The US economy grew more slowly than previously estimated in the final months of last year. The US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) said on Friday that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) expanded at an annualised rate of 0.7% in the fourth quarter, lower than the earlier estimate of 1.4%.

The revised figure also fell short of market expectations. The slowdown shows weaker activity across several parts of the economy, including exports, consumer spending, government spending and investment.

“Real GDP was revised down 0.7 percentage point from the advance estimate, reflecting downward revisions to exports, consumer spending, government spending, and investment. Imports decreased less than previously estimated,” the BEA explained in its press release.

(Financial Express - Continue Reading)

Worries are growing that Iran is deploying mines — one of its most potent and disruptive weapons — in the Strait of Hormuz.

Why it matters: The use of naval mines would likely result in fatal attacks on commercial shipping vessels and closure of the Strait, which would place further strain on the global economy if oil shipments were halted.

(Axios - Continue Reading)

If the stock market drops much further from here, it’s likely to trigger a policy response from the White House and the Federal Reserve, Bank of America chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett said.

The market has held up fairly well this year in the face of heightened headline risk. The S&P 500 has shed just 2.8% for 2026 and is off roughly 5% from its peak as of midday Friday.

However, with oil prices soaring and a protracted war with Iran threatening global stability, Hartnett said it probably won’t take much more before the administration or central bank step in to head off further damage.

(CNBC - Continue Reading)

In 2019, Amazon built its first data center in the Persian Gulf in Bahrain. Three years later, it expanded to the United Arab Emirates. In 2024, it began more than $10 billion in new projects across Saudi Arabia.

The moves helped Amazon stake a claim to one of the world’s fastest growing regions, where deep-pocketed governments and investors wanted in on the digital economy and artificial intelligence race.

(NYT - Continue Reading)

Nvidia’s graphics processing units have been the hottest-selling chips for years, but the sudden advent of agentic artificial intelligence has brought on a renaissance for its more modest host chip, the central processing unit.

Now, Nvidia is poised to unveil new details about its agentic-optimized CPUs at its annual GTC conference that kicks off on Monday, with a CPU-only rack likely to appear on the showroom floor.

“CPUs are becoming the bottleneck in terms of growing out this AI and agentic workflow,” Dion Harris, Nvidia’s head of AI infrastructure, told CNBC this week, calling it an “exciting opportunity.”

(CNBC - Continue Reading)