Good morning.

Samsung went full-on Guardian of the Galaxy Z yesterday. After Apple revealed its $2,000 iPhone Duo, its South Korean rival launched a series of unsubtle putdowns and trolling on social media.

“Let us know when you’re done reheating our leftovers,” read one tweet. Another claimed the Duo was “giving groundhog day,” suggesting the new phone’s features were hardly innovative. But Samsung, which has been making foldable smartphones since 2019, has every reason to sweat: Analysts at Counterpoint Research project Apple will immediately stake out a 25% share of the global foldable phone market in 2026, trailing only Samsung’s 38% share even though it will only be on sale for a few months of the year. So they’ll need more than snarky tweets to compete in 2027.

Markets

S&P 500

7,636.36

-0.48%

DJI

52,380.66

-0.77%

LMT

$524.46

-2.18%

Stock data as of market close on September 9, 2026.

Artificial Intelligence

Google Invests $15 Billion on Data Center Buildout in ‘Texas of Europe’

Think of it as a different kind of data center freeze. A massive surge in AI and data center investments mirroring those in the Lone Star State has recently earned Finland the title of the “Texas of Europe.” While Sámi reindeer dishes will never taste like a bone-in ribeye, they do go down well with a Shiner Bock.

On Wednesday, the Nordic country continued its bluebonnet makeover. Google announced it will spend a record $15 billion over the next two years on AI infrastructure in Finland, including buying as much as half the electricity produced by one of the country’s nuclear power plants.

The Big Chill

For AI hyperscalers, Finland’s boreal forest climate is as well suited to data centers as it is to brown bears, wolverines and wild reindeer. The subarctic country’s colder air acts as a natural alternative to the water- and energy-consuming data centers that require huge amounts of power to keep computer servers from overheating elsewhere. This makes for a starkly different environment from populated areas in the US, which lack the same wintry climate and where fears that data centers are stressing electric grids and water utilities have grown stronger than a shot of Koskenkorva. According to data compiled by investor Will Manidis, 18 US states have active bans or moratoriums on data centers.

Google, for example, is planning to build three data centers in Finland’s north, where winters last as long as seven months with temperatures under 15 degrees Fahrenheit. An existing facility on Finland’s south coast will also receive upgrades. Google’s infrastructure throughout the country will power many of its core services including Gemini, Maps, Search and YouTube. Meanwhile, the Nordic country’s economy is poised to benefit:

Google said the initiative will contribute $4.2 billion to Finland’s GDP in 2027 and 2028, supporting roughly 37,000 jobs during this initial construction period.
Then there’s state-owned energy group Fortum, which signed a 22-year contract with Google to supply power from its Loviisa nuclear power plant. Shares in Fortum rose 15.8% on Wednesday; the plant will stay online for longer, Google said, keeping 10% of Finland’s electricity supply online and prices lower for all grid users.

Bloc Party: AI hyperscalers are increasingly dedicating much of their record capital spending to EU- and UK-based infrastructure. French AI startup Mistral, which counts South Korean chipmaker Samsung Electronics among its shareholders, struck a multibillion-dollar infrastructure partnership with Microsoft earlier this year. Microsoft is also spending $30 billion on British operations through 2028, while Amazon is investing $39 billion through 2035 on cloud and data center infrastructure in Spain. Social media giant TikTok also said earlier this year that it’s investing $1.2 billion to build its second data center in Finland.

Written by Sean Craig

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Media & Entertainment

NFL Kickoff Heats Up Prediction Market Rivalry

Photo of a FanDuel NFL billboard. — Photo via Samuel Rigelhaupt/Sipa USA/Newscom

Most of America had reason to cheer last night, as the New England Patriots lost the NFL’s season opener. For prediction markets operators, there was even more to celebrate: They are expected to rake in about as much green as traditional sportsbooks this year, Citizens analyst Jordan Bender wrote in a Tuesday note.

More than $76 million was at stake during last night’s game on Kalshi alone, and Bender predicts wagers will pile up to a total of about $35 billion this season. The field has also changed since last year, with competitors ready to take on market leaders Kalshi and Polymarket. These new entrants are trying to differentiate themselves, sometimes with the help of a celeb or two.

Sydney Sweeney Semantics

Novig got its name out as a new sports-only prediction market with a Sydney Sweeney ad in which the Euphoria star says, “No betting on wars, or deaths, and no politics.” The ad’s tagline, “Just sports,” emphasized by Sweeney only wearing sports gear, seems to be a not-so-subtle callout of rival platforms. In March, Kalshi and Polymarket users wagered millions on when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was later killed, would be “out” as Supreme Leader of Iran. Kalshi ran an ad campaign later that month that said, “We don’t do death markets.”

The Novig ad also made a point of using the word “betting,” which other companies have avoided, instead emphasizing that their products are classified as event-contracts trading. While the different terminology gave Kalshi and Polymarket an early edge, the gap’s closing:

Because event contracts are federally regulated, they’re legal in all US states, even ones that don’t allow sports betting. That includes two of the largest US states by population, California and Texas. Kalshi, the leading US prediction-markets platform, was once able to cater to an unserved crowd. But this season, it’ll have competition.
Polymarket will have its first US season live since its early 2022 ban, and LeBron James is hyping the crowd for it. Traditional sportsbooks meanwhile, including FanDuel and DraftKings, now offer prediction markets, too.

Big Game: New Jersey’s Attorney General has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on sports-related event contracts, and a decision might eventually overhaul how the industry operates. But for this NFL season, the field could be more crowded than it ever has been, or will be. At the same time, prediction markets are rushing toward another fall event that’ll see users bet on winners and losers: the political preseason known as the midterms.

Written by Jamie Wilde

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Industrials

Thiel, Andreessen-backed Defense Startup Promises Cheap Missiles as US Rebuilds Arsenal

A new defense startup has exited stealth mode … and is waging a price blitzkrieg on traditional weapons-makers.

With $250 million in prior funding, the Peter Thiel- and Andreessen Horowitz-backed Covenant stepped out of the shadows Wednesday, touting a trio of factories in Texas, Germany and Israel, and a manufacturing process it says can cheaply mass-produce exactly the type of cruise missiles desired by Western powers.

Cruise Control

Seven months of start-and-stop war in Iran and more than four years supporting the war effort in Ukraine have, by all accounts, left the US missile stockpile in a near perilous state of depletion. According to a Reuters report last month, the US military has already burned through roughly half of its total supply of long-range heavy-payload Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The result has been a massive boom in demand for more arms; Tomahawk-maker Raytheon recently scored a $23 billion deal to boost production of the missiles from about 60 per year to 1,000. But that surge in demand belies tricky economics for the old guard of weapons-makers, and that’s where Covenant says it could be a significant disruptor:

The company is capable of manufacturing its Anthem missiles at a “mid-six-figure” euros price point, it told the Financial Times on Wednesday; that compares to a price tag as high as $6 million (5.15 million euros) per Tomahawk missile. Anthem missiles can carry a payload of more than 400 pounds, or less than half that of a Tomahawk missile, and Covenant’s goal was to create a weapon with a 2,000-kilometer range, or slightly longer than the Tomahawk.
Meanwhile, Covenant says its Texas and Germany factories will be capable of producing 1,000 missiles each next year, with the goal of scaling up to 5,000 missiles a year.

Seal the Deal: The company is emerging out of stealth with about $150 million worth of orders in hand, including two initial contracts with the US government. Shares of traditional defense contractors quaked on Wednesday following the splashy debut: Lockheed Martin, which just scored a UBS upgrade, fell more than 2%, while Raytheon parent RTX fell 0.68% and the iShares US Aerospace & Defense ETF fell 1.83%.

Written by Brian Boyle

Extra Upside

Fuel for Inflation: Brent crude prices hit $100 for the first time since July as the re-escalating war in Iran threatens to shock oil supplies and drive consumer prices higher.
Nonhuman Behavior: OpenAI agents spammed more than 10 websites without being told to do so, in the latest worrying behavioral case involving artificial intelligence.
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