It’s Wednesday, February 25th.

New York just survived a blizzard. And by “survived” I mean New Yorkers put on their best wool coats and ran straight to Central Park to throw snowballs like sugar-high toddlers.

Central Park looked cute: finance bros building snowmen before logging into Zoom; influencers doing slow-mo snow spins. Someone absolutely tried to romanticize frostbite. We had our winter moment. It was cute. It was aesthetic. It was enough. Now we are ready for spring. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually.

Bring us sun. Bring us 60 degrees. Bring us iced coffee season.

But first — happy hump day. Push through. Stay warm. Don’t slip on the sidewalk. And let’s finish this week strong.

Today’s stories:

Stocks climbed Tuesday as the market decided AI panic might’ve been a little dramatic.

The S&P 500 rose 0.77% to 6,890.07. The Nasdaq Composite gained 1.04%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 370 points, up 0.76%. A nearly 2% pop in Home Depot — after its first earnings beat in a year — helped steady the Dow. IBM, which had been bruised by AI anxiety the day before, also bounced back.

The real headline was Advanced Micro Devices, which jumped 8.8% after locking in a multiyear AI data center deal with Meta Platforms. Meta plans to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs and will take a performance-based warrant for up to 160 million shares. Not exactly a soft endorsement.

All of this comes just a week after Meta said it was buying millions of chips from Nvidia for its AI buildout. Nvidia added 0.7%, because in this market, there’s room for more than one chip hero.

AI disruption fears cooled. AI spending? Very much alive.

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Ikea’s $19 plush is now trading like a stock because of a baby monkey. We regret to inform you that a stuffed orangutan from IKEA is now basically a luxury asset. And yes, this is because of a monkey. Punch, an abandoned baby macaque at Ichikawa Zoo in Japan, was given an IKEA plush orangutan to cope after his mother left him immediately after birth last July. Zookeepers raised him by hand. The plush became his emotional support bestie. Last week, things escalated. An adult monkey dragged little Punch around the enclosure in circles. Punch escaped and ran straight to his stuffed orangutan in the corner. Someone filmed it. The video blew up. Cue the collective meltdown. IKEA jumped in fast, posting a photo of a plush hugging the same orangutan toy (called Djungelskog, originally $19.99) with the caption, “We’re ALL Punch’s family now.” Elite marketing timing. Now the toy is sold out in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. And of course, eBay did what eBay does. The $19.99 plush is now listed for $100… $200… even $384. For a stuffed orangutan that a baby monkey made famous.

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Bitcoin is having a rough month. Bitcoin is once again reminding everyone that “digital gold” is more of a branding exercise than a personality trait. The world’s biggest cryptocurrency dipped as much as 3% to around $62,500 and is now down roughly 24% in February, putting it on track for its worst month since mid-2022. It’s also heading toward a fifth straight monthly loss, which is the longest losing streak since 2018, aka the last time crypto dreams met reality. What’s behind the slide this time? Tariffs. After President Trump announced plans to raise global tariffs to 15%, markets got nervous, investors pulled back from riskier assets, and Bitcoin did what it usually does during macro stress — it followed stocks down. So much for the “safe haven” narrative. Analysts are blunt: when fear spikes, money runs to traditional safe assets. Bitcoin still trades like a tech stock with mood swings.

Software stocks remembered they’re not dead. On Tuesday, software stocks bounced back after Anthropic hosted its big enterprise event and basically told investors to relax. For weeks, Wall Street has been acting like AI is about to replace every software company overnight. Anthropic showed up and said: not exactly. The company updated its Claude Cowork tool so businesses can plug it into apps they already use, including Slack (owned by Salesforce), Intuit, Docusign, LegalZoom, FactSet, and Gmail. So AI isn’t deleting software. It’s layering on top of it. Companies can also add custom plugins for finance, engineering, and HR. Investors liked that message. Salesforce, Docusign, and LegalZoom jumped about 4%. Thomson Reuters surged more than 11%. FactSet rose 6%. Cybersecurity names like CrowdStrike, Okta, Zscaler, Tenable, SentinelOne, and Cloudflare also moved higher. IBM had sold off Monday after Anthropic showed a tool that could automate parts of its programming language. On Tuesday, it rebounded 3%. Crisis averted. For now.

The watch market gets a break. The watch world just exhaled. The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that most of Trump’s tariffs went beyond his authority under a 1970s law. Translation: a big chunk of the trade pressure shaking the luxury watch industry just got checked. Dealers are thrilled. Pre-owned seller SwissWatchExpo says prices could drop 2% to 3% in the next six months. Not life-changing money, but in watch terms, that’s real movement. Without tariffs hovering, sellers can price based on demand again instead of political mood swings. Over the past year, Swiss brands like Rolex kept raising prices while tariff drama between the US and Switzerland kept escalating. At one point, tariffs on Swiss imports jumped as high as 39% before being lowered to 15% after negotiations. It’s been chaos. Supply got tight. Secondhand markets got weird. Everyone blamed tariffs. Now, if they’re truly rolled back, dealers expect better access to pieces and improved sentiment across the industry. In simple terms: fewer panic price hikes, more normal buying. Trump says the Court didn’t kill tariffs entirely and that he’ll look for other ways to push his trade agenda. So this story isn’t over. But for now, collectors get a small win.

Hollywood’s billion-dollar love triangle. Warner Bros Discovery is suddenly reconsidering a sweeter offer from Paramount Skydance — even though it already agreed to sell to Netflix. Paramount reportedly raised its bid above its earlier $30 per share offer (about $108 billion including debt). Netflix’s deal sits at $27.75 per share, or $82.7 billion for the studio and streaming assets. Officially, Warner’s board still supports the Netflix deal. Unofficially, Paramount is waving a bigger check. Analysts say if Paramount goes to around $34 per share, the bidding war likely ends. Until then, it’s Hollywood math. Whoever wins gets one of the industry’s crown jewels — the studio behind Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, DC Comics, and a massive content library that basically runs the internet.

Ozempic is getting cheaper. Novo Nordisk says it will slash the list price of Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Wegovy to $675 a month starting January 1, 2027, which sounds generous until you remember they currently cost over $1,000 a month, with Wegovy flexing at $1,349 like it’s a luxury handbag. So yes, technically that’s a big drop. But if you’re paying cash out of pocket hoping for a miracle, congratulations, nothing changes for you — this price cut mostly helps people whose insurance plans are tied to the official list price, meaning it’s less “we love our customers” and more “we’re optimizing reimbursement math.” And let’s not pretend this is random kindness. Novo is feeling the heat from Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, which has been happily stealing market share in the booming GLP-1 weight-loss Olympics, and nothing inspires corporate generosity like a competitor eating your profits in real time. So the GLP-1 craze continues, the price war begins, and America stays very invested in injectable appetite control.

The UK just welcomed its first baby born from a womb transplanted from a deceased donor. Yes, read that again. Science is not playing small anymore. Baby Hugo Powell was delivered by C-section in December at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London, weighing a very healthy 6lb 13oz. Normal baby weight. Extremely not normal origin story. His mother, Grace Bell, was born with MRKH, a rare condition where the womb is underdeveloped or missing entirely. Translation: doctors once told women like her that carrying their own child wasn’t an option. And then medicine said, “Watch this.” Surgeons transplanted a womb from a deceased donor. Only two similar cases have been reported elsewhere in Europe using deceased donors, and the UK had its first baby born from a living donor transplant just last year. This is still rare territory. Like, textbook-update rare.

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AI just replaced your product photographer. Google Labs dropped a new toy inside its marketing sandbox. It’s called Photoshoot. You take one random iPhone pic of your product and suddenly it looks like you booked a $5,000 studio. It runs on something called Gemini Nano Banana. You upload a photo. The system studies it. Then it places your product into a brand-new scene. Adds lighting. Adds shadows. Makes it look expensive. Google hasn’t said when it will fully launch. They’re “collecting feedback.” Which usually means they’re waiting to see what breaks. Your next product shoot might cost zero dollars.

America is fighting the cameras. There’s a new hobby in America. Smashing surveillance cameras. Across the country, people are reportedly cutting down and destroying Flock license plate readers — the cameras mounted on poles that track where cars go and when. Flock is a $7.5 billion Atlanta startup that built a massive network of plate-scanning cameras. Police use the data. Critics say it’s mass surveillance. The anger is rising because many believe the system is helping federal immigration authorities during deportation raids. Flock says it doesn’t directly share data with ICE. But local police can share their access. So… close enough for critics. There are nearly 80,000 of these cameras nationwide. That’s a lot of electronic eyeballs. Some cities are debating canceling contracts. Others are grabbing tools. In California and Oregon, cameras were smashed or cut down. One vandal even left a note mocking the “surveillance” setup. Other incidents popped up in Connecticut, Illinois, and Virginia. At the same time, dozens of cities have rejected Flock’s tech, and some police departments have limited federal access. Turns out, people don’t love being tracked on their way to Target.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon is now “working” on finding and releasing UFO files. Because President Trump told them to. Hegseth said they’re digging into government records about UFOs, UAPs, and extraterrestrial life. He doesn’t know how long it’ll take. He also didn’t have “declassify aliens” on his 2026 bingo card. Fair. He promised they’ll follow Trump’s instructions. When asked if he thinks aliens exist, Hegseth said, “We’ll see.” So basically, same level of certainty as the rest of us. Trump announced on February 19 that he wants agencies to start releasing files related to alien life and unidentified aerial phenomena. He said there’s “tremendous interest.” He’s not wrong. The internet has been wearing a tinfoil hat for decades. This whole thing picked up steam after Barack Obama did a podcast interview and said aliens are “real.” Then quickly clarified they’re not hiding at Area 51. Probably. Area 51, for anyone new here, is that secret Air Force base in Nevada that conspiracy theories treat like an intergalactic Airbnb. The Pentagon is now reviewing files. The White House hasn’t added much. We’re all on standby.

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Hollywood’s tallest spy. Jacob Elordi is reportedly the front-runner to play James Bond, which is either the most predictable Hollywood move ever or the boldest rebrand of 007 we’ve seen in years. Yes, the same Jacob Elordi who first became famous in Netflix’s The Kissing Booth franchise, where he perfected the art of intense staring and teenage drama, might soon be ordering martinis and saving the world. To his credit, Elordi didn’t stay in rom-com land for long. He pivoted quickly into darker, more serious roles, proving he was not planning to live off slow-motion beach scenes forever. His recent performance as The Creature in Frankenstein even earned him an Oscar nomination, which is quite the glow-up from kissing booths to prestige horror. Hollywood clearly sees him as one of its fastest rising stars, and studios love a tall, broody, internationally marketable leading man. He checks many boxes. He has the presence. He has the jawline. He has the serious-actor résumé now.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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