Cairn

Live your mountaineering fantasies and brave the elements in a wonderfully illustrated climbing game. You must carefully place climber Aava’s hands and feet to make your way up a forbidding mountain, camping on ledges and bandaging her fingers as you go. Like real climbing, it is challenging and somewhat brutal.
PC, PlayStation 5; 29 January

Onwards and upwards … Cairn. Photograph: The Game Bakers

Reanimal

A two-player animated horror game in the Tim Burton mode, minus all the whimsy. In a setup reminiscent of the famously discomfiting games Limbo and Inside, a brother and sister must escape a twisted mockery of their home town, finding their friends as they go. They are stalked by horrible spike-limbed monsters and grotesquely reanimated creatures. Genuinely frightening and artistically impressive.
Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation5, Xbox; 13 February

Resident Evil Requiem

Capcom’s horror series is very old, but it still comes up with new ways to make your skin crawl. In Requiem we play as bookish Grace, whom the game’s director calls “the biggest scaredy-cat in Resident Evil history”, and the confidently combat-proficient cop Leon S Kennedy, pursued by monsters through the iconic Raccoon City.
Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; 27 February

Pokémon Pokopia

How does your garden grow? Pokémon Pokopia. Photograph: Nintendo

Imagine dropping Pokémon into the world of Animal Crossing, with a hint of Minecraft’s blocky aesthetic. This family-friendly Nintendo game has you building and tending habitats for Nintendo’s beloved creatures. You play as a Ditto, the shape-shifting pink blob, which can helpfully transform into other Pokémon, using those other critters’ abilities to bring a barren landscape back to life and build a vibrant town.
Nintendo Switch 2, 5 March

007 First Light

The most anticipated James Bond game since the Nintendo 64’s GoldenEye 007. Made by IO Interactive, famous for Hitman, it stars a younger, twentysomething Bond who has not yet earned his 007 status, and hopes to blend the expected car chases, shootouts and gadgets with some genuine spycraft, as Bond infiltrates parties and digs for information.
Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; 27 May

Saros

Hostile aliens … Saros. Photograph: Sony Interactive Entertainment

From the Finnish developer behind Returnal, the exceptional, intelligent time-loop sci-fi shooter, this mysterious action game stars another stranded astronaut on a different hostile planet, one where a dying sun is sending its creatures and colonists mad. Long-time gamers will recognise the lineage of arcade bullet-hell shooters in this very modern action game.
PlayStation 5; 30 April

Grand Theft Auto VI

It has been in development for more than a decade and, despite several delays (GTA VI was on this very list last year), expectations have never been higher for the biggest game in the world. It’s a crime story and a love story, featuring the series’ first female protagonist, Lucia, and her boyfriend, Jason, and set in Rockstar’s fictional Floridian state of Leonida. There has been so much to satirise about contemporary America since 2013’s GTA V that Rockstar’s writers will surely have been spoilt for choice.
PlayStation 5, Xbox; 19 November

Marvel’s Wolverine

Marvel’s Wolverine gets his claws into new foes. Photograph: Insomniac Games/ Marvel

The modern Spider-Man games have gone down a storm, so it’s no surprise that developer Insomniac is now turning its attention to a different Marvel hero. This new game features an ensemble X-Men cast and a whole lot of gratuitous comic-book violence, as Wolverine sticks those adamantium claws through a succession of foes trying to chase him down.
PlayStation 5; date TBC

Witchbrook

Looking for an alternative to established wizarding-school fiction? Witchbrook is a charming pixel-art slice-of-life game about a witches’ college. In school you learn spells and broom flight; outside school you involve yourself in the life of the whimsical town outside. It supports four players at once, too.
PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; TBC

Halo: Campaign Evolved

Controversial take: first-person shooter campaigns have never got better than the original Halo, with its eerie extraterrestrial setting and intelligent, chattering alien enemies. (Let’s conveniently forget about The Library, where we battle through endless waves of the significantly less interesting zombie-like Flood.) This prettied-up remake of 2001’s space-opera classic will, for the first time, be available on PlayStation.
PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; TBC

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By SHIVALI BEST, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

Published: 13:16 GMT, 30 December 2025 | Updated: 13:33 GMT, 30 December 2025

The Amazon rainforest is shifting into a ‘hypertropical state’ that has not been seen for tens of millions of years, scientists have warned.

This new, hotter climate could be commonplace by 2100, and will see the rainforest experience more frequent and intense droughts.

Worryingly, experts from the University of California, Berkeley, say this could lead to widespread tree die–off.

In turn, this will impair Earth’s ability to remove carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, since tropical rainforests absorb more carbon emissions than any other biome.

The only way to prevent the hypertropical state from occurring is to curb greenhouse gas emissions, according to Jeff Chambers, lead author of the study.

‘It all depends on what we do,’ he said.

‘It’s up to us to what extent we’re actually going to create this hypertropical climate.

‘If we’re just going to emit greenhouse gasses as much as we want, without any control, then we’re going to create this hypertropical climate sooner.’

The Amazon rainforest is shifting into a ‘hypertropical state’ that has not been seen for tens of millions of years, scientists have warned. This new, hotter climate could be commonplace by 2100, and will see the rainforest experience more frequent and intense droughts

Usually, the dry season in the Amazon lasts from July to September and brings hotter–than–normal conditions.

However, in hypertropical conditions, the dry season is extended – putting more stress on trees.

‘When these hot droughts occur, that’s the climate that we associate with a hypertropical forest, because it’s beyond the boundary of what we consider to be tropical forest now,’ explained Professor Chambers.

Worryingly, the study found that by 2100, hot drought conditions could occur as many as 150 days each year.

In turn, this could increase tree mortality by 0.55 per cent.

‘We showed that the fast–growing, low wood–density trees were more vulnerable, dying in greater numbers than high wood–density trees,’ Professor Chambers said.

‘That implies that secondary forests might be more vulnerable to drought–induced mortality, because secondary forests have a larger fraction of these types of trees.’

Since the annual tree mortality is slightly more than one per cent, an extra 0.55 per cent may not seem like much.

Usually, the dry season in the Amazon lasts from July to September and brings hotter–than–normal conditions. However, in hypertropical conditions, the dry season is extended – putting more stress on trees

However, Professor Chambers explained that it has a cumulative impact on the forest – meaning over time, it could be catastrophic.

What’s more, the researchers say that hypertropical conditions are also likely to appear outside the Amazon in rainforests in western Africa and across Southeast Asia.

As global temperatures continue to rise, extreme droughts will increasingly occur throughout the entire year, the researchers added.

‘Present–day hot droughts are harbingers of this emerging climate, providing windows of opportunity to better understand tropical forest responses to increasingly extreme future conditions,’ the authors wrote.

THE PARIS AGREEMENT: A GLOBAL ACCORD TO LIMIT TEMPERATURE RISES THROUGH CARBON EMISSION REDUCTION TARGETS

The Paris Agreement, which was first signed in 2015, is an international agreement to control and limit climate change.

It hopes to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2°C (3.6ºF) ‘and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F)’.

It seems the more ambitious goal of restricting global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) may be more important than ever, according to previous research which claims 25 per cent of the world could see a significant increase in drier conditions. 

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change has four main goals with regards to reducing emissions:

1)  A long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels

2) To aim to limit the increase to 1.5°C, since this would significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change

3) Governments agreed on the need for global emissions to peak as soon as possible, recognising that this will take longer for developing countries

4) To undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with the best available science

Source: European Commission 

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The Amazon is shifting into a ‘hypertropical state’ not seen for MILLIONS of years, scientists warn

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TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for four years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government.

As a result, U.S. users have often found themselves caught in the middle of this tension. Earlier this year, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before it was quickly restored. TikTok returned to the App Store and Google Play Store in February. 

A number of investors competed to purchase the app, and after Trump extended the TikTok ban deadline for the fourth time, the battle is finally over. As of last week, TikTok officially signed a deal to divest a portion of its U.S. entity to a group of American investors.

This comes nearly three months after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that approves the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to an American investor group.

A week prior, President Trump announced that President Xi Jinping of China had given his approval of a TikTok deal, which would allow a consortium of U.S. investors to control the platform. ByteDance stated publicly that it would ensure the platform remains available to American users.

Who owns TikTok in the U.S.?

Image Credits:Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

According to a memo viewed by TechCrunch, the investor group consists of Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and investment firm MGX. Collectively, they will hold 45% of the U.S. operation, with ByteDance keeping nearly a 20% stake. Axios first reported the news, citing sources who estimate TikTok U.S. is valued at approximately $14 billion—a figure also mentioned by Vice President JD Vance.

In September, a report indicated that a “framework” deal was established between the U.S. and China, with a consortium of investors— including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz—overseeing TikTok’s U.S. operations. These investors were expected to hold an 80% stake, and the remaining shares would belong to Chinese stakeholders.

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The newly formed “TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC” will oversee the app’s operations, including data protection, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurance.

Oracle will serve as the trusted security partner, responsible for auditing and ensuring compliance with National Security Terms, according to the memo. The company already provides cloud services for TikTok and manages user data in the U.S. Notably, Oracle previously made a bid for TikTok back in 2020.

A White House official previously said Oracle would replicate and secure a new U.S. version of the algorithm, and the U.S.-based TikTok owners could lease the algorithm from ByteDance, which Oracle will then retrain. 

ByteDance will not have access to information about TikTok’s U.S. users or any influence over the U.S. algorithm.

​The deal is scheduled to close on January 22, 2026.

What users in the U.S. should know

Reports from Bloomberg indicate that when the deal is finalized, the TikTok app will be discontinued in the U.S. and users will need to transition to a new platform. However, the specifics of this platform remain largely unclear, including its features and how it will differ from the original app. 

How did we get here?

Image Credits:Mandel Ngan (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

To fully understand this high-stakes drama, we’ll first revisit the timeline of TikTok’s tumultuous relationship with the U.S. government, which resulted in various legal battles and negotiations. 

The drama first began in August 2020, when Trump signed an executive order to ban transactions with parent company ByteDance. 

A month later, Trump’s administration sought to force a sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a U.S.-based company. The leading contenders included Microsoft, Oracle, and Walmart. However, a U.S. judge temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order, allowing TikTok to continue operating while the legal battle unfolded. 

Things began to progress even more last year following the transition to the Biden administration.  After the Senate passed the bill against TikTok, President Joe Biden signed it.

In response, TikTok sued the U.S. government, challenging the constitutionality of the ban and arguing the app and its American users were having their First Amendment rights violated. The company has consistently denied that it poses a security threat, asserting that its data stored in the U.S. complies with all local laws.

Fast-forward to today: Trump has had a change of heart since his first term and is trying to achieve a 50-50 ownership arrangement between ByteDance and a U.S. company. 

There have been several contenders, including The People’s Bid for TikTok , a consortium organized by Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt. This group has the support of investment firm Guggenheim Securities and the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Supporters include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, TV personality and investor Kevin O’Leary, inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee, and senior research scientist David Clark.

Image Credits:Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Another group, called the American Investor Consortium, is led by Employer.com founder Jesse Tinsley and includes Roblox co-founder David Baszucki, Anchorage Digital co-founder Nathan McCauley, and famous YouTuber MrBeast.

Others in the running included Amazon, AppLovin, Microsoft, Perplexity AI, Rumble, Walmart, Zoop, former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The story has been updated after publication.

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2025 has been one of those rare years when the tech industry didn’t just iterate—it swung for the fences. Every category saw something bold, strange, or downright impressive, from smartphones doubling down on design experimentation to XR headsets, finally breaking out of their niche. Even AI models and digital creators got their moment, reshaping conversations far beyond tech circles. 

So, instead of another “top specs of the year” list, this roundup highlights the products that genuinely stood out, devices that sparked debates, pushed boundaries, or simply made us say, “Wait… they did what?”

Techloy Recap: The Biggest Tech Hardware Releases of 2025

Whether it was a radical Samsung foldable, or a next-gen gaming console, this year wasn’t just about incremental upgrades.

1 iPhone 17 Line-up

Many great phones were launched this year, but few stood out as much as the iPhone 17 line-up. This year felt like a massive upgrade across the board, with each model gaining at least one meaningful advantage over its predecessor. 

Take the base iPhone 17, for example, Apple finally bumped the base storage to 256GB without raising the price. The Pro models got thicker, longer-lasting batteries and bold new colours. You genuinely can’t miss the bright orange Pro and Pro Max when they’re nearby. 

On top of that, we got new features like the centre stage selfie camera with a square sensor. It automatically switches between portrait and landscape, widens the field of view for group shots with AI, and shoots ultra-stabilised 4K HDR video, all without rotating the phone. Selfies and video calls feel much more natural now. 

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Apple was overcompensating for the hot mess that’s been Apple Intelligence this year. But what do I know? 

2 iPhone Air

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed that every company has been chasing the “ultraslim phone” trend this year. But in the race to be the slimmest of them all, the iPhone Airits takes the crown.

It features an ultra-light titanium frame and a unique 6.5-inch display that sits between the standard and Pro Max sizes. Unlike the base model, it uses the more powerful A19 Pro chip and 12GB of RAM to handle intensive AI tasks better, while simplifying some hardware to keep the design thin. 

The horizontal camera “plateau” on the back makes it stand out. It also debuted Apple’s custom C1X 5G modem, its latest in-house cellular chip. Apple also made it eSIM-only, with a single speaker, but the premium build with Ceramic Shield front and back makes up for it. And despite all this, it fits into a stunning 5.6mm body, the slimmest phone released this year. 

3 Galaxy Z Trifold

The idea behind the Trifold is pretty simple: it’s a 6.5-inch phone that opens twice to become a 10-inch display. It’s a neat trick, and definitely a step up from the standard foldables we’re used to. Both screens use Samsung’s Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X panels with 120Hz and HDR support, easily among the best phone–tablet displays you’ll find. And it’s powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite. It genuinely doesn’t get much more powerful than that.

It’s one of the most fascinating releases this year, especially after all the anticipation. And given Samsung’s dominance in foldables, its first trifold has been long overdue, finally giving the Huawei Mate XT some real competition.

The downside? Like the only other trifold on the market, it’s not exactly available everywhere. And whenever it eventually goes global, its extremely high price may make it a tough sell.

4 Galaxy XR Headset

Stepping away from phones, this was the year we finally saw what Android XR was capable of. Samsung unveiled the Galaxy XR headset, the first XR headset built on the Android XR platform.

It works like most XR headsets, letting you use it as a standalone computer for immersive content like movies and games. But the Galaxy XR goes further. Because it’s built on Android XR, it comes preloaded with Android apps like YouTube and lets you install apps directly from the Play Store. Out of the box, it already has more use cases than most other headsets.

What makes it feel truly next-gen, though, is the integration of Gemini AI throughout the interface. You’re almost compelled to use multimodal AI to control the device, making it feel less like a clunky piece of hardware strapped to your face and more like an extension of your digital life.

5 Nintendo Switch 2

After about eight years, we finally got the Nintendo Switch 2, and the upgrades were genuinely worth the wait.

It moves from a 720p handheld to a 1080p powerhouse with the ability to output 4K to your TV using NVIDIA’s DLSS upscaling. It packs 12GB of RAM and a modern Ampere-based chip that’s roughly six times more powerful than the original, finally allowing it to run demanding third-party games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.

You see all that power on a larger 7.9-inch 120Hz display, redesigned magnetic snap-on Joy-Cons, and a built-in microphone for Nintendo’s new GameChat platform. It offers partial backwards compatibility, includes 256GB of storage, and supports the faster MicroSD Express standard for huge next-gen titles.

Now, gamers were definitely annoyed by how aggressively Nintendo priced both the console and even the demo games this year, and I don’t disagree. But purely comparing specs, the Switch 2 is a massive step up from the original.

6 LG G5 OLED TV

Image credit: LG

If you’re a “beautiful screen” enthusiast, the LG G5 OLED definitely didn’t pass you by. First shown at CES 2025, it immediately set a new bar for OLED panels.

It’s a 4K OLED display using LG’s “Perfect Colour” technology, delivering the inky blacks and vibrant colours OLED is known for. But what pushes it ahead is its performance: a 165Hz refresh rate and the Alpha 11 AI processor for real-time image tuning and clarity.

Whether you get the 55-inch or the massive 97-inch model, you’re getting premium gaming features like Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium. It’s basically a high-end monitor disguised as a luxury TV.

7 HoverAir X1 ProMax

Once upon a time, drones were either huge, noisy machines or tiny toys that were basically injury hazards. Things have changed. This year, the HoverAir X1 ProMax combined the best of both worlds: ultra-portable and silent, yet surprisingly capable.

It shoots mind-blowing 8K video at 30fps, which is absurd for something that folds and fits into your jacket pocket. With its 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor, it delivers detail and low-light quality normally reserved for much bigger rigs. For action shots, it switches to 4K at 120fps for buttery-smooth slow-motion.

Its smart flight modes are what make it perfect for vloggers. It has Rear Active Collision Detection, a 26 mph follow speed, and advanced modes like “Dolly Track” and “Bird’s Eye” that give you cinematic shots with zero effort. It’s basically a personal camera operator that fits in your hand.

8 Sony WH-1000XM6

For audiophiles, this was the most reliable upgrade of the year. Not groundbreaking, but refined in all the right ways.

Sony swapped in the new QN3 processor, said to be seven times faster, enabling a huge jump in noise cancellation. With 12 built-in microphones (up from 8), it does a much better job blocking out chatter and wind noise. It also adds Auracast support and a new Cinema Mode that upmixes standard stereo into a 360-degree spatial experience.

A fan-favourite change: Sony brought back the classic foldable design missing from the XM5, letting the earcups tuck inward into a smaller magnetic-latch case. And yes, you can finally listen while charging via USB-C.

9 DeepSeek R1

Photo by Solen Feyissa / Unsplash

No product list is complete without at least one major AI model. DeepSeek has been around for a while, but its reasoning model, DeepSeek R1, truly shook the industry when it launched in January 2025.

Its appeal came from offering “thinking” capabilities, deliberate reasoning, and self-correction, on par with OpenAI’s o1, but at a tiny fraction of the cost. And because it launched open-source under the MIT licence, developers could inspect the model’s internal chain-of-thought and run advanced reasoning on consumer hardware. It democratised high-level AI in a way no one expected.

Of course, controversy followed. Researchers quickly found its safety guardrails easier to jailbreak, and geopolitical concerns about censorship and data privacy led U.S. agencies like NASA and the Pentagon to ban it from government devices. Still, R1 forced the AI industry to rethink efficiency vs scale, permanently shifting the competitive landscape.

10 Xania Monet, the AI-Generated Singer

This might not sound like a “product,” but it still fits. In case you missed it, who is Xania Monet?

She’s an “award-winning” digital persona who made history in 2025 as the first AI-generated artist to chart on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay. Created by American poet Telisha “Nikki” Jones, Xania uses the AI platform Suno to turn Jones’s poetry into soulful tracks like the viral “How Was I Supposed to Know?”

Her success sparked a label bidding war that ended with a $3 million deal from Hallwood Media. But it also triggered backlash from artists like Kehlani and SZA, who argue that AI-generated fame undermines human labour. Xania has become the centre of a heated debate about copyright, authenticity, cultural appropriation, and whether a machine can ever truly have “soul.”

But what do you think?

Honourable Mentions

These might not have been major standalone releases this year, but they definitely deserve a shoutout

• The iPhone Pocket: This wasn’t a tech product in the traditional sense, but rather a high-fashion collaboration between Apple and Issey Miyake. Released in November 2025, it’s a 3D-knitted textile sleeve that reimagines the “iPod Sock” for the modern era. While it doesn’t have a processor or a screen, it became a viral sensation for its “wearable textile” design that lets you glimpse your notifications through the fabric.
• Instagram on the iPad: After 15 years of waiting, Meta finally released a native Instagram app for iPad in September 2025. It finally ditched the “blown-up phone app” look for a multi-column layout that puts Reels and DMs side-by-side, taking full advantage of the tablet’s screen real estate.
• Sony’s Future Immersive Entertainment Concept: While technically not a properly released thing in 2025, the concept of it was unveiled at CES 2025, and this is Sony’s vision for “VR without the headset.” It’s a room-sized experience using Crystal LED walls, haptic floors, and even scent dispensers to drop you into games like The Last of Us. It’s not a product you can buy for your living room yet, but it’s a stunning look at where location-based entertainment is headed.

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After one too many drinks on Wednesday night, many will wake up and swear off alcohol for the month.

But Dry January is a bad idea as it promotes a ‘binge or bust’ approach to drinking, an expert has warned.

Julian Braithwaite, CEO of the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, said the challenge is often taken up by people who have been drinking more heavily in the run–up to the New Year.

Many do report feeling better for it – from improved sleep to a lift in mental wellbeing.

‘But that may not translate into wider change’, he told the Daily Mail. ‘One major UK study found that although 25–27 per cent of drinkers tried to cut down during Dry January, there was no population–level reduction in alcohol consumption.’

Nearly one in three Brits – the equivalent of 17.5 million people – plan to take part in Dry January this year, polling figures suggest.

Yet alcohol is still causing thousands of deaths every year, with 7,673 alcohol–related deaths in England in 2024.

‘If you want to change your relationship with alcohol longer–term, a single month of abstinence is not necessarily the answer,’ Mr Braithwaite said.

Dry January is a bad idea as it promotes a ‘binge or bust’ approach to drinking, an expert has warned (file image)

He explained that, for many people, sharing a drink is part of how we celebrate and connect.

‘Rather than a binge–or–bust approach, we encourage moderate, sustainable habits that let adults enjoy the social benefits of drinking while managing health risks sensibly,’ he added.

His comments echo those made last year by Dr Niall Campbell, a consultant psychiatrist at the Priory and one of the UK’s leading alcohol withdrawal specialists.

‘If you use Dry January as an excuse to drink to excess in December and February, and the rest of the year, then you’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘Increasingly, that’s what we’re seeing.

‘Dry January is a fantastic initiative. It is very popular and the health benefits of completing it are significant.

‘But I worry that it has become a fashionable exercise for a lot of people. As a society, we need a wake–up call.’

Figures recently released by research company IWSR revealed monthlong abstinences – such as ‘Sober October’ and ‘Dry January’ – are becoming less popular among Gen Z, who were born between 1997 and 2012.

The number of Gen Z drinkers in the UK who reported abstaining from alcohol for a month or longer during the last six months dropped from 33 per cent in autumn last year to 24 per cent this year.

Alcohol is still causing thousands of deaths every year, with 7,673 alcohol–related deaths in England in 2024 (file image)

‘Temporary abstinence appears to be less central to moderation strategies than it once was,’ IWSR President Marten Lodewijks said.

‘This is especially the case among Gen Z drinkers, who have always been its most enthusiastic adopters.

‘Moderation is still an important trend across the entire beverage alcohol industry, but performative abstinence periods are less of the driving force they once were.

‘Instead, consumers moderate by drinking less often and, when they do drink, they tend to drink less.’

Experts now believe people are drinking more ‘mindfully’ by deciding which days they will drink or taking part in ‘Zebra striping’ – when alcoholic and non–alcoholic drinks are rotated.

The IWSR also said that consumers are seeking out more expensive drinks – such as fancy cocktails – while cutting back on how much alcohol they consume overall.

Dry January officially started as a public health campaign in 2013, when it was launched by Alcohol Change UK.

Short–term benefits can include marked reductions in liver fat, blood glucose and cholesterol along with improvements in sleep.

Findings from one study suggest that taking part in Dry January can lead to less drinking year–round.

The research, led by psychologist Dr Richard de Visser form the University of Sussex, included giving a questionnaire to 3,791 people who took part in Dry January in 2014.

A total of 71 per cent made it through the month without drinking.

Follow–up questionnaires, issued six months later, revealed statistically significant reductions in the quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption and hazardous drinking, and increased confidence about refusing alcohol.

These long–term benefits were seen in all the people who had signed up for Dry January, even if they did not manage to abstain for the full month, the research showed.

Dr Richard Piper, CEO at Alcohol Change UK, said the Dry January challenge was designed to help people cut down and get back to controlled, moderate, low-risk drinking over the long-term.

‘It’s the circuit breaker that many people need to reset their relationship with alcohol,’ he said. ‘Just trying to cut back, without first having a proper break of a month or more, is much harder.’

He said when it comes to unlocking maximum benefit and achieving lasting changes to drinking habits, there is a huge difference between those who attempt Dry January on their own or those who use the Try Dry app designed by experts at Alcohol Change.

‘If you find yourself drinking lots to compensate before the 1st Jan or counting down the days to the February, or find it hard to socialise, relax, sleep or have fun during the challenge, these are signs that you would benefit from changing your relationship with alcohol,’ he added.

WHAT IS ALCOHOLISM?

Alcoholism is the most severe form of alcohol abuse and involves the inability to manage drinking habits.

It is organized into three categories: mild, moderate and severe. Each category has various symptoms and can cause harmful side effects.

If left untreated, any type of alcohol abuse can spiral out of control. 

Individuals struggling with alcoholism often feel as though they cannot function normally without alcohol.

This can lead to a wide range of issues and impact professional goals, personal matters, relationships and overall health.

Sometimes the warning signs of alcohol abuse are very noticeable. Other times, they can take longer to surface. 

When alcohol addiction is discovered in its early stages, the chance for a successful recovery increases significantly.

Common signs of alcoholism include:

• Being unable to control alcohol consumption
• Craving alcohol when you’re not drinking
• Putting alcohol above personal responsibilities
• Feeling the need to keep drinking more
• Spending a substantial amount of money on alcohol
• Behaving differently after drinking

Short-term effects of alcohol abuse can be just as dangerous as long-term effects. 

For instance, drinking can impact your reaction time, causing you to have slow reflexes and coordination.

That’s why drinking and driving is extremely dangerous. Getting behind the wheel of a car can alter your perception of speed and distance, putting yourself and others at risk.

Several short-term effects of alcohol abuse may produce:

• Slow reaction time
• Poor reflexes
• Reduce brain activity
• Lowered inhibitions
• Blurry vision
• Difficulty breathing
• Restlessness

Additionally, consuming too much alcohol can affect your long-term health. Some side effects may lay dormant for years before they surface.

Because of this, professional medical care is required for proper diagnosis and treatment.

Long-term health conditions caused by alcohol:

• Brain defects 
• Liver disease
• Diabetes complications
• Heart problems
• Increased risk of cancer
• Vision damage
• Bone loss 

Treatment for Alcoholism 

There are different forms of treatment available based on frequency and severity of alcohol abuse. 

Recovering from alcohol addiction is a process that continues long after rehab. 

It takes commitment to practice and apply the techniques you learn in rehab, counseling, support groups and other types of therapy.

Although every individual will have their own recovery plan that’s tailored to their specific needs, treatment generally follows a structure.

Alcohol treatment is broken into three sections, consisting of:

Detoxification

The first stage in alcohol addiction recovery is detoxification. This phase should be completed with the help of medical professionals due to the potential for serious, uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms. Many times, individuals are given a medication to help alleviate the painful side effects of a withdrawal.

Rehabilitation

There are two types of rehabilitation that help treat alcoholism: inpatient rehab and outpatient rehab. Inpatient rehabs are intensive treatment programs that require you to check into a facility for a certain period of time, usually 30, 60 or 90 days. Outpatient rehab allows individuals to participate in a recovery program while continuing with their daily life. Talk with your doctor about treatment options to determine which form of recovery will best fit your needs.

Maintenance

The recovery process doesn’t end with the completion of rehab. Long-term sobriety requires ongoing therapy and may entail support groups, counseling and other recovery resources. These will make sure you maintain sobriety and continue on a happy, healthy path for months and years to come.

Source: Alcohol Rehab Guide

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In September, NVIDIA agreed to purchase $5 billion worth of Intel shares. On Monday, the deal finally became official, with NVIDIA buying 214 million shares at $23.28 per share, giving it a 4.4% ownership stake in one of the most consequential companies in semiconductor history.

Since the initial agreement, the value of NVIDIA’s stake has already risen to $7.5 billion, as Intel shares closed at $36.68 on Monday. But focusing only on the immediate gains misses the bigger picture of why this deal matters right now.

On 18 December, the transaction cleared a major regulatory hurdle when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved the purchase after months of scrutiny over whether NVIDIA’s dominance in AI chips, combined with a stake in Intel, could raise antitrust concerns. The FTC ultimately ruled that the 4.4% stake was small enough to move forward.

What NVIDIA And Intel Are Actually Building Together

Beyond the financials, NVIDIA and Intel are planning to co-develop multiple generations of chips for data centres and computing platforms.

At the heart of this partnership is NVIDIA’s NVLink technology, which will connect Intel and NVIDIA chips at extremely high speeds. With bandwidth reaching 1.8 TB/s, NVLink enables far tighter CPU-GPU integration than traditional PCIe connections, removing the bottlenecks that increasingly slow down AI workloads.

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang described the partnership as: “This historic collaboration tightly couples NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing stack with Intel’s CPUs and the vast x86 ecosystem — a fusion of two world-class platforms.”

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan echoed the sentiment, saying: “Intel’s x86 architecture has been foundational to modern computing for decades — and we are innovating across our portfolio to enable the workloads of the future.”

In practical terms, Intel will manufacture NVIDIA-custom x86 CPUs for data centres that integrate directly into NVIDIA’s AI architecture. For consumer and enterprise PCs, Intel plans to build system-on-chips that combine x86 CPUs with NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets, blurring the traditional lines between processor roles.

A Lifeline For Intel

This deal comes at a critical moment for Intel. The company reported an $18.8 billion loss in 2024, its first annual loss since 1986, after years of strategic missteps, fierce competition, and heavy spending on manufacturing expansion.

NVIDIA’s investment will not fix those problems overnight, but it offers Intel something it urgently needs: time and credibility — a lifeline that could help stabilise the company while it attempts to reinvent itself.

NVIDIA’s Spending Spree Continues

For NVIDIA, the Intel stake is part of a much broader investment campaign that has already topped $120 billion, including its planned $100 billion investment in OpenAI and its recently announced $20 billion Groq deal.

Although NVIDIA officially labelled the Groq deal a non-exclusive licensing agreement rather than a full acquisition, it still underscores how aggressively the company is positioning itself across the AI value chain.

Nvidia’s $20 billion Groq Deal Opens a New Front in the Fight Over Faster AI

Officially, Nvidia had labelled this deal as a non-exclusive licensing agreement and not as an acquisition.

The Geopolitical Layer

The deal also fits neatly into a growing global AI race. In August, the U.S. government took a $10 billion stake in Intel, citing national security and supply-chain resilience.

NVIDIA’s move aligns with that strategy, reinforcing the US ambition to become a dominant AI chip production powerhouse, especially as competition with China intensifies.

Why This Matters

For NVIDIA, the upside is control and optionality. For Intel, it is a rare chance at reinvention. As demand for AI computing continues to surge, this partnership could help define who shapes the next era of semiconductors — and who struggles to survive it.

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Behind The Scenes (BTS), a film by popular Nollywood Actress Funke Akindele, has set another milestone by grossing over N100 million each in four consecutive days. The development has seen the project become the first Nollywood film to reach that mark.

According to a breakdown released by the Nigeria Box Office (NBO) on Monday, Behind The Scenes capitalised on the festive period and its continued acceptance to set new records. While the movie grossed N103.6 million on Christmas Day, it recorded N130.1 million on Boxing Day, becoming the highest single-day gross of all time. 

Behind The Scenes continued the fine run by grossing N105.4 million on 27 December and N121.6 million on 28 December, becoming the first Nollywood film to rake in over N100 million each in four consecutive days, and still counting. 

Aside from these, Funke Akindele’s latest feature also set several records.

Behind the Scenes, with the accumulation of its daily returns since launch, has now surged past N1.1 billion to become the fastest film in West Africa to cross N1 billion within 19 days after its release. The figure also made Funke Akindele Nollywood’s highest-grossing producer of all time. 

While confirming the new record, FilmOne Entertainment, the film’s distributor, said that Funke Akindele is now the only filmmaker to surpass N1 billion three separate times. In addition, she is also the first to rake in N1 billion+ in three consecutive projects within a single calendar year.

The distributor tagged the ongoing turnout at cinemas as  “another history made,” and also acknowledged the audience for continuing to show up, filling cinemas and “carrying this story with love.” It had previously described Funke Akindele as the “Queen of Box Office for a reason” after the film set its first record two weeks ago. 

Recall that earlier this month, Behind The Scenes became the first Nollywood film to hit the N200 million mark on its opening weekend in 2025. The film was described as a five-time box office opening weekend record holder and the biggest weekend admissions of 2025. It also recorded the biggest weekend admission (34,548) of 2025.

While the film continues to rake in revenue, the cost of production also attracts attention. Funke Akindele had earlier disclosed in a video that the production budget exceeded N1 billion, highlighting the scale of investment involved in the film production. 

Funke Akindele

Also Read: Behind The Scenes becomes first Nollywood movie to hit N200m on opening weekend in 2025.

About Behind The Scenes 

Behind The Scenes features Scarlet Gomez in the lead role, alongside Iyabo Ojo, Funke Akindele, Destiny Etiko, and Tobi Bakre. Others are Uche Montana, Uzor Arukwe, Ini Dima-Okojie, Adebowale ‘Mr Macaroni’, Ibrahim Chatta, Kamo State, and reality TV stars Handi and Wanni Danbaki, among others.

The film is a comedy-drama that spotlights the chaos, ego clashes, and hidden struggles in Nollywood film production and focuses on themes of pressure, healing, and hidden truths. It lights up an ambitious young filmmaker navigating betrayal, ambition, and on-set drama.

In addition, Behind The Scenes touches on broader societal issues like ‘black tax’ and self-sacrifice through characters such as successful entrepreneur Aderonke “Ronky-Fella” Faniran.

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Facebook hosted terrorist propaganda that celebrated the murder of Jews and praised Islamic State, a leading anti-hate group has alleged.

The posts included celebrations of the Bondi beach massacre that the Community Security Trust says Facebook has been too slow to take down. The posts were still on Facebook on 16 December, two days after the attack, and received shares and likes.

Some accounts are Britain-based and those have been reported to counter-terrorism police in the UK as a matter of urgency.

One post shows video of the aftermath of the Bondi beach attack, which was allegedly carried out by a father and son who were IS supporters, and says: “Allah is the greatest and praise to Allah.” It has clearly been viewed, with more than 100 likes, 27 comments and four shares recorded.

Fifteen people were killed as they celebrated the Jewish festival of Hanukah in Sydney on 14 December. One of the attackers also died.

Another post shows a photo of one of the Bondi beach gunmen and says: “The coming years of art and hell,” and contains praise for an IS leader. This had 12 shares and more than 300 likes.

Facebook said it was in the process of removing some of the posts after being contacted by the Guardian, and said some had already been spotted and removed.

Dave Rich, the director of policy for the CST, which works to keep Jewish people safe from attack, said: “The sheer volume of IS-supporting accounts promoting terrorist content on Facebook is deeply alarming, and the posts celebrating the Bondi terrorist attack are utterly nauseating.

“Yet again, social media companies are incapable of meeting even their most basic of responsibilities and are putting all of us in danger as a result. This simply should not be happening any more. We will be calling on Ofcom to urgently investigate Meta’s failings and to take strong action where possible.”

Ofcom, the media regulator, said: “If a post is reported to a platform now, the platform must decide whether the content is illegal under UK law, and take it down swiftly if it is. Our job is to make sure sites and apps have appropriate measures in place to comply with their duties.”

It said it had received “evidence that suggests terrorist content and illegal hate speech is persisting on some of the largest social media sites”.

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook, declined to answer a series of questions but said: “The content was removed for violating our policies around dangerous organisations and individuals.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Social media content promoting terrorism or violence against communities is absolutely unacceptable, and will not be tolerated. The law is clear: social media platforms must take action to prevent illegal content on their sites, including terrorist and violent material.”

The focus on pro-IS material on popular social media sites comes amid concern about an increase in terrorist efforts to target Jewish people across the west.

Two men were convicted on 22 December of a plot to get machine guns and shoot Jewish people around the north-west of England. In that plot and the Sydney massacre, both sets of terrorists’ approaches had a degree of sophistication.

Though neither was “directed” by IS, the Sydney attackers visited the Philippines and the north-west England machine-gun plotters had contact with an IS person overseas and were sophisticated enough to try to bypass Jewish community security and infiltrate a Facebook group, giving them details of potential Jewish targets.

Rich said of the English plot: “This is an even more serious plot than the attack on the synagogue in Heaton Park and indicates a much greater level of training and sophistication.”

Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism policing, told the Guardian: “The terrorist threats we face do not stand still and we rarely confine them to history. Instead, they flex in intensity and risk over time – and so does our response.

“Recent attacks in Manchester and Australia are clear reminders of the range of threats we face, and we continue to ask the public to … report any concerns they see in their real-world or online communities.”

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Cybersecurity breaches remained a persistent thorn in the side of African companies in 2025, but the major highlights from the year weren’t the headline attacks. Institutions lost the luxury of keeping breaches quiet as cyberattacks became harder to hide.

Several African countries tightened the breach-reporting guidelines for operators. Chief among them is Algeria, which mandated a 5-day window for companies to report breaches or pay heavy fines. Kenya and South Africa also made significant strides in forcing organisations to treat breaches as public events rather than private IT problems. 

In Kenya, operators that discover a potential breach are now expected to alert data controllers within 48 hours, and controllers are pushed to file a preliminary report to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) within 72 hours—even if the full facts are not yet in. Late notifications must be justified, and new guidance from the regulator ties weak security and poor reporting directly to fines, sanctions, and even the risk of losing the right to process data. For Kenyan firms, that means the old instinct to “wait until we know more” now carries regulatory risk of its own.

South Africa also overhauled its breach‑reporting process. While the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) had long required organisations to notify both the regulator and affected people after a “security compromise,” in 2025, the Information Regulator tightened how that duty works in practice. In April, it mandated companies to log breaches through an online reporting portal using a form, forcing operators to spell out what happened, what data was involved, what they are doing to contain it, and what individuals should do to protect themselves.

According to South Africa’s Information Regulator, there were 2,374 reported breaches in the 2024/25 financial year, with 82% of them occurring after April 2025. The number pointed to an acceleration, but also hinted that disclosure was becoming unavoidable.

Elsewhere, Zambia chose to treat cybersecurity as a critical‑infrastructure issue rather than a back‑office concern. In April 2025, the country split its cyber law into two: a Cyber Security Act governing security service providers and critical information infrastructure, and a Cyber Crimes Act dealing with offences and penalties. Operators in sectors such as energy, banking and finance, health, transport, pensions and insurance, ICT, education, mining, and other designated public‑sector services can now be classified as controllers of “critical information” or “critical information infrastructure,” bringing them under a tighter supervisory net.

That designation comes with hard obligations: controllers must register with the new Zambia Cyber Security Agency, keep designated critical information hosted in Zambia unless expressly authorised to store it elsewhere, and promptly notify the agency of any perceived or actual cybersecurity incident affecting those systems or connected networks. They are also required to undergo annual audits, file cybersecurity situational-awareness reports, and participate in national cyber-exercises, with non-compliance punishable by fines of up to ZMW 1.2 million ($48,000) and, in serious cases, prison terms that can extend up to 10 years.

These regulatory shifts forced the disclosure of some of the most consequential breaches in 2025. At a new scale, they made visible how intrusions disrupt everyday customer services in very public ways.

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Exposure as a strategy

If 2024 gave us the unfortunate breach at South Africa’s National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), the biggest healthcare incident in 2025 was Kenya’s M-TIBA breach in October. Like a trophy showcase, hackers published the siphoned data on public Telegram channels, a pattern used to force organisations to comply with ransom demands. Organisations that hold sensitive customer data remained heavily targeted businesses in 2025.

Telecom firms, once assumed to be resilient by virtue of scale, became some of the most lucrative targets. Telecom Namibia, a state-owned provider, was quietly crippled by a ransomware attack in December 2024, with a public fallout that continued in January 2025. When the company refused to pay, attackers leaked sensitive billing data belonging to senior government officials in an attempt to force compliance.

On January 8, hackers hit mobile operator Cell C with a cybersecurity breach, with reports stating that perpetrators, RansomHouse, had “unlawfully disclosed the incident” and published stolen customer data on the dark web, exposing them to fraud and extortion.

In April, MTN Group disclosed a data breach affecting its South African subscribers. In Ghana, at least 5,700 MTN customers were directly affected in a breach reported on April 28. In South Africa, the breach escalated into a criminal investigation. The message to the industry was unmistakable: Telecoms had become identity vaults, and those vaults were being tested.

Hackers maintained their exhibitionist posture, and several other sensitive data organisations were hit. In January 2025, a cyberattack on the South African Weather Service (SAWS) knocked key systems offline, disrupting the delivery of aviation and marine forecasts and limiting access to critical weather information at home and across the region. In July, the municipal systems of Otjiwarongo, a quiet town in central Namibia, were knocked offline. Residents were blocked from accessing basic services as officials struggled to explain what had happened.

The year’s most consequential infrastructure breach involved South Africa’s Eskom, the state-owned power company, and it became a crowning moment of the exposure era—one that attached a clear financial cost to a cyber incident. 

In December 2024, the power utility detailed how its Online Vending System (OVS)—the platform used to generate prepaid electricity tokens—had been breached the previous year, after a forensic investigation linked large “non-technical” losses to fraud on the system.

The breach itself occurred in 2024, but only surfaced publicly in December, when Eskom acknowledged that criminals had exploited weaknesses in its vending platform to generate large volumes of fraudulent yet technically valid tokens. MyBroadBand, a local media publication, reported in November 2025 that Eskom employees, either acting as colluders or as orchestrators of the scheme, took advantage of the compromised system to create and sell fake power tokens, allegedly stealing between R657 million and R1.1 billion ($39.5 million–$66 million) from the company.

By September 2025, Eskom reported that fraud linked to the OVS breach had been reduced to “very low levels of activity.” The incident did something damaging: it made internal failure, financial loss, and delayed disclosure visible at once, underscoring how difficult it had become for institutions to keep breaches quiet.

Espionage?

State‑linked groups such as Salt Typhoon, associated with China, have targeted telecommunications providers—including at least one in South Africa, according to researchers at Recorded Future—seeking access not to cause disruption but to observe. Metadata, call records, network access—the architecture of daily life—proved more valuable than any single database.

These attacks rarely produced headlines. They did not need to. Their success lay in remaining largely invisible.

In South Africa, allegations surfaced in September that the State Security Agency (SSA) had been breached by a suspected Chinese-linked group known as RedNovember. Officials denied the intrusion, saying they investigated the claims and found no evidence of such a breach. Yet the matter remains a public spectacle on how espionage could be the objective for RedNovember, a group notorious for targeting high-profile governments and intergovernmental organisations (IGOs). RedNovember did not issue any statement on the alleged SSA breach.

At the same time, ransomware groups turned toward infrastructure: ports, utilities, logistics systems. In South Africa alone, ransomware- and cybercrime-related losses were estimated at $120 million annually. 

Elsewhere on the continent, Senegal’s tax authority was hit by ransomware that threatened to erase and leak sensitive fiscal records. On October 2, Senegal’s Directorate General of Taxes and Domains (DGID), a department of the Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Planning—responsible for tax and land policies and administration in the country—issued a statement denying the alleged attack, and framing it as a temporary technical glitch; with that move, the government opted for quiet containment and recovery. Yet the episode exposed the fragility of digital tax systems that underpin state revenue.

Similar pressures were visible across East Africa. Kenya’s national incident response team recorded over 842 million attempted cyber intrusions in Q3 2025, most targeting government login portals and internet service providers. In Ethiopia and several other countries in the region, repeated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks aimed at telecom infrastructure remained a persistent thorn. These attacks were stress tests on states digitising faster than they could defend.

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The new confidence trick

In 2025, people also stopped trusting voices.

AI-driven social engineering matured quickly. The fear of finance managers receiving calls that sounded exactly like their CEOs or video meetings featuring faces that blinked and nodded with unsettling accuracy increased. Traditional warning signs—bad grammar, strange domains—no longer apply.

West Africa’s long-running role as a hub for Business Email Compromise (BEC) hardened into something more industrial. Crime syndicates like Black Axe ran operations that were transnational, disciplined, and lucrative. Reports of digital sextortion—often involving AI-generated images used to blackmail victims—also surged.

Nigeria illustrated how cybercrime blended with insider abuse. At Access Bank, the country’s biggest bank by assets, investigators alleged that staff colluded to divert ₦826 million ($569,345) through a fake internal revenue account. It was not a breach in the conventional sense, but it underscored another reality of 2025: the most damaging compromises also came from willing, and even unwitting insiders.

Arrests, laws, and the theatre of response

There were moments of resolve. In a coordinated operation, INTERPOL arrested 1,209 cybercriminals across 18 African countries. Regulators also began flexing their muscles. The Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC), the country’s data privacy regulator, fined MultiChoice, the South African multinational media company, ₦766 million ($528,000) for failing to adequately protect consumer data. It signalled to African organisations that poor data stewardship would carry real financial consequences.

In North Africa, a wave of cyber incidents unfolded over several weeks in April. The sequence began when Moroccan-linked hackers allegedly compromised the X account of Algeria’s state news agency. TechCabal’s checks showed that the account was taken over in April and renamed to ‘Sahara Marocain,’ in what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to provoke.

On April 8, pro-Algerian group Jabaroot hit back. It reportedly hacked Morocco’s National Social Security Fund, directly framing it as retaliation. The disclosed breach exposed tens of thousands of files containing personal and financial information of nearly 2 million citizens. 

While officials disputed some of the leaked material, large portions of the data reportedly appeared on public Telegram channels. Soon after, the hacktivist group Jabaroot defaced Morocco’s Ministry of Labour website, citing retaliation for online attacks against Algerian media. The escalating tit-for-tat of digital reprisals underscored how cyber operations have become weapons of digital skirmishes, leaving civilians’ data as collateral damage.

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What 2025 left behind

Between 2019 and 2025, Africa lost more than $3 billion to cybercrime, according to INTERPOL. The figure only captures money and not lost confidence following such attacks. The agency also noted that detection and response capabilities across the continent remain limited, lagging behind the pace and scale of emerging threats, and signalling an investment gap.

According to INTERPOL’s Africa Cyberthreat Assessment report, 90% of African businesses operate without adequate cybersecurity protocols in place. The same report notes that only 30% of African countries have an incident reporting system, underscoring persistent underreporting and structural gaps in how cyber incidents are captured.

Across much of Africa, cybersecurity spending has tended to cluster around basic perimeter tools and compliance-driven controls, while more advanced capabilities—continuous monitoring, threat hunting, assessments, testing, and controls—remain underdeveloped in many sectors outside large banks and telecom operators. 

A report by PwC, a global consulting firm, showed that only 28% of South African organisations are spending significantly more on proactive measures than reactive measures (such as incident response, fines, recovery). Globally, that figure is closer to 70%, yet most African organisations are not close to that mark.

Without stronger defences, the threats will spill over to 2026. Hackers are timing, striking when systems are already strained. Global blockchain startups are also discovering that smart contracts, accounting for $29 million in damages, fail just as human ones do. Information security analysts have become some of the most sought-after professionals on the continent.

As the year draws to a close, we learned that breaches are no longer the thing African institutions fear most. What they fear is being seen as unprepared, evasive, and ordinary in the face of a problem they once believed could be managed quietly.

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At a time when everyday conversations about money are starting to feel heavier, rising prices, growing government debt, and questions about long-term stability, Bitcoin is again being pulled into the center of a much bigger debate. This time, the argument isn’t about replacing the U.S. dollar, but about whether Bitcoin can quietly make the system stronger. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believes it can.

Speaking in December, Armstrong said Bitcoin acts as healthy competition for the U.S. dollar. Not as an enemy, and not as a substitute, but as an alternative that keeps policymakers on their toes. In his view, when people have a credible exit option, governments are forced to be more careful with how they manage money.

Armstrong explained that Bitcoin works more like a market signal than a political weapon. When inflation rises or government spending grows too fast, confidence in traditional money starts to weaken. People don’t wait for official reforms. They simply look for safer places to store value. Bitcoin, in that sense, reflects stress in the system rather than causing it.

He pointed out that moderate inflation can work if the economy grows at the same pace. The problem begins when inflation runs ahead of growth. Over time, that gap chips away at trust in the dollar, especially for global investors who rely on it as a store of value. Bitcoin’s existence, Armstrong argued, forces institutions like the Federal Reserve and lawmakers to think harder about the long-term impact of their decisions.

What $14B crypto forfeiture says about the U.S. bitcoin strategy

A massive Bitcoin seizure tied to a global scam could push America’s holdings past $36 billion and reveal how its approach to digital assets is changing.

Does Bitcoin actually weaken the U.S. dollar or hold it accountable?

This argument becomes more serious when viewed alongside America’s rising debt. The U.S. national debt has climbed to historic levels and continues to grow rapidly.

For Armstrong, Bitcoin introduces an unusual form of accountability. If confidence breaks down, people can move capital elsewhere. That possibility alone creates pressure. From this perspective, Bitcoin does not weaken the dollar. It quietly encourages better discipline to protect it.

Armstrong is not alone in framing Bitcoin this way. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has previously described Bitcoin as a hedge against currency debasement, particularly for countries that struggle with fiscal control. Hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones has compared Bitcoin to digital gold, saying it serves as protection in an era of aggressive money printing. Even Federal Reserve officials have acknowledged that crypto reflects public concerns about inflation and trust, even if they disagree on its role.

Across these views, the comparison is consistent. Bitcoin is not positioned as a new national currency, but as a parallel system that highlights weaknesses in existing ones.

How Stablecoins Are Becoming a Global Macroeconomic Force

As stablecoin use explodes past $9 trillion in annual transactions, the question becomes how long before they reshape global finance.

What role do stablecoins play in the future of the U.S. dollar?

While Bitcoin often grabs headlines, Armstrong and others have noted that dollar-backed stablecoins may be doing more to extend U.S. influence globally. Stablecoins allow people around the world to use digital dollars for everyday payments, savings, and transfers, often without touching the traditional banking system.

When the U.S. economy shows strength, confidence tends to flow back into dollar-based assets. In those moments, Bitcoin does not always rise. Stablecoins, however, gain traction by making the dollar easier to use across borders. Some industry leaders argue that this quietly reinforces dollar dominance in the digital economy.

Taken together, Bitcoin and stablecoins play very different roles. Bitcoin applies pressure by offering an alternative during times of instability. Stablecoins extend the reach of the dollar when confidence is high. Armstrong’s core argument is that this balance ultimately benefits the U.S., not by eliminating the dollar, but by forcing it to remain credible.

In that sense, Bitcoin’s most important impact may not be its price or volatility, but the uncomfortable questions it keeps raising. And for policymakers, those questions are becoming harder to ignore.

How the GENIUS Act Impacts Stablecoins and Crypto Adoption

With this implementation, stablecoins gain legal clarity, greater institutional trust, and a clear path toward real-world adoption at scale.

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Between the slash-and-burn US government reboot led by a dank meme fan and the relentless pushing of AI by venture capital-backed blowhards, 2025 has felt like peak obnoxious tech bro. Fittingly, jargon-spouting, self-regarding digital visionaries also became Hollywood’s go-to baddies this year in everything from blockbusters to slapstick spoofs. Spare a thought for the overworked props departments tasked with mocking up fake Forbes magazine covers heralding yet another smirking white guy as “Master of the Metaverse” or whatever.

With such market saturation, the risk is that all these delusional dudes blend into one smarmy morass. It felt reasonable to expect that Stanley Tucci might sprinkle a little prosciutto on The Electric State, Netflix’s no-expense-spared alt-history robot fantasia. As Ethan Skate – creator of the “neurocaster” technology that quashed an AI uprising then turned the general populace into listless virtual-reality addicts – Tucci certainly looked the part: bald and imperious in retro Bond villain wardrobe. But even the great cocktail-maker couldn’t squeeze much out of sour existential proclamations such as: “Our world is a tyre fire floating on an ocean of piss.”

Hall-of-mirrors feel … Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor in Superman. Photograph: Jessica Miglio/© 2025 Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved. TM & © DC

There was more baldness in Superman, where Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor embodied the worst kind of wannabe paradigm-changer: one desperate to appear on talkshows. Incensed that the world seemed to be ignoring his genius in favour of a flying alien do-gooder, the LuthorCorp founder spent a fortune to rig social media, deploying an army of vivisected monkey cyborgs to swamp platforms with anti-Superman hashtags and memes. That the film itself was met with farmed outrage about perceived wokeness added a disconcerting hall-of-mirrors feel to what was essentially an overstuffed crowdpleaser. Hoult’s Lex was also a distractingly hot tech CEO, which pushed the film further into the realm of fantasy.

Is it more appealing when these self-regarding douchebags are funny? In the heightened world of killer doll action thriller M3gan 2.0, Jemaine Clement was sleazily overconfident as Alton Appleton, a high-functioning billionaire whose latest wheeze was pushing an unwanted neural implant on the masses. Seduced by an impassive fembot assassin, Alton was humiliated in his final moments, his signature Altwave tech effortlessly hacked, his weird prosthetic six-pack coming unstuck. It was pathetic but humanising. As the movie trundled on, you actually began to miss him.

If Clement nailed tech bro obliviousness, Danny Huston had to remain deadpan opposite Liam Neeson’s blathering Frank Drebin Jr in The Naked Gun reboot. Huston’s Richard Cane was a hybrid Jeff Bezos/Elon Musk-esque blowhard who used the galactic profits from his online retail and electric car empires to make a Primordial Law of Toughness device . His master plan was to zap the general public back to a prehistoric mindset, violently culling the herd and ushering in a new age for humankind (or at least his zillionaire class). Cane was obsessed with men’s sperm counts, building luxury bunkers for the super-rich and Black Eyed Peas. In other words: truly psychotic.

Truly psychotic … Danny Huston in The Naked Gun. Photograph: Paramount Pictures/AP

In the goopy, grungy world of The Toxic Avenger reboot, Kevin Bacon’s floppy-haired biotech baddie Bob Garbinger stood out simply because he looked so pale and pampered. While it’s not a great sign when a self-proclaimed “healthstyle” guru gets Sisyphus and syphilis mixed up, Garbinger’s habit of going shirtless while flogging “proprietary cutting-edge bio-boosters” in TV ads felt like a timely skewering of immortality-seeking biohackers such as Bryan Johnson.

In 2022, Evan Peters played the lead in Netflix’s ghoulish Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Did that influence his casting as a second-generation nepo baby in Tron: Ares? To be fair, his Julian Dillinger – grandson of David Warner’s boardroom bully from the original 1982 Tron – seemed more neurotic than psychotic: a baby-faced tech huckster with crappy circuit board sleeve tattoos whose audacious move into 3D-printing wicked neon war machines and digital commandos was only slightly scuppered by the fact that they imploded within 30 minutes. A wildly expensive, resource-intensive, essentially useless product? Intentionally or not, it felt like an appropriate metaphor for the AI bubble.

Pale and pampered … Kevin Bacon in The Toxic Avenger

But why stop at just one douchey tech bro? Jesse Armstrong’s jagged satire Mountainhead took the bold step of making every single character the absolute worst of the “move fast, break stuff” billionaire mindset, isolating them – and the viewer – in a remote, repellently deluxe ski lodge while the spectre of possible Armageddon encroached. As the Musk-alike owner of a social media app spreading dangerous AI-augmented misinformation, Cory Michael Smith captured the glib, morality-agnostic tone of someone richer than God who views the world as their plaything.

As Venis (Smith), silverback investor Randall (Steve Carell), canny algorithm tamer Jeff (Ramy Youssef) and would-be wellness app supremo Souper (Jason Schwartzman) relentlessly needled each other, there was the illicit thrill of dialling into the combative quartet’s inside-baseball repartee of boasting, toasting and roasting. But as the globe lurched further into chaos, watching these four nominal thought leaders clumsily workshop how best to exploit the situation was depressing, not least because it seemed so plausible. We have all been forced to absorb the pathologies of our tech overlords due to their disproportionate influence in the real world. As a new cinema year looms, is it too much to ask that we don’t have to keep doing it at the movies too?

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The Loch Ness Monster was ‘spotted’ five times in 2025, official records have revealed. 

The mythical creature has been a staple feature of Scottish folklore for centuries, but gained worldwide attention in 1933, when the first photo was snapped.

Since then, 1,165 sightings have been recorded by The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register. 

The five sightings of the creature, nicknamed Nessie, took place across just an eight-month period. 

The first was on 22 March, when a couple visiting from London spotted a mysterious ‘hump’ in the water. 

Two months later, in May, a visitor reported a ‘long and thin’ creature in a boat’s wake. 

In August, a ‘long time local’ reported a sighting, before two visitors claimed to spot Nessie within weeks of each other in October. 

Here’s a closer look at the five sightings, and exactly what was seen. 

In May, a visitor viewing the loch from a high vantage point at around 15:40 spotted a small motor boat entering the bay

22 March 

At around 7pm on 22 March, a couple visiting from London heard a ‘quiet splash’ at Fort Augustus. 

‘We were right at the point where the River Taff connects to Loch Ness, on the north bank,’ one of them said. 

‘At first I noticed a very quiet splash sound as if something was cutting stealthily into the water and this drew my attention to the south side of the water. 

‘There I saw something moving through the water, between 130 and 160 feet away from us. 

‘It was paler than the jet-black water around it, but in the gloom it was impossible to determine a hue.’

The couple described the sighting as a ‘hump’, adding that it was ‘large and alive’.  

‘Kind of like if a large seal or walrus was swimming in the water but for some reason it’s head was hidden, like just it’s back was exposed,’ they explained. 

The mythical creature has been a staple feature of Scottish folklore for centuries, but gained worldwide attention in 1933, when the first photo was snapped

In late August, a long time local resident shot a two-minute video of something under the water near Lochend

While it was too dark to pick up on details like texture, the couple soon realised that there was a second mass in its wake.

‘It was roughly the same size and shape as the leading mass but perhaps lower in the water,’ they added. 

‘There was maybe 1.5 to 2 meters gap between the humps from my line of sight. I think until I saw the second hump I was thinking it was a seal that was behaving strangely.’

The creature soon left the area, moving towards the deeper part of the loch, before disappearing.  

‘Later when we talked about it, my partner told me that from her vantage point it was clear that the two humps were on one creature, that it was one long creature,’ the viewer added. 

23 May

In May, a visitor viewing the loch from a high vantage point at around 15:40 spotted a small motor boat entering the bay. 

Using binoculars, he peered at the boat’s wake, and spotted something ‘long and thin’ pop up.

On 15 October, Peter Hoyle was visiting the Loch from Moray, when he spotted a dark shape sticking out of the water

While the object vanished a few times, he managed to catch it on film, with the entire sighting lasting just five minutes.   

29 August

In late August, a long time local resident shot a two-minute video of something under the water near Lochend. 

Filmed at 09:15 during ‘calm clear conditions’, the footage shows an unusual disturbance pattern on the surface of the water. 

Despite living in the area for 30 years, the resident said they had ‘never seen anything like this before.’  

15 October 

On 15 October, Peter Hoyle was visiting the Loch from Moray, when he spotted a dark shape sticking out of the water. 

The shape was moving from the right side of the loch to the left, travelling ‘fairly quickly, but not boat speed’. 

Finally, Mishawn Mielke, a tourist from Texas, was visiting Urquhart Castle when she reported seeing a black head in the water at 14.45

Within 30 seconds, the shape had disappeared into the depths of the water – although Mr Hoyle did manage to capture footage of the short sighting. 

28 October 2025

Finally, Mishawn Mielke, a tourist from Texas, was visiting Urquhart Castle when she reported seeing a black head in the water at 14.45. 

‘I first saw it and was like wow, that looks just like images I saw from the sightings website,’ she said.

‘It didn’t look like a wave, it actually looked like the head of something popping up. it made a distinct pattern in the water I couldn’t see anywhere else, kind of like its own wake. And than it was gone. 

‘From that distance I’d say the water pattern was at least 3m long.’

Webcam images

Four sightings were also reported via webcam images in 2025, although these are listed separately.

‘Over the past few years, and especially during the Covid crisis, many images that we receive come from the Loch Ness Webcam,’ The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register explains on its website.

‘For reasons outwith the control of the camera operators, the resolution of some of the images from the camera has at times been less than ideal. 

‘As such, it has been more difficult to identify what some images submitted. 

‘Given they are still “unexplained” though, we decided that from 2021 onwards, such images would be listed separately from those that are reported by people who saw something while physically at the loch.’

What IS the Loch Ness Monster?

Rumours of a strange creature living in the waters of Loch Ness have abounded over the decades, yet scant evidence has been found to back up these claims.

One of the first sightings, believed to have fuelled modern Nessie fever, came in May 2, 1933.  

On this date the Inverness Courier carried a story about a local couple who claim to have seen ‘an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface’.

Another famous claimed sighting is a photograph taken in 1934 by Colonel Robert Kenneth Wilson.

It was later exposed as a hoax by one of the participants, Chris Spurling, who, on his deathbed, revealed that the pictures were staged.

Other sightings James Gray’s picture from 2001 when he and friend Peter Levings were out fishing on the Loch, while namesake Hugh Gray’s blurred photo of what appears to be a large sea creature was published in the Daily Express in 1933.

Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London physician, captured arguably the most famous image of the Loch Ness Monster. The surgeon’s photograph was published in the Daily Mail on April 21, 1934 – however it was later proven to be a fake 

The first reported sighting of the monster is said to have been made in AD565 by the Irish missionary St Columba when he came across a giant beast in the River Ness.

But no one has ever come up with a satisfactory explanation for the sightings – although in 2019, ‘Nessie expert’ Steve Feltham, who has spent 24 years watching the Loch, said he thought it was actually a giant Wels Catfish, native to waters near the Baltic and Caspian seas in Europe.

An online register lists more than 1,000 total Nessie sightings, created by Mr Campbell, the man behind the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club and is available at www.lochnesssightings.com. 

So what could explain these mysterious sightings? 

Many Nessie witnesses have mentioned large, crocodile-like scutes sitting atop the spine of the creature, leading some to believe an escaped amphibian may be to blame.

Native fish sturgeons can also weigh several hundred pounds and have ridged backs, which make them look almost reptilian.

Some believe Nessie is a long-necked plesiosaur – like an elasmosaur – that survived somehow when all the other dinosaurs were wiped out.

Others say the sightings are down to Scottish pines dying and flopping into the loch, before quickly becoming water-logged and sinking.

While submerged, botanical chemicals start trapping tiny bubbles of air.

Eventually, enough of these are gathered to propel the log upward as deep pressures begin altering its shape, giving the appearance of an animal coming up for air.

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Meta has acquired Singapore-based AI startup Manus for billions of dollars, closing the deal in just over ten days—a speed that shocked even the startup’s own investors.

“At first, we almost doubted whether this was a fake offer,” said Liu Yuan, partner at ZhenFund and an early investor in Manus, describing the extremely short negotiation timeline. The deal marks Meta’s third-largest acquisition ever, behind only WhatsApp and Scale AI.

But here’s what makes this urgent: Manus launched only in March 2025. Eight months later, Meta paid billions to own it. That timeline tells you everything about how fast the AI landscape is moving and how seriously tech giants now view the gap between talking and doing.

Meta Spent Billions on AI. Its Next Big Models Still Aren’t Ready

The Chief AI Officer told employees that its two most important AI models won’t ship until next year.

The Shift From Chatbots to Workers

The difference between current AI tools and what Manus built comes down to execution. Most AI—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini—can answer questions, write text, and suggest next steps. Manus goes further: it completes entire workflows autonomously without constant supervision.

Want a 40-page market research report? Manus researches, analyses, structures, and delivers it while you’re in another meeting. Need to screen hundreds of job applications? It reads them, scores candidates, and presents recommendations. Looking for a two-bedroom apartment in a specific neighbourhood? It searches listings, compares options, and builds a shortlist with pricing breakdowns.

This isn’t about generating better responses. It’s about AI that finishes tasks from start to end, the way you’d hand work to a colleague and expect them to handle it completely.

Manus achieved $100 million in annual recurring revenue just eight months after launch, reportedly the fastest any startup globally has hit that milestone. The company processed more than 147 trillion tokens this year and created over 80 million virtual computers while serving millions of users worldwide.

Those metrics explain why Meta moved so quickly.

Behind the acquisition is a recognition that Meta has fallen behind in a critical area. While the company has invested heavily in AI infrastructure and model development, it struggled to translate that into consumer products that feel genuinely transformative.

Apple has reportedly explored acquiring Perplexity AI. Microsoft continues deepening its OpenAI partnership. Google is pushing agents across its product suite. The window for acquiring proven autonomous agent technology is closing fast as the best companies either get bought or become prohibitively expensive.

Manus was in the middle of raising a new funding round at a $2 billion valuation when Meta approached. Instead of letting competitors make offers or waiting for the price to climb higher, Meta closed the deal in days. Mark Zuckerberg and several Meta executives were already using Manus themselves, which likely accelerated the decision.

“Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” said Xiao Hong, Manus CEO, who will now serve as Vice President at Meta while continuing to run the company from Singapore.

Meta plans to keep operating Manus as a standalone service while integrating its technology into Meta AI, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and its AI-powered glasses. That means autonomous agent capabilities could soon reach billions of users across Meta’s platforms.

What This Means for Users

The acquisition signals a fundamental shift in how AI will work in everyday apps. Instead of typing prompts into a chatbot and reviewing its suggestions, you’ll be able to assign complete tasks and walk away.

Book a vacation itinerary? The AI researches flights, hotels, activities, and presents a complete plan. Analyse your investment portfolio? It pulls data, identifies trends, flags risks, and creates a summary report. Draft a presentation deck? It builds slides, adds relevant data visualizations, and structures the narrative.

The integration timeline isn’t clear yet, but Meta’s urgency suggests the company wants these capabilities live quickly. The competitive pressure from Apple, Google, and Microsoft is intensifying, and autonomous agents represent the next major platform shift—similar to how mobile apps transformed what phones could do a decade ago.

Manus currently operates on a subscription model: a free tier with one daily task, a $39/month Starter plan, and a $199/month Pro plan. How Meta adapts that pricing when integrating Manus into its free platforms remains to be seen, but the company has historically preferred advertising-supported models over direct subscriptions.

Image Credit: Manus

The China Factor and Strategic Independence

There’s another layer here. Manus was created by Butterfly Effect, a Chinese company that recently relocated its headquarters to Singapore. The startup raised $75 million from U.S. venture firm Benchmark in April, which drew scrutiny from lawmakers concerned about backing an AI company with Chinese origins.

Meta says Manus will sever all ties to Chinese investors and will not operate in China following the acquisition. That’s a significant condition, especially as U.S.-China tech tensions continue shaping corporate strategy in AI development.

The company will continue operating independently from Singapore, maintaining its existing team and decision-making structure. That autonomy matters—Manus built its technology by aggressively combining and optimizing existing AI models from Anthropic and Alibaba rather than developing everything from scratch. Keeping that team intact and independent preserves the execution speed that made them valuable in the first place.

The Bigger Picture

Meta’s acquisition reveals how the AI industry is entering a new phase. The era of impressing people with clever text generation is over. The fight now centres on which companies can deliver AI that executes real work reliably and repeatedly.

Manus achieved something most startups don’t: product-market fit at scale in record time. The company’s rapid revenue growth and global user adoption proved that people will pay for AI that actually completes tasks, not just assists with them.

Whether Meta can maintain that momentum while integrating Manus into its vastly larger ecosystem is the open question. The company has a mixed record on acquisitions—Instagram and WhatsApp thrived, while others faded. But the speed of this deal and Zuckerberg’s personal involvement suggest Meta understands the stakes.

For now, the message is clear: autonomous agents that execute tasks from start to finish are the next battleground in AI. And Meta just paid billions rather than risk building too slowly on its own.

IBM Acquires Confluent for $11 Billion to Power Real-Time AI Data

The deal highlights a growing trend of tech giants investing heavily in data infrastructure to ensure AI systems can make decisions instantly.

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Nigeria’s National Assembly has initiated an institutional review of the legislative handling of Nigeria’s controversial tax reform laws, following discrepancies between versions passed by lawmakers and those published in the Official Gazette.

A seven-member ad hoc committee has been constituted to establish what went wrong in the passage of four critical tax bills that have generated significant public attention.

According to a press statement from the House spokesman, Rep. Akin Rotimi, the committee will examine the sequence of events surrounding the Nigeria Tax Act 2025, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025, the Joint Revenue Board of Nigeria (Establishment) Act 2025, and the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act 2025.

The review will focus on identifying lapses, irregularities, or external interferences that may have contributed to the confusion between the harmonised bills passed by both chambers and the versions subsequently gazetted.

The House raised the matter under a Point of Order on Privileges, suggesting possible concerns about the integrity of the legislative process.

Similar: How the new tax law will affect POS agents

Tax committee tasked with examining discrepancies

The ad hoc committee, working alongside other relevant National Assembly committees and management, has been tasked with conducting a comprehensive examination of how documents were transmitted for presidential assent and why discrepancies emerged in the final gazetted versions.

Leadership under Senate President Godswill Obot Akpabio and House Speaker Abbas Tajudeen has directed the Clerk to the National Assembly to regazette the Acts and issue Certified True Copies reflecting the actual legislative decisions made by both chambers.

This administrative correction is meant to authenticate what lawmakers genuinely passed, addressing concerns that the published versions may not accurately represent the National Assembly’s intentions.

The press release emphasises that the review will be conducted within constitutional boundaries, examining compliance with the Acts Authentication Act, Standing Orders of both chambers, and established parliamentary practice.

However, the statement carefully notes that this does not constitute an admission of any defect in legislative authority, maintaining that the exercise is strictly procedural.

Taiwo Oyedele, chairman of the presidential committee on fiscal policy and tax reforms

What remains unclear is how long Nigerians must wait for both processes to conclude. The regazetting appears to be an administrative function that could be executed relatively quickly once discrepancies are identified and corrected.

Yet, the committee’s investigative work presents a different timeline challenge. Institutional reviews of this nature typically require thorough documentation review, witness interviews, and examination of administrative procedures at multiple levels of the legislative bureaucracy.

Read also: Banks, fintechs mandated to generate Tax IDs for account holders from January

The silence surrounding the committee’s progress suggests work may only be beginning – or not.

Parliamentary investigations often take weeks or months, particularly when examining complex legislative processes involving multiple stakeholders. The committee must trace the bills’ journey from harmonisation through authentication, presidential assent, and final gazette publication to identify where things went wrong.

Beyond procedural corrections, the review must determine whether irregularities resulted from administrative error, systemic failures, or deliberate interference.

The reference to examining “external interferences” in the press statement raises questions about whether forces outside the National Assembly may have influenced the final gazetted versions.

Establishing culpability for any breach of legislative procedure or authentication laws will require careful investigation and could have significant consequences for individuals or institutions found responsible.

It bears noting that the France-FIRS partnership arrangement continues to generate questions, and the public has yet to see the Memorandum of Understanding governing this relationship. This lack of transparency compounds existing concerns about the tax reform process.

The National Assembly urges Nigerians to avoid speculation while institutional processes unfold, but the extended silence and unclear timelines inevitably fuel public anxiety.

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Mark Zuckerberg has struck again.

Meta Platforms is acquiring Manus, a Singapore-based AI startup that’s become the talk of Silicon Valley since it materialized this spring with a demo video so slick it went instantly viral. The clip showed an AI agent that could do things like screen job candidates, plan vacations, and analyze stock portfolios. Manus claimed at the time that it outperformed OpenAI’s Deep Research.

By April, just weeks after launch, the early-stage firm Benchmark led a $75 million funding round that assigned Manus a post-money valuation of $500 million. General partner Chetan Puttagunta joined the board. Per Chinese media outlets, some other big-name backers had already invested in Manus at that point, including Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG (formerly known as Sequoia China) via an earlier $10 million round.

Though Bloomberg raised questions when Manus started charging $39 or $199 a month for access to its AI models (the outlet noted the pricing seemed “somewhat aggressive . . . for a membership service still in a testing phase,”) the company recently announced it had since signed up millions of users and crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

That’s when Meta started negotiating with Manus, according to the WSJ, which says Meta is paying $2 billion — the same valuation Manus was seeking for its next funding round.

For Zuckerberg, who has staked Meta’s future on AI, Manus represents something new: an AI product that’s actually making money (investors have grown increasingly twitchy about Meta’s $60 billion infrastructure spending spree).

Meta says it’ll keep Manus running independently while weaving its agents into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, where Meta’s own chatbot, Meta AI, is already available to users.

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There is one wrinkle, however, which is that Manus, which launched eight months ago, has Chinese founders who founded parent company Butterfly Effect in Beijing in 2022 before decamping to Singapore in the middle of this year. Whether that raises flags in Washington remains to be seen, but Senator John Cornyn already dragged Benchmark for its investment in the company, asking back in May on X who thought it was “a good idea for American investors to subsidize our biggest adversary in AI, only to have the CCP use that technology to challenge us economically and militarily? Not me.”

Cornyn, a Texas Republican and senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has long been one of Congress’s most vocal hawks on China and technology competition, but he’s hardly alone. Being tough on China has become one of the genuinely bipartisan issues in Congress.

Unsurprisingly, Meta has already told Nikkei Asia that after the acquisition, Manus won’t have any ties to Chinese investors and will no longer operate in China. “There will be no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI following the transaction, and Manus AI will discontinue its services and operations in China,” a Meta spokesperson told the outlet.

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