced, or proofed… done in their entirety.
- The Crypto Rollercoaster: Bitcoin started 2025 at $95,000, surged 33% to an October peak of $126,163, propelled by record ETF inflows and the creation of a U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The rally then abruptly reversed in a “mini tsunami” as hawkish Federal Reserve policies triggered a 32% crash, dragging prices down to $85,000 — mid-December 2024 levels. The lesson here: an asset without a yield is always subject to speculation and wild swings in value.
- AI Companions and Therapists: About a third of people have used AI for emotional support or therapy-like conversations. It can actually be quite good. Among Gen Z, the trend is a tad more personal: 33% have engaged with AI as a romantic companion, and 72% of US teens have tried AI companion apps. General-purpose bots now handle over 1 million messages about mental distress each week, while the dedicated AI companion market has surged to an estimated $15 billion, with users spending an average of 92 minutes per day talking to digital “friends” or “partners.” Maybe our future will involve synthetic relationships, but it definitely it needs thoughtful regulation to diminish the inevitable downside.
- What’s yours? – Feel free to add your key trend in the comments. I’d love to hear from you… and I’ll be back before your end with my 2026 predictions.
Thanks for reading, have a safe holiday & keep thinking.
Steve.
** Get me into do an AI keynote at your next event and as a blog reader – get 2 nights free at my luxury farmhouse on the Bellarine Peninsula.