Good morning.

It’s Tuesday, January 26. Somehow it's still January.

On this day, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born (1756–1791). Composer of The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro. One of the most influential figures in classical music. Wrote symphonies as a child. Casual.

Meanwhile, half the country spent the weekend buried under a snowstorm. Roads iced. Plans canceled. Nature said “stay inside” and honestly, fair. Hope everyone stayed warm, horizontal, and not pretending they enjoy shoveling snow.

Bundle up. Keep the heat on. Let’s get into it.

Today’s stories:

• Alex Honnold free-climbs skyscraper, gravity applauds

• Apple’s AirTag just got aggressively helpful

• Social media faces its tobacco moment

• Gold screams distrust in global money

• One pair of shades moved markets

• Microsoft builds chip, eyes Nvidia

• SpaceX IPO hype goes nuclear

• Zoom’s $51M bet turns billions

• A cow just used a tool

  and more…

Stocks kicked off the week higher as traders juggled politics, earnings anxiety, and a looming Fed decision — because one catalyst is never enough.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% to close at 6,950.23. The Dow added 314 points, up 0.64%, to finish at 49,412.40. The Nasdaq gained 0.43%, ending at 23,601.36.

Big Tech did the heavy lifting ahead of a packed earnings slate. Apple jumped about 3%, Meta climbed roughly 2%, and Microsoft added around 1% as investors positioned ahead of results later this week.

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Gold Hits $5,000 And Wall Street Blinks

Gold just blew past $5,000 an ounce. Earlier than Wall Street planned. Futures hit the level over the weekend, because gold does not wait for analyst notes. This isn’t about jewelry or vibes. It’s the “everything is getting debased” trade. Investors are piling into gold as government debt keeps exploding and money feels… imaginary. One economist called the move “breathtaking and scary.” Which is usually not what you want to hear about the global financial system. Gold is not panicking. People are.

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Elon Musk warms up Wall Street for a very large IPO. SpaceX is warming up for a very large IPO. Elon Musk is reportedly lining up Wall Street’s usual suspects to take it public. Think Bank of America, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley. The Avengers, but for fees. Talks point to a possible valuation around $800 billion. SpaceX was worth $400 billion not that long ago. Growth is aggressive when rockets are reusable and hype is unlimited. If it happens, SpaceX could raise up to $25 billion, making it one of the biggest IPOs ever. SpaceX makes money launching rockets, working with NASA, and selling Starlink internet from space. Apparently, that’s a solid business model now. The IPO buzz is part of a bigger tech rush. Massive AI companies are also circling the market. They’re calling them “hectocorns.” Because unicorn wasn’t dramatic enough.

Macron’s shades crashed a website and moved a stock. Emmanuel Macron wore blue aviator sunglasses at Davos. The internet noticed. So did the market. The glasses came from a tiny Italian eyewear firm, iVision Tech SpA, and retail for €659. Orders flooded in. The website crashed. Shares jumped over 70% in a week. All because one president accessorized confidently. The brand, part of Henry Jullien, suddenly became the most talked-about thing at Davos. More than trade policy. More than inflation. Sunglasses won. Even Donald Trump mocked the look during his own speech. Didn’t matter. The stock already flew. Moral of the story: never underestimate a good pair of aviators.

Zoom invested $51 million and might get billions back. Zoom stock jumped 11% after analysts remembered Zoom owns a very nice AI lottery ticket. Turns out Zoom quietly invested $51 million in Anthropic back in 2023. That stake could now be worth $2 to $4 billion. Yes, billion. Roughly a 78x return. Not bad for a side quest. Zoom’s stock hasn’t been thrilling since the world stopped living on video calls. But this investment? Suddenly the most exciting thing Zoom has done since “You’re on mute.” If Anthropic goes public, that quiet check Zoom wrote could become its best meeting ever.

AirTag Gets Better At Finding Stuff 

Apple finally dropped a new AirTag. Louder. Smarter. Longer range. Same tiny circle. The new AirTag tracks stuff from almost 200 feet away, up from about 50. Translation: you can now lose your keys outside and still feel hopeful. The speaker is 50% louder, so it actually yells back when you’re panicking. It runs on Apple’s newer Ultra Wideband chip, the same one in newer iPhones and Apple Watches. You get arrows, vibrations, sounds. A full scavenger hunt, but make it premium. Apple also leaned hard into safety. No location history stored. Encrypted everything. Anti-stalking features turned up. Because trackers should help you find keys, not strangers.

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Microsoft builds its own AI chip and comes for Nvidia. Microsoft just launched a new AI chip called the Maia 200. It’s built for inference. That’s the part where AI actually works, not learns. The expensive part. The Maia 200 is stacked. Over 100 billion transistors. Faster. More efficient. Less power drama. Microsoft says one chip can run today’s biggest AI models and still have room to grow. Casual confidence. This is also about not relying so much on Nvidia. Everyone wants their own chip now. Google has TPUs. Amazon has Trainium. Microsoft wants in. Microsoft even claims Maia beats Amazon’s and Google’s chips in key performance areas. Translation: “We did the math. Ours is faster.” The AI chip wars continue.

Cows are smarter than we thought, apparently. A cow in Austria just used a tool. On purpose. Repeatedly. Science is shaken. Veronika the cow picks up branches, chooses the right texture, and scratches herself to stop an itch. No training. No treats. Just problem-solving. Researchers confirmed it wasn’t a fluke. She picked different tools for different spots, adjusted her technique, and even used different parts of the same branch. That’s not luck. That’s strategy. Until now, tool use was mostly a chimp thing, with a side of whales. Cows were not on the list. Veronika just fixed that. We owe cows an apology.

Alex Honnold Free Climbs One Of The World’s Tallest Skyscrapers

Alex Honnold just free-climbed one of the tallest skyscrapers on Earth. No ropes. No harness. No backup plan. Honnold scaled the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 in a little over 90 minutes during Netflix’s Skyscraper Live. Millions watched. Gravity waited patiently. Everything went fine. Afterwards, Honnold said he was paid a “mid-six figures” amount. Which sounds nice until you compare it to mainstream sports, where athletes make $170 million to jog, stretch, and occasionally hit a ball. Context matters. He called the pay “embarrassing,” not because it was zero, but because risking your life on live television apparently still doesn’t qualify as elite compensation. No bonus for height. No danger premium. Best part: Honnold said he would’ve done it for free. As long as the building gave permission. Which explains both his career and why accounting departments are not impressed.

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Big Tech heads to court over kids and addiction. Meta, TikTok, and YouTube are heading to a real courtroom. With a jury. Not Congress. Not a hearing. An actual trial. A 19-year-old and her mother say the platforms knowingly built addictive features that damaged her mental health and led to self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Endless scrolls. Notifications. Algorithmic rabbit holes. You know the ones. This is the first time a jury will hear these claims directly. The case could shape more than 1,000 similar lawsuits waiting in line. Billions of dollars may be on the table. Design changes too. Suddenly, “just a platform” feels less convincing. Executives are expected to testify. Lawyers will argue. Safety tools will be mentioned. Section 230 will be waved around. And for the first time, a court will decide whether social media design — not just content — did real harm. Some are calling these the tobacco trials of the internet era. Big comparison. Big stakes. Very long weeks ahead.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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