It’s too bad “AI” is so hard to CTRL-F, because investors will have to scan earnings reports for every mention this week — or maybe, they can just ask AI to do it.

As major tech companies tee up their earnings reports, shareholders will be looking to see whether massive investments in artificial intelligence have begun to generate returns. Companies spent hundreds of billions on AI last year, and Wall Street analysts expect that to rise further, with AI spending on track to break past $500 billion in 2026. Investors started feeling jittery about spending last fall as concerns about an AI bubble grew, and their fears haven’t dissipated so far.

Meta and Microsoft report on Wednesday (along with Tesla), and Apple follows on Thursday.

Spinning Round and Round

Heading into the big earnings week, Microsoft debuted its next generation of AI chips yesterday, which it said have 30% higher performance for the price than competing products. The new chip shows how tech companies are jockeying for position in the AI race, and increasingly, pushing into territory Nvidia has dominated. The new Maia 200 chip comes with a software tool called Triton that could rival Nvidia’s Cuda, a major selling point for Nvidia’s chips. Microsoft’s chip is also packed with SRAM, a type of memory that Cerebras Systems and Groq depend on.

While companies like Microsoft are competing with each other to win AI biz, they’re also depending on each other for profits from the AI biz in a circular-spending vortex:

• Who’s sourcing server power from whom for whose AI is an increasingly tangled web that even Charlie Day with a chalkboard would struggle to sort out. Take Meta: Earlier this month, it announced plans to build tens of gigawatts of AI power in the next decade and, eventually, hundreds. At the same time, Meta’s said to be sourcing power from several companies. It reportedly signed a $10 billion deal to tap into Google’s cloud network and a $20 billion deal with Oracle.
• On the front end, Apple’s expected to announce an updated Siri next month that uses Google’s Gemini AI models as part of a partnership the two tech giants confirmed earlier this month. Siri currently looks to ChatGPT for an AI boost, and it’s unclear what the new Google tie-up means for OpenAI.

Double-edged: The top tech companies are increasingly intertwined, which could make them vulnerable if AI turns out to be a bubble. If one bursts, it could set off the rest (picture: the exploding naval mines in “Finding Nemo”). On the other hand, if AI’s promise to boost productivity by creating workplace efficiencies translates to major cost-savings, the tech companies could spin high into the air together. Of course, they’ll be trying to knock each other down as they do so.

Now that the White House has swapped threats of force in Greenland for a diplomatic ‘factory reset,’ the real work begins. The US is rushing to stand up a critical minerals pipeline to break Beijing’s chokehold. With China controlling 70% of the rare earths used in everything from fighter jets to chips, this isn’t just a supply chain update; it’s a race for technological survival.

The Department of Commerce struck a deal on Monday to take a roughly 10% stake in USA Rare Earth, backing the company’s plans to build a mine at a rare earth deposit in Texas and a magnet production facility in Oklahoma. This follows deals last year that saw the government take stakes in MP Materials, Lithium Americas and Trilogy Metals, with equity proving a more reliable pathway into the minerals sector than transatlantic saber-rattling.

A PIPE Dream

Since Trump took office last year, the federal government has taken stakes or negotiated the right to acquire shares in no less than 10 companies, perhaps most famously via a so-called “golden share” in Nippon Steel-owned US Steel. Six of those companies are involved in critical minerals, reflecting the anxiety some US officials feel about China’s dominant role in crucial resources.

USA Rare Earth will be the first-in-America mine-to-magnet specialist in heavy rare earths like dysprosium and terbium if and when its west Texas rare earths mining project opens by the end of 2028. A magnet manufacturing plant for those minerals in Stillwater, Oklahoma, is scheduled to open this spring, while USA Rare Earth bought a UK firm last year that gave it a processing facility in Britain and one soon to begin construction in France:

• In exchange for $1.6 billion in federal funding, the Commerce Department will get 16 million shares of USA Rare Earth stock and nearly 18 million warrants. Depending on whether it exercises all those warrants, the government stake will be 8% to 16%, according to a filing with the SEC.
• USA Rare Earth also raised $1.5 billion via a private investment in public equity (PIPE) deal. Confirmation of the government and investor cash infusions sent shares up 7.8% Monday. (They’ve rallied over 120% in 2026 so far.)

Dig This: William Blair analysts have pointed out a prevailing “assumption that there is more government rare earth funding to come.” They urged savvy traders to keep their eyes on US critical mineral miners NioCorp Development and United States Antimony, as well as Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths, which is exploring potential projects in Texas. Trilogy Metals, in which the Trump administration took a 10% stake in October, is based in Vancouver, Canada, so more shopping abroad wouldn’t be unheard of.

Home improvement isn’t only for people with ’90s nostalgia and a Disney+ subscription. Outside of the Tim Allen sitcom, it’s a vital pulse check that economists use to track the health of the housing market.

And lately it’s been looking a little under the weather. On Monday, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies released its quarterly Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) report, which measures home renovation and repair spending in the United States. Repairs, experts note, closely track the broader housing market, which is why signs of a slowdown in the second half of the year warrant close reading.

Put a Socket in It

LIRA, a weighted average of economic indicators used to project spending on home remodeling, additions and alterations, accounts only for homes occupied by their owners.

The Harvard center said its latest projection based on LIRA is that home renovation spending will rise 2.9% in early 2026 before shrinking to 1.6%. All told, spending on home improvement and maintenance, expected to total $522 billion in 2026, appears to be losing strength amid cost pressures. Earlier this month, Bankrate forecast that interest rates on home equity loans and home equity lines of credit will ease somewhat this year but still average 7.75% and 7.3%, respectively. Those are significantly higher than the historic low equity loan rates of 3.86% during the pandemic. The cost of materials has gone up, too, and there are even signs that renovating before selling isn’t the advantage it once was:

• According to a Realtor.com report last month, the median flipped home in the US was purchased for roughly half the market median price last year. Even after renovation, it was listed for only 87.8%.
• The report also found that flipped homes sold at an 8.3% discount from their initial listing price following renovation, suggesting softening demand.

Staying Put: Cost pressures are being felt in the broader market: The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said its pending home sales index fell 9.3% in December. Uncertainty about the economy and labor market has incentivized homeowners with mortgage rates below 5% — aka the majority of them — against listing their properties, even as mortgage rates have eased. Realtor.com analysts forecast mortgages will average 6.3% in 2026, meaning jumping back into the housing market would force them to risk paying a higher interest rate.