Meta’s action follows Mark Zuckerberg’s declaration in January 2026, where he identified his company’s next growth area, glasses, which billions of people wear for vision correction.

According to the tech giant, the new products, “Ray-Ban Meta Blayzer Optics” and “Ray-Ban Meta Scriber Optics,” would become available at optical retailers ⁠in the United States and select international markets on April 14.

“The new models will feature overextension hinges, interchangeable nose pads and optician-adjustable temple tips to make them adaptable to each user’s unique face shape. The Facebook parent plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in its pursuit of ‘personal superintelligence,’ in which advanced gadgets, among other products, would bring the benefits of AI to individual users. Meta develops its AI glasses in partnership ‌with ⁠Ray-Ban owner EssilorLuxottica,” reported Reuters.

Discussing global smart glasses, shipments in the domain reached 9.6 million units in 2025, with Meta alone accounting for about 76.1% of the total. As per International Data Corporation’s research director Ramon Llamas, in 2026, the figure is expected to reach 13.4 million units.

The social media conglomerate launched Meta ⁠Ray-Ban Display glasses at USD 799 last year, with a built-in display that enables users to read messages, follow navigation directions and interact with AI services without using a phone.

Recently, Meta delayed ⁠the model’s global rollout, citing a mismatch between strong demand and short supply. The Display smart glasses can also be ordered with prescription lenses for an additional USD 200.

And Meta is not alone in bringing out the next-generation smart gadgets. Snap, too, has established ⁠an independent subsidiary for its augmented reality (AR) smart glasses and is reportedly gearing up for the product launch. Google, on the other hand, has partnered with Warby Parker to launch AI glasses.

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The Wall Street brokerage, as per the reports, has cut its rating on global equities to “equal weight” from “overweight”, while raising US Treasuries and cash to “overweight” from “equal weight.”

“Uncertainty around magnitude and duration of oil supply disruption means outcomes for risk assets have become increasingly asymmetrical,” Morgan Stanley strategists said.

Brent has soared 59% in March 2026, ⁠its steepest monthly jump, even exceeding gains seen during the 1990 Gulf War, as the Strait of Hormuz remains choked, affecting the flow of 20%–25% of global seaborne oil and 20% of LNG trade. Futures have already climbed above USD 116 a barrel.

The brokerage warned that if oil prices stay at around USD 150-USD 180 per barrel, global equity valuations could shrink nearly 25%. It has also ‌trimmed its overall ⁠equity exposure ⁠through a downgrade in the United States, apart from terming Japanese stocks to “equal weight” from “overweight.”

“We turn equal weight on Japanese stocks given negative tail risks as we ‌expect them to come under pressure from ⁠supply chains and global recessionary impacts in a scenario where the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for longer,” Morgan Stanley strategists said, while advocating a preference for American stocks compared to other regions, given higher earnings-per-share growth.

In 2025, investors shunned their United States-based assets due to tariff-related uncertainties and ended up rotating cash to European, Japanese and emerging ‌markets.

However, in 2026, there has been a behavioural shift, about which Morgan Stanley stated, “Fund flows to US equities and bonds have ⁠overtaken the rest of the world since the Middle East conflict began last month, with investors looking to US assets as a more defensive market again.”

“In an oil supply shock, US Treasuries offer better diversification ‌as the country is less energy import-dependent than Europe,” ⁠the venture concluded.

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Around the same time, reports began circulating that the Michigan-based medical technology giant was facing a major cyber incident. A voicemail at its US headquarters referenced a ‘building emergency’ Internally, operations were disrupted. Externally, questions were mounting.

Then came the claim. A hacktivist group known as Handala Hack Team, believed to have links to Iranian intelligence, posted a lengthy statement on Telegram, claiming responsibility for a large-scale data-wiping attack. According to the group, more than 200,000 systems, servers, and devices across 79 countries had been wiped. No ransom demand, negotiation, just erasure.

Right now, it is still unclear how much damage has actually been done, and the claims haven’t been independently confirmed. But even the possibility of an attack at that scale targeting a company so deeply embedded in global healthcare has sent ripples far beyond the organisation itself. Because Stryker is not just another corporate name.

Its products sit inside operating rooms. Its systems support surgical workflows. Its supply chains feed directly into hospitals, clinics, and critical care environments. So, when something like this happens, the impact does not stay contained; it spreads.

Not Just Another Breach

For years, cyberattacks have followed a familiar pattern. Break in, encrypt systems, demand payment. Ransomware became almost routine, but this incident doesn’t quite fit that mould. There is no clear financial motive. No demand. No obvious attempt to monetise the breach.

Instead, what is being described if the claims hold is something more destructive. A wiper-style attack, designed not to extract value, but to remove it entirely. That distinction matters.

Errol Weiss, Chief Security Officer at Health-ISAC, sees this as part of a broader shift.

“We are absolutely seeing a shift toward disruption-focused attacks in healthcare, and it is tightly linked to the broader geopolitical tensions. Iran-aligned and sympathetic hacktivist groups have been increasingly targeting US and Israeli critical infrastructure to make political statements and retaliate for actions against Iran since the war escalated in late February,” Weiss told International Finance.

In other words, what he meant was that the timing isn’t random. The digital world is increasingly reflecting real-world tensions, including those involving Iran and the United States. Healthcare, somewhat unexpectedly, is becoming a part of that equation.

Weiss puts it plainly: “Destructive activity against healthcare and its supply chain is not just about money anymore. It is about sending a message, and creating maximum operational and psychological impact.”

Authorised Tools Used In Unauthorised Ways

If the intent is shifting, so are the methods. One of the more striking aspects of this incident is the reported use of Microsoft Intune, a legitimate enterprise device management platform, to carry out system wipes. No obvious malware, no dramatic breach signature, just authorised tools, used in unauthorised ways. It’s subtle, quiet, and incredibly effective.

Weiss explains why this approach is so difficult to defend against: “Abusing legitimate tools like Microsoft Intune is a classic ‘living off the land’ tactic, and it is incredibly hard to spot because it looks like normal administrative and IT activity.”

That is the uncomfortable reality. The attack does not look like an attack. It looks like a routine admin action, which means traditional detection methods, the ones designed to spot malicious software, don’t always work. That leaves organisations exposed in ways they are not always prepared for.

Weiss points to a critical gap. He says, “For high-risk actions, like issuing a device wipe, there should be built-in controls such as dual-admin approval, so a single compromised account cannot trigger a catastrophic event.”

One account, one mistake, one breach, and suddenly, thousands of systems can disappear.

Not Entirely New, But Potentially Escalating

Chester Wisniewski, Global Field CTO at Sophos, offers a slightly more cautious take on whether this marks a definitive shift.

“Overall, no, but in this case, we might begin to see this shift. Historically, Iran has utilised ‘wiper’ attacks. If they ramp up their activity. These attacks might become more prevalent,” he told International Finance.

While disruption-focused attacks are not yet dominant, the conditions are there, and they may be evolving.

On the use of legitimate tools, Wisniewski is clear that this is not new.

“Living off the land has been very common for at least a decade now. This technique was even used during the Target breach in 2013,” he said.

“What’s changed is the context, and the scale. Looking for common strains of malware is still important, but careful monitoring of behaviour and unusual tool usage is essential for an effective defence,” he added.

In other words, organisations need to rethink what ‘normal’ looks like inside their own systems, because attackers are already doing that.

The Ripple Effect Nobody Talks About

When a company like Stryker is disrupted, the immediate assumption is straightforward: hospitals will feel the impact. But Weiss highlights something more nuanced and, in some ways, more concerning.

He says, “The healthcare supply chain is deeply interconnected, but paradoxically, much of the downstream fallout we see is actually self-inflicted.”

It’s a surprising statement, but it makes sense.

“Hyper-conditioned to fear a ransomware or malware outbreak, many organisations default to a knee-jerk reaction: proactively severing B2B connections. That instinct to isolate, disconnect, protect is understandable, but it can backfire,” he said.

“That panic is what frequently escalates a targeted incident into a widespread service disruption. The damage doesn’t just come from the attack. It comes from the reaction to it. In a sector like healthcare, where timing and coordination matter, those reactions can have real consequences,” he added.

A Sector Under Pressure

There is an ongoing debate about whether healthcare is being specifically targeted or simply exposed.

Weiss says, “Healthcare is a prime target because its disruption creates immediate, tangible panic and maximum pain at a very personal level. Hospitals aren’t just infrastructure; they’re emotional infrastructure. Disrupt them, and the impact is immediate and visible.”

“The historical underinvestment in cybersecurity and reliance on complex, fragile supply chains make the health sector a highly vulnerable pressure point during global conflicts,” he added.

However, Wisniewski takes a more measured stance: “I am not sure there is evidence for this…the majority of attacks are opportunistic.”

It’s a subtle difference in interpretation, but perhaps both can be true. Healthcare may not always be the intended target, but it remains one of the most impactful ones.

Where It Breaks: Identity And Trust

If there is a single thread running through incidents like this, it is identity. Who has access, who can act, and who is trusted.

Wisniewski points to a striking statistic: “Almost 70% of incidents we responded to in 2025 were the result of some sort of identity compromise. That is not a technical failure. That is a trust failure.”

Credentials stolen, access abused, systems misused. Once inside, attackers don’t need to force their way through; they just walk.

Highlights another dimension of the problem, Weiss said, “Too many healthcare organisations still treat their centralised device management platforms as inherently trusted infrastructure rather than primary attack surfaces.”

This assumption that certain systems are safe creates blind spots, and attackers tend to find those first.

Recovery Isn’t Just About Numbers

The scale of the alleged attack – tens or even hundreds of thousands of systems – sounds overwhelming, and it is. But not all systems are equal.

As Chester Wisniewski explains, “It is important to differentiate quantity from importance.”

Many endpoints, such as laptops and desktops, can be rebuilt slowly and with significant effort, but in a relatively predictable way. What’s far more challenging to restore are the on-premise servers and cloud infrastructure that sit at the core of operations.

Those systems are different. They are not just devices; they represent the functioning backbone of the business. Restoring them is not simply an IT exercise; it becomes a business-critical process that can define how quickly an organisation recovers.

Are We Ready for What Comes Next?

This is where the conversation shifts from analysis to something more serious. Because if this incident is not an outlier, but a preview of what is coming, then the question becomes unavoidable: are we actually ready?

Errol Weiss doesn’t hesitate in his response, stating, “Candidly, the healthcare sector is drastically underprepared. Which brings us to the part that is difficult to ignore: If hospitals are left fighting these large-scale fires alone, people could die.”

This is not framed as a distant possibility. It reads more like a warning.

What Needs To Change

There is no single fix here, no silver bullet that can eliminate the risk. But there are clear starting points.

Wisniewski keeps it simple: keep firewalls and VPNs updated, enforce strong MFA, and watch closely for identity misuse. Basic steps, but they only matter if you actually stick to them.

At the same time, Weiss argues for stronger safeguards and a more collaborative approach.

He said, “Organisations should immediately lock down their administrative environments, but defence cannot happen in a silo. Because attackers are already sharing knowledge and evolving together, defenders need to do the same.”

More Than Just a Cyber Incident

The claims surrounding this attack may ultimately turn out to be exaggerated. It’s also possible that the disruption will be contained. In a few weeks, this may just become another case study in a long history of cyber incidents. However, it doesn’t quite feel that way, because this incident represents something much larger.

Cyberattacks are not just about data or money anymore. They are about disruption, sending a message, and hitting systems people depend on most. When something like this hits a company like Stryker, it doesn’t stay online; it spills into hospitals, supply chains, and real life.

The post Why Microsoft Intune’s role in Stryker cyberattack is a scary prospect appeared first on International Finance.

“There was no shortage of headwinds to customer satisfaction with the property claims experience this year, particularly when it comes to the financial burden customers face, but carriers were really able to counter the negative effects of higher prices by delivering exceptional service,” said Mark Garrett, director of insurance intelligence at JD Power.

“Thanks to investments made over the past several years in digital channels that make it faster and easier to communicate with customers throughout the claims process, insurers have made important efficiency gains that are translating into better customer experience. Despite the industry-wide improvement, however, customer expectations are not always met, with almost one in five customers indicating their experience was not great, so there is still work to do,” the official added further.

“Customers are satisfied despite cost pressures: A total of 19% of homeowners’ insurance customers faced insurer-driven premium hikes, out-of-pocket expenses, and a deductible of USD 1,000 or more. Even though satisfaction among customers who faced all three of these challenges averages only 606 (on a 1,000-point scale) this year, overall customer satisfaction for the industry rises 20 points to 702,” the study noted.

“The average amount of time required to complete a repair is 29.6 days, down 2.8 days from 2025, and the average amount of time before customers receive final payment is 40.7 days, down 3.4 days from last year. Repair cycle times are heavily influenced by the use of direct repair programmes, through which the insurance company connects homeowners with a contractor from their approved network. Among the 41% of customers using these programmes, there is a notable improvement in the average time to start work, leading to faster overall repairs—averaging more than two weeks shorter for higher-severity claims compared to those not using the programmes,” it added.

While the utilisation of digital tools increased throughout touchpoints of an insurance claim, be it reporting the first notice of loss to submitting photos used to estimate/pay the claim, apart from receiving updates, overall levels of satisfaction remained higher among customers using digital tools for each of these interactions, compared to those who performed the same functions offline.

“While 51% of insurers fully meet customer expectations for how their policy will work, and 15% exceed those expectations, 34% of customers say their policy did not fully meet expectations. Common issues experienced among those whose policies did not fully meet expectations are a lack of explanations or the opportunity to discuss the estimate/settlement; high out-of-pocket costs; and frequent customer-initiated contacts,” the report concluded.

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The news also comes against the backdrop of rising oil prices fuelling inflation concerns and lifting expectations of further European Central Bank (ECB) rate hikes. While Iran has dismissed United States President Donald Trump’s talks of negotiations as “fake news,” reports claiming administration insiders as sources stated that Washington would continue its strikes against the Western Asian nation.

Talking about Bund yields, Germany’s 10-year government bond yield, ‌the euro area’s benchmark, ⁠dropped 0.5 ⁠basis points to 3.01%. A couple of days back, it reached 3.077%, its highest level since June 2011.

Money markets have fully priced ‌in two European Central Bank interest rate hikes ⁠by July 2026, along with a deposit facility rate at 2.65% by year-end. The ratio currently stands at 2%.

According to Reuters, Germany’s two-year yields, more sensitive to expectations for policy rates, were down 1.5 bps at 2.60%. They hit 2.764% the day before, their highest level since July 2024. Italy’s 10-year government bond yields fell one bp to 3.91%, after recently reaching 4.119%, their highest since July 2024.

The yield gap of ⁠Italian government bonds versus Bunds was at 85 bps. It was at 63 bps before the attacks against Iran and hit 53.50 in mid-January this year, its lowest level since August ‌2008. The French spread, on the other hand, was at 69 bps ⁠from 58 bps before the conflict.

Discussing the existing money market mood, Commerzbank rates strategist Hauke Siemssen said, “Markets look set to remain in sell-off mode as latest headlines out of the Middle East point to prolonged energy price increases.”

Goldman Sachs also expects the ECB to deliver two 25 basis point interest rate hikes in April and June 2026.

“At the April meeting, only a few data pointers for March will be available, which would render a potential hike a risk management exercise and a sign of commitment to stay ahead of the inflation curve. More hawkish-leaning council members seem in favour of an April hike, while centrist council members ‌should ultimately tip the balance,” Siemssen concluded.

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Bank of Montreal, the third-largest Canadian bank by market value, said in October that it would sell 138 branches to First Citizens Bank, apart from reinvesting in markets with stronger client engagement and longer-term growth prospects.

Bank of Montreal’s latest move comes amid some of the biggest American banking players investing in building branches in affluent areas to attract more clients, earn consumer trust and provide higher-value services such as mortgage services and wealth management. In 2023, Bank of Montreal bought BNP Paribas’ US unit, Bank of the West, for USD 16.3 billion. This was the BMO’s largest deal to date, giving it access to nearly two million customers, about 500 retail branches, and commercial and wealth offices in the Midwest and Western United States.

“The bank plans to open three new financial centres in Greater Los Angeles in 2026, two in the Bay Area and two in San Diego, which will create hundreds of jobs and expand access to in-person and advice-led banking,” the lender said in its media note.

Bank of Montreal has over 220 financial centres in California, and the planned expansions would add more than 50% to its footprint in the American state. Shares of BMO have returned a little over 7% so far in 2026, ahead of its larger peer, Royal Bank of Canada.

Meanwhile, BMO is navigating a more volatile North American rate environment while doubling down on expansion and capital discipline in the United States. For global investors, BMO offers a diversified North American banking franchise with exposure to cross-border trade, wealth management, and capital markets, but faces risks like cyclical credit and regulations.

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However, in this article, International Finance will discuss in detail SoftBank’s rush to forge partnerships with OpenAI and the American tech industry in general, as the ongoing AI boom is also witnessing heavy spending on data centres. In January, OpenAI and SoftBank announced their roadmap to invest $500 million each in California-based SB Energy (a SoftBank-owned company) to expand data centre and power infrastructure for their Stargate initiative. SB Energy will build and operate OpenAI’s previously announced 1.2-gigawatt data centre site in Milam County, Texas.

Talking about Stargate, it is a $500 billion multi-year initiative to build AI data centres for training and inference, backed by major investors including Oracle. SoftBank’s aggressive spending spree on the data centre front comes amid the tech companies’ mad rush to secure their power infrastructure. Energy access is becoming a critical constraint on AI expansion, with the push for larger and more numerous data centres driving electricity demand higher.

SoftBank will also be acquiring Florida-based digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge Group in a deal valued at $4 billion. Through this, the Japanese company will be penetrating the digital infrastructure segment further, aligning with the vision of its billionaire founder, Masayoshi Son, who has made the United States’ AI boom his investment target. He wants to capitalise on surging demand for the computing capacity that underpins AI applications.

DigitalBridge invests in digital infrastructure sectors such as data centres, cell towers, fibre networks, small-cell systems and edge infrastructure. The company, which as of September 2025 possesses around $108 billion in assets, making it one of the largest dedicated investors in the digital ecosystem, also has a Stargate link.

It, along with OpenAI, Oracle and Abu Dhabi-based tech investor MGX, is investing billions of dollars in the project, under which five new computing sites across Texas, New Mexico and Ohio will have a combined power capacity of about seven gigawatts.

Building an AI war chest

Masayoshi Son’s latest interview with The Times Magazine gave a sneak peek of what is going through his mind, in terms of SoftBank’s road ahead in the AI domain. After making a fortune in software and transferring that success into domains like telecoms and a raft of tech ventures, Son is now preparing SoftBank’s $180 billion war chest for AI.

Be it taking control of chip firms Arm, Graphcore and Ampere Computing, as well as self-driving car start-up Wayve, or the investments into Intel and OpenAI, all of them have one thing in common: Son’s emphasis on artificial superintelligence (ASI), which he envisions becoming “10,000 times smarter than humans within a decade.”

“ASI combined with physical AI (including humanoid robotics) will comprise 10% of global GDP in 10 to 15 years, followed by 30% over 30 years,” Son predicted.

Masayoshi Son is known for following a high-risk, even higher-leveraged investment style that has courted both success and disasters. While the $20 million investment in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (worth close to $200 billion at its peak) gave the SoftBank boss a sort of legendary status, the $18.5 billion he pumped into the now-bankrupt office-sharing venture WeWork also got listed among history’s most bizarre moves.

However, the ongoing AI boom has given Son another opportunity to be a risk-taker. SoftBank shares hit a record high in October 2025, briefly propelling Son to once again become the richest man in Japan. However, he has got a bigger role now: spearheading Silicon Valley’s bet to scale up US data centres and AI infrastructure, thereby writing the rulebook of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0).

The SoftBank boss has also reportedly proposed a vast $1 trillion AI and robotics complex in Arizona, dubbed “Project Crystal Land,” that will also incorporate a free-trade zone alongside Taiwan’s chipmaking giant TSMC. By tapping into the Donald Trump Administration’s appetite for big numbers, as well as the clamour to reshore chipmaking and reassert American tech leadership against China, Son has pivoted SoftBank as an essential partner toward revamping US AI infrastructure.

And the investment vehicle supercharging SoftBank’s AI pivot is its “Vision Fund.” The entity, apart from being a steady investor in AI companies, including OpenAI, holds stakes in chip designer Arm, along with companies involved in robotics and autonomous vehicles. As of December 2025, through the fund’s strategic investments, the Japanese tech conglomerate has remained a profit-making machine, that too for four consecutive quarters.

In the October-December quarter alone, the venture reported a net profit of 248.6 billion yen (USD 1.62 billion), in a stark reversal of the net loss of 369 billion yen which it had to undergo in the same quarter in 2024. It seems like OpenAI’s rising valuation will also bode well for the conglomerate’s earnings, despite market worries about the risk of overexposure to a single firm.

In March 2026 itself, S&P Global lowered its outlook for SoftBank Group to negative from stable, saying further investments in the Sam Altman-led firm may hurt the Japanese conglomerate’s liquidity and the credit quality of its assets. However, it seems Son doesn’t have immediate plans to move away from the OpenAI bet.

However, the same bet comes at a cost. In November 2025, the SoftBank boss had to take the hard call of liquidating the entire stake ($32.1 million to be precise) in American chipmaking giant NVIDIA to free up investment worth $5.83 billion, along with part of a T-Mobile stake worth $9.17 billion. It wasn’t an easy call for Son, given that Vision Fund was an early backer of NVIDIA, apart from both ventures having a deep relationship, with the tech conglomerate involved in several AI ventures that rely on NVIDIA’s technology, including the Stargate one.

When Masayoshi Son broke his silence on the NVIDIA stake sale, he said, “I respect Jensen (NVIDIA CEO), I respect NVIDIA so much, I don’t want to sell a single share. I just had more need for money to invest in OpenAI, invest in our opportunities, so I was crying to sell NVIDIA shares. If I had more money, of course, I would want to keep NVIDIA shares, all the time, any time.”

Maverick since childhood

Born as the grandchild of Korean immigrants in a small town on Japan’s southernmost island of Kyushu, Masayoshi Son had a humble childhood, living in a shack on a plot of unregistered land. At the age of 16, he read a book written by legendary Japanese businessman Den Fujita, the iconic figure who brought McDonald’s to Japan.

Then he made 60 long-distance phone calls with one intention: to meet the businessman himself. Despite repeated rejections, Son went to Tokyo and turned up uninvited at the McDonald’s head office. He was eventually given a 15-minute audience with Fujita, who gave one piece of advice to the teenager that changed his life forever, which was “focus on future technologies like computers.” It is worth mentioning that Fujita later sat on the SoftBank board.

Masayoshi Son then moved to the United States, completing his high school education at California High School, followed by a course in economics at the University of California, Berkeley. However, one task was quietly shaping Son’s entrepreneurial destiny, dedicating five minutes every day to thinking about inventions and filling hundreds of notebooks.

Son eventually ended up collaborating with Berkeley tutors to invent the world’s first electronic translator, which he later sold to Sharp Corporation. He then started a business importing second-hand arcade game machines from Japan.

Despite setting up a successful business in the United States, Son returned to his homeland to keep a promise he made to his mother. In 1981, the 24-year-old Son established SoftBank. While SoftBank started as a software wholesaler to support the then-upcoming PC industry, in 1982, TIME named the computer its “Machine of the Year,” giving the youngster’s business a solid purpose.

However, he was diagnosed with Hepatitis B. Given three to five years to live, Son took the challenge head-on and underwent pioneering treatment that saved his life. The whole episode only made him more self-confident. And it showed in his rapid rise since then.

In the 1990s, Masayoshi Son invested $3 billion in 800 tech start-ups. In 1996, he paid $100 million for 33% of Yahoo! Three years later, he sold off a chunk of the shares for a huge profit but still retained a 28% stake worth $8.4 billion. He zeroed in on one investment strategy, which is issuing SoftBank bonds to borrow money at rates cheaper than banks.

Then arrived the ill-famed dot-com bubble. During the phase, Son’s net worth used to surge by $10 billion every week, so much so that in February 2000, the SoftBank boss briefly unseated Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the world’s richest person for three days. However, when the bubble burst later that year, SoftBank shed 97% of its value, and Son had to suffer losses worth $70 billion.

However, the beauty of time is that it changes. Alibaba, now an established Chinese conglomerate, was a relatively unknown e-commerce startup in 2000. It got a $20 million bet from Son, and as the company went public in 2014, the same stake became worth $75 billion. As Son sold it, it doubled again, becoming one of his most profitable investments of all time, apart from creating the “Midas Touch” narrative about Son’s bet-taking capabilities.

Telecom investments and blunders

After recovering from the dot-com bubble disaster, Masayoshi Son set his eyes on the broadband segment. However, things weren’t smooth initially, as SoftBank had to struggle to get regulatory approvals in Japan to set up its industry subsidiary.

Things went to the extent where Son stormed into an official’s office at Japan’s telecommunications ministry, clutching a cheap cigarette lighter. While recollecting that episode in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Son remembered saying to the official, “This is the end. If you don’t help me, I’m going to pour gasoline all over myself right here and set myself on fire with this $1 lighter.”

The situation got better in 2006 when, after acquiring Vodafone’s Japanese subsidiary, the rebranded SoftBank Mobile emerged as a key player in Japanese telecoms. Son successfully persuaded Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to give him the exclusive rights to market the iPhone, history’s most successful consumer electronic product, when it debuted in 2007.

In 2013, he purchased Sprint and turned things around for the struggling US telecom provider before merging it with T-Mobile in 2020, disrupting the AT&T and Verizon duopoly. Although Son is known as a hands-off investor, the Sprint episode was the best example of him rolling up his sleeves and getting things done.

In 2017, he formed the SoftBank Vision Fund with over $100 billion in capital. The entity still maintains its position as the world’s largest private equity fund. He secured some $45 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) following a 45-minute meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The fund’s strategy was simple: invest a minimum of $100 million to juice each startup to market dominance by blowing competitors out of the water, and Masayoshi Son called it “blitzscaling.” The entity, by 2019, pumped $76.3 billion into companies like NVIDIA, Uber, WeWork, Paytm, Ola and Flipkart, most of which are market giants in their respective fields.

In 2019, SoftBank launched Vision Fund 2 with a touted value of $108 billion. However, there was a setback, as the entity reportedly managed to secure a paltry $30 billion, mostly self-funded. The original Vision Fund also underperformed, as in 2021 it posted record losses of $27.4 billion amid the haemorrhage of tech stocks. The Ukraine war, COVID-19 lockdowns, and Beijing’s crackdown on its tech giants, many of which were backed by SoftBank, pulled down investor confidence.

And who can forget the WeWork disaster? During his high-profile visit to the United States in December 2016, in which Son met President-Elect Donald Trump, he also interacted with Adam Neumann, the founder of the co-working venture. The deal, famously drawn up during a 12-minute meeting followed by a car ride, saw the SoftBank boss handing Neumann $4 billion. The Japanese conglomerate then went on to pump in another $14.5 billion.

However, in 2023 the bet backfired as WeWork declared bankruptcy, after a planned IPO went awry, followed by investor doubts about its governance, business model and profitability.

The episode affected Masayoshi Son, as he announced SoftBank would adopt a “defensive” position by being conservative when it came to the pace of new investments. Not only did the Japanese conglomerate witness an exodus of executives, but Son also ended up telling investors that he was “embarrassed and ashamed of himself for being so elated by big profits in the past.”

WeWork was not the only failed bet for SoftBank, as it also faced criticism for unsuccessful investments in dog-walking service Wag, robot pizza chain Zume and, most importantly, payments service Wirecard, which collapsed in 2020 after being named in Germany’s biggest post-war accounting fraud, where €1.9 billion in reported cash was found to be non-existent.

Around the same time, Greensill, a SoftBank-backed supply chain finance firm in the United Kingdom and Australia, also shut down amid illegal lobbying accusations.

The big gamble

Stargate is a huge bet for Son and the wider American tech sector, as through this, the world’s largest economy is looking to enhance its AI infrastructure to 10 gigawatts by 2029, with Texas, Michigan, New Mexico and Wisconsin being key data centre hubs.

However, economists and investors believe that the current AI infrastructure, far cheaper than Stargate, already fails to generate adequate revenue compared to its cost. Also, newer AI models will likely be more power-efficient, rendering massive data centres obsolete.

Data centres are also known for straining energy grids, leading to higher operational as well as environmental costs, undermining economic viability.

Masayoshi Son disagrees with the detractors, as he envisions 10 times more AI chips being deployed in each three-year cycle. Over time, these chips themselves will become 10 times more potent, while AI models, on their part, will ramp up productivity by a factor of 10.

“That’s 1,000x in three years. Nine years with three generations is 1,000,000,000x. It’s a huge, huge difference,” he told TIME.

Another concern of critics is that the collaboration between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank could result in a cartel that stifles innovation while inflating costs.

Taking a different view, Son remarked, “For the AI race, it requires hundreds of billions of dollars of investment into the data centres, buying chips, integrating chips and training the models. It’s very, very costly, so it will naturally be concentrated into several very capable companies in terms of talent and capitalisation.”

Stargate is also a prime example of geopolitical and technological rivalries finding a common link: Washington’s desire (spooked by DeepSeek’s rise) to beat Beijing in the so-called AI “arms race.” Korean-Japanese Son has picked his side here.

Or call it Son’s revenge, as Beijing’s regulatory crackdown on its tech industry in 2021 caused stocks to plummet, leading to a financial bloodbath for SoftBank.

He told TIME, “I have stopped investing in China. Zero. I’m now focused on investing in the US.”

However, he still has great admiration for Chinese business acumen, reflected in his words: “You cannot underestimate China’s crowd of young entrepreneurs, young scientists. They are for real.”

Talking about Stargate, out of the total $500 billion to be spent over four years, some $100 billion was to be invested “immediately,” to create 100,000 permanent jobs. However, only roughly $10 billion has so far been deployed in the Texas city of Abilene, where some 7,000 temporary construction jobs reportedly have been created, providing a mixed bag to the local economy in the form of growing job openings and a housing crisis.

Two elements from the dot-com era, fibre optic cable and 3G infrastructure, went on to prove invaluable over the years. However, the same can’t be said about data centres (warehouses packed with GPUs), as these infrastructures may not enjoy such longevity given the industry’s emphasis on developing next-generation AI that will be more energy-friendly.

Has Masayoshi Son, who has repeatedly risen like a phoenix after multiple investment failures, taken a big gamble about Stargate and American AI ambitions in general? Only time will tell.

The post Stargate: Masayoshi Son’s next big bet appeared first on International Finance.

According to Gene Seroka, executive director for the Port of Los Angeles, total processed cargo volume at the facility in January was down by approximately 12% year over year, citing a decline in agricultural exports as among the major factors. He further told CNBC, “Exports to China look dismal,” suggesting that the shipping activity towards the world’s second-largest economy has dropped considerably across the United States’ major ports, with containerised exports down 26% in 2025. As per the data published by the port authorities, Los Angeles took a big hit on the crucial agricultural export of soybeans.

In early 2026, President Donald Trump announced China was considering purchasing an additional eight million metric tons of American soybeans (totalling 20 million) for the current season, following the October 2025 agreement to buy 12 million tons. Soybeans coming out of the Port of Los Angeles to China were down 80% last year, and despite the high-profile declaration from the Republican, no improvement was seen in either November or December after the initial discussions between the world’s two largest economies.

“It’s a really important part of the overall export strategy here. Argentina and Brazil have picked up a lot of the contracts for China on soybeans,” Seroka said, while adding that any increase in the American farm sector’s ability to export will take time.

“These are not transactional-type applications. These are agreements that are for the last three, six, and twelve months in duration. So, it’ll be yet another cycle before the US soybean exporter has a chance to bid and get into the game,” the senior official added.

“The Port of Los Angeles reported roughly 812,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) for January, including imports, exports and empty containers. In January 2025, roughly 924,000 TEUs were reported, fuelled by front-loading of freight ahead of not only the major holiday period in Asia but the start of President Trump’s second-term tariffs. Breaking out the container count, January imports were 421,000 container units, down almost 13% from last year’s higher levels. On the export side, 104,000 container units were processed, a close to 8% drop year over year,” CNBC reported.

“Empty export containers that during times of high demand are sent back to Asia, a forward-looking indicator of Asia demand, came in at 286,000 TEUs, a 12.5% drop from last year,” the port authority stated.

According to Seroka, elevated 2025 numbers from a period when importers were scrambling to get cargo in ahead of Trump tariffs will continue to be a factor in comparisons throughout 2026.

“US trade policy remains largely uncertain, and I expect that to continue,” he concluded.

The post Quiet crisis at Port of Los Angeles amid US-China trade tensions appeared first on International Finance.

The official remarked, “The partnership is also active through academic and technical cooperation, as Boeing is a founding partner of Al-Faisal University and has partnerships with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST, and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology.”

While stating industry and supply chain localisation as key objectives for companies operating in Saudi Arabia, Al-Jomoai added that partnerships with firms like SAMI are boosting the Kingdom’s goal of localising more than 50% of its military spending by 2030. Boeing considers itself a central partner in localisation and technology transfer.

According to Al-Jomoai, Boeing’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, which spans more than 81 years, has been a fruitful one, with the aviation giant delivering more than 170 commercial aircraft in recent years.

Boeing’s existing contracts within Saudi Arabia’s military-industrial set-up include maintenance and technical support for advanced defence systems, most notably F-15 fighter jets, with the Kingdom being the largest operator of the aircraft outside the United States. These contracts also cover Apache attack helicopters and AH-6i aircraft, light helicopter gunships often known as the “Little Bird.”

Al-Jomoai said that although support agreements cover both commercial and defence sectors, defence operations currently dominate in the Kingdom’s aviation discourse, as the Gulf major continues to expand its military spending.

According to Boeing’s website, Boeing Defence, Space & Security’s relationship with the Royal Saudi Air Force began in 1978 when Saudi Arabia selected its first fleet of F-15C/D aircraft, forming the backbone of the Kingdom’s air defence.

The fleet expanded significantly in December 2011 when Saudi Arabia and the United States signed a military sales agreement, the largest in America’s history at the time, covering F-15SA fighter jets, AH-64E Apache attack helicopters, and AH-6 light armed reconnaissance helicopters.

The post Through 400 industry partners, Boeing consolidates its Saudi presence appeared first on International Finance.

From April 2012 to November 2015, Damoa served as the Flight Module Logistics Manager at Elon Musk-led SpaceX, developing the private space player’s logistics systems and programmes, apart from designing and deploying the venture’s shipping apparatus that was used to transport the rocket from production to the launch site. After that, he served one year at American military aviation giant Northrop Grumman, following which Damoa worked as an executive and early founding employee at start-ups like Romeo Power, XOS Trucks, Canoo, and Serial 1 Cycle/Harley-Davidson, where he led product development and design, manufacturing deployment, and product launches.

What was common in Damoa’s stints at SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and Harley-Davidson’s Serial 1 Cycle Company: he noticed the universal structural flaw of first-mile logistics remaining fragmented and dangerous, with road and rail functioning as silos (segments operating in isolation).

The answer he pitched here was Glid, which got created in 2022 to correct that flaw with a rail-first, dual-mode architecture that merges advanced vehicles with a coordinating intelligence layer, while putting clean energy and autonomous technologies at the core of these innovations.

Dual-Mobility Platforms

Glid’s operational ecosystem’s goal is dead clear here: synchronising road and rail to cut logistics costs by 40% and boost throughput by 60%. In that direction, the start-up has introduced three integrated technologies that are transforming first-mile logistics from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage.

“GliderM,” which eliminates forklifts and yard equipment. The solution transitions from highway to rail in under two minutes, apart from possessing abilities like handling 20-foot containers directly and operating with or without a driver. Certified for both highway and rail operations, GliderM comes equipped with a 40,000 lb (20-ton) hooklift for containers, swap bodies (standardised, interchangeable freight containers in logistics used primarily for efficient road and rail transport), and bins (designated storage locations or containers used to organise, store, and track inventory), with software-powered autonomy supervising the entire load-in and load-out operations. The entire technology replaces an entire yard’s worth of equipment and does it faster, safer, and cheaper.

Next is “Raden,” an autonomous dual-mode vehicle, hailed as a game-changer for contested logistics and first-mile delivery. The armoured, low-profile platform is known for sliding under any trailer, lifting it, and moving it seamlessly between road and rail in 90 seconds. It has a hybrid powertrain with a propellant-agnostic range extender for 24/7 operations.

Raden can go SOLO (single-mode transport) mode for individual missions and PAK mode for convoy operations. It can go modular for carrying payloads like cargo, medevac, and drone operations, apart from having a silent running capability for sensitive operations. Raden also brings autonomy to the first mile while removing the infrastructure-related requirements.

Also, “EZRA-1SIX,” Glid’s in-house “AI Logistics Orchestrator,” which coordinates vehicles, schedules yards, optimises routes, and, apart from making pricing transparent, all while providing real-time visibility and verified emissions tracking.

“EZRA-1SIX” provides logistics operators a single operational picture across all assets and locations by enabling fleet mesh networking for coordinated operations. The “AI Logistics Orchestrator” possesses predictive billing that eliminates demurrage surprises (unexpected, costly fees charged when shipping containers aren’t picked up from ports or terminals within the allowed “free time”), while providing military-grade security with blockchain audit trails.

Solving First And Last Miles

Rail is known for moving a ton of freight with far less fuel and lower external costs than trucking. However, shippers often forgo rail because local service is unreliable, while transloading becomes cumbersome. While the United States’ “Staggers Rail Act” stabilised the industry and created space for shortlines, it also fostered an environment in which consolidation and margin discipline sometimes eclipsed growth and service.

“Shortlines now hold the keys to organic expansion; they are close to customers, skilled at local service, and capable of pre-blocking traffic for mainlines. What they lack is a set of tools that make first-mile rail as simple as calling a truck,” Glid noted.

Glid wants to unlock the network “already in the ground” and its elements like shortline mileage, dormant sidings and spurs, port-adjacent yards, and industrial aprons. Explaining the approach, the start-up noted, “Rather than insisting on new fixed transload terminals as a prerequisite to growth, Glid vehicles and software create capability where the freight already is, transforming the first mile from a sequence of specialised machines into a single, instrumented move.”

For logistics players and shippers, Glid cuts first-mile costs by 30-40% through consolidated operations and the elimination of multiple handling equipment. EZRA-1SIX offers right-sized tariffs based on actual physics and network capacity, eliminating demurrage surprises, thereby making the whole pricing model predictable and transparent.

At the same point in time, the solution increases logistics throughput (the volume of goods, products, or work processed through a warehouse or supply chain within a specific time) by 8-12 container moves per hour, as opposed to the traditional three to five moves. The seamless road-to-rail conversion eliminates expensive transload terminals by using existing warehouse aprons as micro-terminals.

EZRA-1SIX’s orchestration layer, most importantly, provides auditable performance metrics, apart from recovering billions in working capital by reducing railcar dwell times from 48-72 hours to under 24 hours.

For stakeholders in the logistics sector who depend on the rail network for seamless goods movement, Glid makes investments cost-friendly by activating underutilised sidings, spurs, and industrial aprons. Another area where the start-up’s expertise comes in handy is the domain of origination points (specific physical locations where a shipment officially begins its journey and is first received by a carrier for delivery to the final point of consumption), as it multiplies these points, especially for shortlines, without waiting on new concrete infrastructure.

Glid also handles operations of “Class I Carriers,” the largest players in North America’s railway network, through EZRA-1SIX’s pre-blocking optimisation, ensuring things remain punctual and increasing the rail modal share as well.

Making Ports Great Again

Through Glid’s EZRA-1SIX, ports and infrastructure players are witnessing a 60% throughput increase at terminals by eliminating intermediate handling equipment. Another benefit has been 20%–30% more container movements per acre through road-siding deployments that bypass traditional infrastructure.

GliderM, on the other hand, is compressing crane-to-rail dwell, apart from shortening gate queues through the solution’s direct container-to-rail spotting. Most importantly, since going green has been one of the operational mottos of the 21st-century global economy, a 10-unit GliderM fleet is helping American ports reduce 15,000–20,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year by replacing diesel hostlers. Hardened aprons, meanwhile, are being converted into functional micro-terminals with EZRA-1SIX’s software-scheduled operations.

Also, ports and infrastructure players, through Glid’s help, are scaling their operations incrementally, using existing infrastructure and the start-up’s mobile platforms.

The post Start-up of the Week: Glid bridges road and rail with AI appeared first on International Finance.