The Hottest New Home Amenity? ‘It’s Brutal.’
Homeowners are spending tens of thousands of dollars to outfit their properties with cold plunges
8 min
Most mornings after Stephen Garten wakes up at his home in Austin, Texas, he goes into his backyard and starts pacing, preparing himself for what’s next. “It’s brutal,” says Garten, 37, the founder and CEO of social impact company Charity Charge. “It’s a real challenge every day.”
He’s talking about lowering himself into a 66-inch-long and 24-inch-wide stainless steel tub clad in customised zebrawood and submerging himself up to his neck in water that he sets at 39 degrees Fahrenheit, with water circulating at 1,400 gallons a minute. “It’s like being in a river,” he says of the flow rate produced by this particular vessel, a Blue Cube cold plunge.
It’s an experience that Garten typically tolerates for less than two minutes at a time, once or twice a day. And it comes at a price of $19,000. Blue Cube, based in Redmond, Ore., makes cold plunge units that cost between around $18,000 and $29,000.
“Cold plunging has made a profound difference in my life,” Garten says. He says it has brought him health benefits including stress management.
Previously the domain of athletes, bathing in cold water or ice has become a mainstream wellness trend across the U.S. The practice goes by many terms, like cold plunging, ice bathing and cold-immersion therapy. Water temperature below 59 degrees Fahrenheit is generally considered cold immersion. People who swear by it say they have experienced wide-ranging health benefits, like reduced anxiety, alleviated joint and muscle pain and boosted energy and focus.
But while many people are experimenting with do-it-yourself methods—like taking cold showers or filling kiddie pools, horse troughs and unplugged chest freezers with cold water or ice—some enthusiasts have levelled-up their at-home cold plunging setups with sophisticated receptacles priced at tens of thousands of dollars and up.
Developers, meanwhile, are adding cold plunges to amenity-rich luxury complexes like 53 West 53 in New York and Cipriani Residences Miami, betting that cold immersion is here to stay.
“Ice bathing seems like a trend, but people have been doing this for thousands of years,” says Jonathan Coon, co-founder of Austin Capital Partners, which is the developer of Four Seasons Private Residences Lake Austin, 20 minutes from downtown Austin, slated to open in 2026.
In addition to 188 residential units starting at $4.1 million, the Lake Austin property on 145 acres will have 76,000 square feet of indoor wellness and sports facilities, including a 12,000-square-foot orangery, 82-foot swimming pool, sauna, steam room and, of course, cold and hot thermal baths.
Amenities covering 100,000 square feet is a key reason that Onyx W.D. Johnson and Cristian Santangelo bought a $2.2 million two-bedroom, 1,123-square-foot apartment in New York’s One Manhattan Square, an 80-story building located on the Lower East Side. Facilities include a spa with a tranquility garden, 75-foot saltwater swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, steam room and hammam with a cold plunge set between 55 and 58 degrees Fahrenheit. The couple moved into the apartment in May 2021.
Johnson and Santangelo quivered at the idea of cold plunging until they started seeing other people dipping and discussing the health benefits. “We decided to give it a try,” Johnson says.
Now cold plunging is part of their wellness regimen. Johnson, 50, who runs a management consulting firm, uses the hot pool, steam room and sauna, and then cold plunges for 45 seconds to a minute. He says this routine speeds up his training recovery time, helps him think clearer and improves his alertness and mood. Santangelo, 45, who is a management consultant, says the ritual helps him calm down and fight anxiety and stress.
Diamond Spas & Pools, based in Frederick, Colo., is a custom manufacturer of luxury pools, spas and soaking tubs for homeowners globally. The company added cold plunges to its portfolio in 2015 and saw one or two orders annually until 2019, when it experienced a sales surge. “Our cold plunge projects have increased 10 times since then,” says Mitch Martinek, the company’s design manager.
Martinek attributes the uptick to several factors. Today’s homeowners want gym and spa amenities at home and on-demand, cold therapy health benefits are better known now, and there are lingering pandemic concerns over public wellness facilities.
The company’s cold plunges, which chill water to between 40 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit, are made from stainless steel or copper and can be camouflaged in tile, stone or wood. The pools can go indoors or outdoors, come in any size and can work with home automation systems. The average cold plunge costs about $45,000, with elaborate projects running closer to about $65,000.
One of the company’s more unique cold plunges had an acrylic bottom and was in a high-rise building. “It was on a deck with a fire pit below,” Martinek says. “The homeowner wanted to be able to look up through the cold plunge.”
John Thorbahn bought a four-bedroom, 5,500-square-foot single-family home in Hingham, Mass., south of Boston, in March 2020 for $1.6 million. He owns a cold plunge from Phoenix-based company Morozko Forge, founded in 2018. Morozko Forge’s entry-level unit costs $12,850; its upgraded version costs $19,900.
Morozko Forge’s ice baths make ice. While the stainless steel tub is filled with cold water, an ice slab starts building at the tank’s bottom. At about 1-inch thick, the ice detaches and floats to the water’s surface. The ice can be broken up with an implement like a rubber mallet if needed.
Thorbahn, 63, who is the managing director at consulting company NFP, ice bathes most days for two to three minutes at 33 to 34 degrees Fahrenheit. His wife, Jana Thorbahn, 59, ice bathes, too. “The older you get, the more you want to live longer,” says Thorbahn, whose home also has a gym, sauna, red light therapy room and hot tub. “You start investing in protocols to help you be healthy.”
While many cold plungers have developed their own ice bathing rituals, choosing everything from their preferred water temperatures to time limits, Dr. Susanna Søberg, a Danish Ph.D. metabolic scientist and founder of the Soeberg Institute, is one of the world’s experts on the health benefits of cold immersion, which she has been studying for nine years.
In 2021, Søberg published research on cold exposure and hot exposure, which is called “contrast therapy” if the cold and hot exposures are performed in succession. Studying Danish winter swimmers, Søberg identified that a short plunge in cold, moving water combined with sauna use shifts the body’s nervous system and creates physiological changes, like boosting metabolism, lowering inflammation and releasing neurotransmitters that improve cognitive performance and mental health. “You are activating your whole body system,” Søberg says.
In a field that hasn’t been widely studied by the medical community, Søberg has developed what she says is the only scientifically backed cold immersion protocol for reducing stress using contrast therapy and breathing: 11 total minutes of cold immersion combined with 57 total minutes of heat, across two to three days a week. The goal of her method is to expose the body to the smallest amount of healthy stress needed to reap health benefits. “Staying in cold water or heat longer may not be beneficial or necessary,” she says.
Søberg says cold immersion carries the rare risk of cold water shock that can cause confusion or fainting, but the risk increases if a person does hyperventilating breathwork before or during cold water immersion. She also says cold plunging might not be good for people with heart disease or high blood pressure. Søberg advocates for cold plunging with others, and practicing slow, nasal breathing in the water.
Contrast therapy is why Sausalito, Calif.-based company Yardzen says most of its cold plunge projects involve saunas. Yardzen is an online landscape and home-exterior design company that works with homeowners across the U.S. The company’s co-founder and CEO Allison Messner says wellness yards—encompassing everything from cold plunges to saunas to meditation spaces to forest bathing—is one of Yardzen’s top 2023 trends.
“Peak luxury is having both a cold plunge and a sauna in your yard so you can experience cold and hot therapy,” Messner says.
Tobias Lawry, 51, and his wife, Christine Lawry, 50, live in a three-bedroom 1963 Midcentury Modern house in Dana Point, Calif. They purchased it in October 2018. Between July 2021 and October 2022, they worked with architect Chris Light, designer Frank Berry and builder Crawford Custom Homes to renovate their 3,000-square-foot house to honor its original period intention while modernising it. This included turning a bedroom into a wellness room, which opens into a backyard with a pool, sauna and Blue Cube cold plunge.
The Lawrys, who run an estate-management and concierge services company called LPM, keep their Blue Cube at 47 degrees Fahrenheit. They typically cold plunge in the evening and on weekend mornings.
Stephen Garten in Austin also has a tricked-out wellness yard: In addition to his Blue Cube, he has a barrel sauna from Almost Heaven Saunas, which are manufactured in West Virginia and start around $7,500. He also has a stock tank pool from Cowboy Pools, an Austin-based company that has pool packages starting around $2,000.
He was inspired to create a backyard oasis where he and his fiancée, Katie Snyder, can have friends over. “It’s wellness,” Garten says, “but it’s entertainment too.”
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The future of sports infrastructure is being built now. The Sports Infra & Arenas Summit will bring together sports infrastructure leaders, developers, architects, consultants, technology providers and other key stakeholders for focused discussions and meaningful industry connections.
Dubai Finance is using AI and digital twin technologies to shape its 2027–2029 Strategic Plan, enabling smarter decisions, scenario testing and proactive financial planning.
Bukhatir Group partners with Magure to launch DIWAN, a secure enterprise AI assistant designed to support employees across the Group.
SHEIN’s Hong Kong IPO wiped a $4.4 billion obligation from its books, but the fast-fashion giant still faces a payout of up to $3.5 billion to early investors.
3 min
Companies typically go public to raise money to supercharge growth. Fast-fashion giant Shein has another motivation.
The company’s initial public offering in Hong Kong this week is allowing it to avoid paying out billions to early investors.
If Shein hadn’t sold shares by the end of the year, the company would have been required to fork out nearly $4.4 billion in cash to holders of its convertible redeemable preferred shares. With the IPO, the $17.3 billion in preferred shares was converted to ordinary equity, and that obligation was wiped off the books.
But Shein was still on the hook for another payment. Holders of those preferred shares were entitled to a payout of billions more, in part because the company’s valuation has fallen from its peak. That payout came to nearly $3.5 billion in cash, according to regulatory filings.
The retailer on Monday priced its shares at 48.56 Hong Kong dollars each, equivalent to about $6.20 and near the middle of the range of HK$47.60 and HK$49.50 it provided last week.
The company pressed ahead with its IPO despite slowing growth and regulatory headwinds in the U.S. and European Union. Shein priced its IPO at a valuation of around $26 billion, roughly a quarter of the $98.2 billion valuation it achieved in a funding round in 2022.
Shein started selling its wares in the U.S. around 2012 and shot to popularity during the pandemic when more people shopped online. Its supply-chain prowess and vast range of styles at affordable prices made the brand a favorite among many U.S. consumers. It showed other retailers, including Amazon.com, that consumers were willing to wait more than a week for their online purchases to be delivered—if the price was right. But rivals soon emerged, such as Temu, which sells more products apart from apparel.
Shein’s business model of selling massive amounts of cheap goods lost some of its shine as more countries started imposing tariffs on small packages. The U.S. removed a trade exemption that allowed packages valued at or below $800 to enter the country duty-free, and the EU has introduced a €3 (about $3.50) customs duty on imports of low-value parcels.
Shein has worked toward its IPO for years, and the looming $4.4 billion obligation wasn’t the only reason it went public. But the threat of the big payout on Dec. 31 was certainly a part of its reason to press ahead, said Jianggan Li, founder and chief executive of Momentum Works, a research advisory firm based in Singapore.
“Complete the listing before then,” said Li, “and a very large liability comes off the balance sheet.”
While that liability will now be off its books with a successful IPO, Shein said it was saddled with another bill: the roughly $3.5 billion it owed its early investors upon going public.
That amount includes $1.3 billion that Shein had to pay several late-stage pre-IPO investors who had been guaranteed a cash payout at an 8% or 12% annual return, and up to $2.2 billion in compensation for the fall in the company’s valuation in the period after they made their investments. The $2.2 billion was a projection based on the lower end of the offer price range, or HK$47.60 per share, so the total bill will likely be smaller than $3.5 billion. The exact amount has yet to be disclosed by the company.
Notably, the amount it owes investors is more than the roughly $1.7 billion the company raised in the IPO. The company said it was paying the funds to its investors out of cash it has on hand.
The investors entitled to the payments include entities linked to HSG, formerly known as Sequoia China, Boyu Capital, Tiger Global, General Atlantic, Thrive Capital and others.
“What the IPO really does here is resolve the capital-structure overhang,” Li said. “It gives investors liquidity, terminates those preferred-share rights and cleans up obligations created when Shein raised money at much higher valuations.”
Shein could have kicked the can down the road by renegotiating terms with its investors, he said: “Shein is not taking the cheapest way out of its old financing obligations. It is taking the cleaner way out.”
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AWS will launch its first Saudi Arabia Cloud Region in December 2026, backed by a planned $5.3 billion investment. Its expanded partnership with HUMAIN will also strengthen the Kingdom’s cloud and AI capabilities in line with Vision 2030.
3 min
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced at LEAP in Riyadh that its first AWS Cloud Infrastructure Region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on track to launch in December 2026.
Together with HUMAIN, a Public Investment Fund–owned company, AWS will also make up to 50 megawatts (MW) of capacity available in Saudi Arabia’s first AI Zone by 2028 as part of an expanded strategic collaboration. AWS is HUMAIN’s preferred AI partner, driving AI innovation across the Kingdom and globally. The AI Zone capacity will include AWS’s Trainium chips and the latest NVIDIA AI infrastructure for customers to run AI training and inference workloads.
Increased cloud and AI capacity is key to growing the Kingdom’s AI leadership and supporting public and private sector organizations to build a future-ready economy in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. HUMAIN’s ALLAM Arabic large language model will soon be available through Amazon Bedrock, so customers can securely access advanced Arabic-language AI capabilities through a fully managed generative AI platform. The expanded collaboration also includes the availability of HUMAIN Fabric, HUMAIN’s AI-native data infrastructure and platform component of the HUMAIN ONE generative AI operating system, via AWS Marketplace.
With the new Region, developers, startups, and enterprises will have greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from data centers located in Saudi Arabia. All AWS Regions are sovereign-by-design, formalized under the AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge commitment to offering customers the most advanced sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud.
“Saudi Arabia is home to some of the most ambitious and inventive builders, from startups and enterprises reimagining industries to public sector organizations deploying AI at scale, and the new AWS Region in the country will help them to continue to innovate,” said Matt Garman, CEO of AWS. “The launch of our new Region and our partnership with HUMAIN will deliver the full-stack cloud and AI infrastructure to help power new industries, create jobs, and accelerate the goals of Vision 2030.”
“Saudi Arabia is building the computing power needed for the Intelligence Age and strengthening its position as a global computing partner. The launch of AWS’s new Region and its expanded partnership with HUMAIN will help accelerate AI innovation, enable new industries, and advance the goals of Saudi Vision 2030.” said His Excellency Engineer Abdullah Alswaha, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Minister of Communications and Information Technology.
The Region, first announced in March 2024, represents more than $5.3 billion (19.88 billion Saudi riyal) in planned cloud infrastructure investment. This launch will expand the AWS Global Infrastructure to 40 Regions worldwide.
According to an IDC report commissioned by AWS, AI will contribute an estimated $130 billion to Saudi Arabia’s economy by 2030. The new Region will help accelerate this potential by empowering organizations to innovate faster and operate more cost-efficiently, while providing access to leading AI services like Amazon Bedrock.
Investing in Saudi Arabia’s AI-Powered Future
Saudi organizations including Abdul Latif Jameel, Almosafer, stc Group, Red Bull Mobile, and AWS Partners like ZainTECH, Accenture, and Tamkeen, will be running AI workloads on AWS. stc Group, a major digital and telecommunications provider, has announced a strategic collaboration with AWS to accelerate the adoption of cloud and AI services in Saudi Arabia, while ZainTECH, a regional integrated digital solutions provider, has signed a multi-year agreement to help organizations adopt AWS solutions and strengthen their security and compliance readiness.
Building Saudi Arabia’s Digital Workforce
Beyond infrastructure, AWS is making a significant investment in Saudi Arabia’s workforce development. The Amazon Academy, launched with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), provides free training in cloud computing, AI, logistics, and retail, aiming to train over 100,000 Saudi citizens for digital careers. AWS has also partnered with 11 higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia, and is training up to 10,000 women through the AWS Saudi Arabia Women’s Skills Initiative at no charge.
Across the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey, AWS commits to reaching two million citizens with AI and cloud training by 2030 and has already served more than 680K individuals to date. Additionally, AWS is establishing two innovation centers in Saudi Arabia to provide technical mentorship and training to startups and entrepreneurs across the Region.
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Limited to just 30 pieces, the TONDA PF Skeleton Rose Gold Milano Blue transforms mechanical precision into architectural elegance through light, space and refined proportion.
3 min
SOME TIMEPIECES REVEAL THEIR MOVEMENT; OTHERS REVEAL AN ARCHITECTURE.
The TONDA PF Skeleton Rose Gold Milano Blue belongs to the latter tradition.
Produced in a limited edition of 30 pieces, it expresses Parmigiani Fleurier’s contemporary vision of watchmaking, where an open worked movement remains measured rather than demonstrative, expressive yet restrained, sculptural yet always governed by proportion.
Within the world of Parmigiani Fleurier, skeletonization is not conceived as a display of complexity, but as a discipline of reduction. Matter is carefully removed to reveal structure; the movement is opened to disclose its underlying coherence; and light is invited to circulate freely through an architecture whose balance remains intact. Here, emptiness is never absence. It becomes rhythm, tension and depth, allowing light to shape what matter has relinquished.
Conceived for a contemporary collector, the TONDA PF Skeleton Rose Gold Milano Blue speaks to those drawn to pure architectures and objects whose presence emerges not from ornament, but from the subtle interplay of material, light and space.
THE ART OF OPENWORKING
Rooted in the traditions of fine watchmaking, skeletonization finds a distinctive expression at Parmigiani Fleurier. Neither ornament nor demonstration of virtuosity, it extends an intimate understanding of the movement inherited from the Maison’s culture of restoration, where every mechanical architecture must first be understood before it can be interpreted.
To openwork a caliber is to embrace a delicate equilibrium. Material must be removed without weakening the structure; the movement must be opened without dispersing its coherence; complexity must be revealed without compromising clarity.
It is an exercise in restraint, situated between presence and disappearance, substance and light, structure and perception.
As artist Anish Kapoor observes, ‘EMPTINESS IS NOT AN ABSENCE, BUT A PLACE OF POTENTIAL.’
The principle resonates deeply here. Every bridge, every opening and every line has been reduced to necessity, contributing to a composition in which nothing seeks to dominate, and every element participates in a harmonious whole. Rather than revealing everything at once, the watch offers access only to what is essential.
FROM STRUCTURE TO PERCEPTION
At the heart of the timepiece, the caliber PF777 assumes an architectural dimension. The dialogue between substance and void orchestrates light, guiding the eye through successive layers of depth and creating a perception that evolves with every glance.
Developed within the Parmigiani Fleurier Manufacture, this self-winding movement embodies a disciplined approach to complexity. Its 192 components form a coherent mechanical composition conceived not only to perform with precision, but also to be appreciated in its equilibrium and visual clarity.
Measuring just 3.9 mm in thickness and operating at a frequency of 4 Hz, with a 60-hour power reserve, the caliber combines slenderness, precision and endurance. Its open worked oscillating weight in 22-carat rose gold extends this pursuit of coherence, appearing not as an added component but as an integral part of the movement’s visual language.
The satin-finished bridges, meticulously hand-beveled throughout, establish a refined architectural framework. Their geometry allows light to circulate, settle upon an edge, glide across a surface and reveal subtle variations in texture.
Finishing becomes more than decoration; it becomes a means of perception.
The architecture unfolds progressively, inviting the eye to move through the movement’s layered construction, to follow its lines and gradually discover the choreography of its mechanics.
Understanding emerges naturally, through observation rather than display.
MILANO BLUE: COLOR AS SPACE
Within this open architecture, Milano Blue performs a role that extends beyond color. It introduces depth.
Set against the warmth of rose gold, this dense, almost nocturnal hue creates a contemporary tension, lending the movement perspective, atmosphere and a quietly expressive presence.
Color is no longer confined to the surface; it becomes an integral component of the composition, shaping the perception of space and light.
Alternating sandblasted and satin-finished surfaces, the dial preserves the spirit of the TONDA PF collection: sophisticated in its construction, refined in its expression. The delta-shaped hands move effortlessly across the movement’s aperture, while the rose gold indices appear suspended within the architectural composition of the dial itself.
Framing this interplay of structure and light is a 40 mm case crafted in 18-carat rose gold. Its knurled bezel, a signature of Parmigiani Fleurier, captures reflections through a succession of finely executed micro-reliefs, creating a subtle transition between the polished exterior of the watch and the layered depth of the movement within.
The sapphire case back extends this visual narrative. Viewed from either side, the skeletonized architecture reveals new perspectives and relationships between light and structure. Completing the composition, the integrated bracelet in polished and satin-finished rose gold ensures visual continuity between case, movement and wrist.
The TONDA PF Skeleton Rose Gold Milano Blue does not seek to reveal everything at once. Instead, it invites a gradual discovery in which structure is shaped by light, matter gives way to space, and mechanics assume an architectural dimension.
It stands as a contemporary expression of watchmaking, conceived through proportion, depth and refined discretion, where mechanical elegance finds its most essential form.
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The future of sports infrastructure is being built now. The Sports Infra & Arenas Summit will bring together sports infrastructure leaders, developers, architects, consultants, technology providers and other key stakeholders for focused discussions and meaningful industry connections.
< 1 min
The Sports Infra & Arenas Summit is a focused industry platform bringing together the key stakeholders responsible for the planning, development, design, construction, operation and transformation of sports infrastructure across the region.
The summit brings together stadium and arena owners, developers, government authorities, sports organisations, architects, consultants, contractors, technology providers and infrastructure specialists to explore the evolving demands of modern sports venues.
With the UAE continuing to invest in major sporting facilities, experiences and infrastructure, the summit provides a platform to discuss how the industry can deliver smarter, more commercially viable, sustainable and high-performance venues.
Key discussions will explore areas including stadium development and redevelopment, venue design, fan experience, smart technologies, sustainability, operational efficiency, sports technology, hospitality, safety and security, and the future of major sports infrastructure.
Taking place on 29 September 2026 in Dubai, the summit is designed around practical industry discussions, knowledge exchange and meaningful connections between the decision-makers shaping the future of sports infrastructure and arenas.
Sports Infra & Arenas Summit
29 September 2026 | Mövenpick Grand Al Bustan Hotel, Dubai
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Dubai Finance is using AI and digital twin technologies to shape its 2027–2029 Strategic Plan, enabling smarter decisions, scenario testing and proactive financial planning.
2 minDubai Finance (DOF) has announced the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital twin technologies in developing its 2027–2029 Strategic Plan, as part of efforts to advance strategic planning, enhance decision-making and strengthen foresight in public financial management.
The technologies are being integrated across key stages of the planning process, from analyzing internal and external environments and anticipating emerging trends to developing future scenarios, testing assumptions and alternatives, and defining priorities, objectives, initiatives and performance indicators.
Through digital twin technology, DOF aims to simulate strategic thinking and decision-making processes, enabling different options and future scenarios to be tested before adoption.
The approach supports more agile and proactive planning while strengthening the government financial sector’s readiness for future change.
Aref Abdulrahman Ahli, Executive Director of Planning & General Budget Sector at DOF, said the approach represents an important step in integrating strategic and financial planning.
“AI and digital twin technologies enable us to move from expectation-based planning towards a more proactive and dynamic model. By testing different alternatives and assessing their potential impact, we can direct resources and priorities more efficiently, support fiscal sustainability and strengthen the Dubai Government’s future readiness,” he said.
Fatma Buti Al Suwaidi, Director of the Strategy & Corporate Performance Division at DOF, said the 2027–2029 plan introduces a more dynamic approach to strategy development by leveraging advanced technologies for analysis, simulation and foresight.
“We view strategy as a dynamic system that can be continuously tested and developed, rather than a fixed plan based on a single view of the future. Integrating AI and digital twins allows us to assess a broader range of variables and scenarios while keeping human expertise and institutional judgement at the heart of decision-making,” she said.
Through the initiative, DOF aims to develop an advanced government strategic planning model that combines AI, foresight, scenario analysis and digital twin technologies to enhance organizational readiness, support fiscal sustainability and contribute to Dubai Government’s future objectives.
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Bukhatir Group partners with Magure to launch DIWAN, a secure enterprise AI assistant designed to support employees across the Group.
4 minBukhatir Group, one of the UAE’s oldest and most diversified business houses, and Magure, a UAE-headquartered enterprise AI company, today announced a strategic partnership to embed AI across the Group’s businesses, beginning with a milestone already achieved: DIWAN, a secure enterprise AI assistant, is now live in production for employees across the Group.
DIWAN, the Group’s own AI, is built on Magure’s agentic AI operating platform, MagOneAI and runs on a privately deployed model within Bukhatir’s own cloud environment. It is designed so that questions and documents are processed within the Group’s infrastructure, governed by its own policies, with audit logging of how AI is used across the organisation.
“Bukhatir Group has always looked ahead with confidence and purpose,” said Salah Bukhatir, Chairman of Bukhatir Group. “Artificial intelligence represents the next chapter in our journey-strengthening how we make decisions, serve our communities and create lasting value. As we embrace its potential, we will remain guided by our values, our responsibility to our people and our commitment to building a sustainable future.”
Charting Their Own AI Course
For a conglomerate spanning construction, education, real estate, retail and commercial development, and sports and leisure, the question was never whether to adopt AI employees across the Group were already reaching for it. The question was how to put AI in everyone’s hands without sensitive data leaking into public tools the Group neither controls nor sees.
Rather than renting AI capability on someone else’s terms, Bukhatir chose to chart its own course: a deployment in which the Group owns the environment, keeps its data within its own perimeter, and holds governance firmly in its own hands. Across every industry, the rise of unsanctioned “shadow AI” has created a new risk, as sensitive information finds its way into public tools that an organisation neither controls nor sees. DIWAN gives employees a sanctioned, secure alternative designed to remove that risk.
“For a group like ours the choice looked binary: put AI in our people’s hands quickly and accept that our data sits on someone else’s platform or keep full control and wait years to build it ourselves,” said Mohamed Sadawy, Group Chief Information Officer, Bukhatir Group. “I didn’t accept that we had to choose. In partnership with Magure, everything that matters to us – our cloud, our data, our governance – stayed inside the Group, and we still moved fast. DIWAN went from a decision to a live tool our people can actually trust with real work in a matter of weeks. And the risk of staff reaching for unsanctioned public tools is no longer something we manage day to day; we’ve designed it out with help of Magure’s MagOneAI platform.”
Aligned with the UAE’s National AI Ambition
The UAE was the first nation in the world to appoint a Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, and its National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031 sets a clear ambition: to make the UAE a global leader in AI, with intelligence embedded across every sector of the economy. The nation’s AI Charter goes further, committing to AI that is safe, fair, transparent and accountable with data privacy and human oversight at its core.
Bukhatir Group’s deployment is the private sector answering that call. A homegrown UAE conglomerate partnering with a UAE-headquartered AI company, deploying a sovereign AI capability on UAE soil with data residency in the country, governance owned by the enterprise, and AI capability that stays under national and organisational control rather than flowing to platforms abroad. In embedding AI across construction, education, real estate, retail and sports, the Group is carrying the national vision into the everyday economy: not AI as a showcase, but AI as working infrastructure across the sectors that UAE families and businesses touch daily.
The deployment reflects an AI ambition that flows from the board down and a conviction, shared with the UAE’s own approach, that AI at enterprise scale must be governed, not merely adopted. MagOneAI provides the governance layer beneath every interaction: role-based access controls, centralised monitoring, cost attribution and full audit trails across every use case, with human task nodes that pause any consequential workflow for human review and sign-off. AI assists and accelerates; people decide.
Magure is ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 (AI Governance) certified, with SOC 2 Type II attestation, and the deployment is mapped to the UAE’s data protection landscape data residency in the UAE, transparency over automated decisions, and enforceable data-subject rights native to the platform rather than bolted on.
From One Assistant to an AI-Woven Enterprise
DIWAN is the first step, not the destination. Bukhatir Group is establishing its own Group AI Centre of Excellence, supported in that effort by its partner Magure, to take AI into the fabric of every business: conversational analytics over the Group’s own data, intelligent document analysis, finance automation, and AI assistants across the Group’s customer-facing brands – each new capability built on the same governed platform and reaching production in weeks rather than quarters.
The Group’s vision extends further: AI copilots embedded in everyday workflows across every entity, predictive intelligence supporting decisions from procurement to enrolment, and a portfolio of enterprise-grade AI solutions that compounds each new use case cheaper and faster to deliver than the last. The destination is a cognitively connected enterprise, where intelligence flows across every Bukhatir business, responsibly and under the Group’s full control.
“The UAE has set out one of the boldest national AI ambitions in the world, and it will be realized by enterprises like Bukhatir Group organizations that treat AI as foundation, not fashion,” said Akhil Koka, CEO, Magure. “Bukhatir understood early what most enterprises learn the hard way: ungoverned AI is a liability, and rented AI is a ceiling. DIWAN is live today on a sovereign stack the Group fully owns, and behind it sits a platform that can carry AI into every corner of the business governed, auditable, and private by design. A year from now this won’t be one assistant; it will be AI woven into finance, operations, education and customer experience. That is the difference between adopting AI and becoming an AI-driven enterprise and it is exactly the future the UAE is building towards.”
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Formula 1 returns at Zandvoort for the final Dutch Grand Prix and the circuit’s first-ever Sprint weekend.
2 min
Formula 1 returns from its summer break at Circuit Zandvoort from August 21–23, with the final scheduled Dutch Grand Prix set to feature the venue’s first F1 Sprint weekend.
The weekend closes Formula 1’s latest chapter in the Netherlands. The Dutch Grand Prix returned to the calendar in 2021 following a 36-year absence, and its final edition will introduce an additional competitive element: Sprint Qualifying on Friday and a 24-lap Sprint on Saturday.
The championship resumes following the Hungarian Grand Prix, where Lando Norris claimed his first victory of the season for McLaren. Max Verstappen finished second, championship leader Kimi Antonelli took third, and Oscar Piastri retired. The result moved Norris to 128 points, placing him fifth in the standings and 19 points ahead of Verstappen as the four-time world champion prepares for his home race.
Antonelli arrives at Zandvoort with 219 points and a 50-point advantage over Lewis Hamilton. George Russell sits third, nine points behind Hamilton, while Mercedes leads Ferrari by 72 points in the Constructors’ Championship. With additional points available in Saturday’s Sprint, the weekend gives the leading drivers and teams two opportunities to influence the title race.
For Verstappen, the final Dutch Grand Prix combines the emotion of a home appearance with an immediate test of Red Bull’s pace against Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren. For Norris, it offers an early indication of whether his Hungary performance can carry into the second half of the season. Both storylines will unfold within a compressed format that gives teams only one practice session before competitive running begins.
What to Expect at Zandvoort
Friday begins with the weekend’s only practice session, followed by Sprint Qualifying. The Sprint and Grand Prix Qualifying take place on Saturday, before the 72-lap Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday. Zandvoort’s narrow layout, banked corners and changeable coastal conditions place particular importance on car set-up, qualifying performance and track position.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
Interior designer Thomas Hamel on where it goes wrong in so many homes.
As AI productivity trackers reshape workplace evaluations, employees are learning how to manage calendars, activity levels and AI usage to ensure their contributions are recognized.
4 min
What’s more important than being a good employee right now? Looking like a good employee in the eyes of AI productivity trackers that more managers are using to evaluate their teams.
Employee-monitoring systems are especially popular at tech companies and are also used by other white-collar firms that want to probe how people spend company time. The scary thing: You might not even know you’re being watched because many states don’t require disclosure.
Metrics can include performance data that is undoubtedly relevant, such as sales results. But it also can employ dubious proxies like keyboard strokes and how often your computer screen goes into sleep mode.
We generally accepted, or at least understood, heightened surveillance during the work-from-home era. Back then it seemed reasonable for bosses to keep tabs on employees they couldn’t see.
Yet the oversight has only escalated, and tensions are rising, too.
A group of former Meta Platforms employees alleges in a lawsuit that the company used a “constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems” when it began laying off about 10% of its workforce in May. Meta says humans make termination calls.
However that case shakes out, a couple of things are clear. Companies eager to gauge which employees are locked in now have sophisticated AI monitoring systems at their disposal. And they believe they have leverage in a tepid labor market.
So while we may chafe at having our worth reduced to numbers on the boss’s productivity dashboard, we have to play the game as it’s being played. Here are some tips, based on conversations with people who make employee monitoring systems—and others who game the systems.
Be meticulous about your calendar
Calendar integration is one way that productivity trackers have gotten more advanced and, ostensibly, fairer.
Let’s say you make an old-fashioned phone call or attend an in-person meeting. Your Outlook or Slack status may switch to “away,” making you appear as inactive as if you were taking an extended coffee break.
Employee monitors like one made by a company called Insightful cross-check your online status with your calendar to see whether there is a valid reason for your apparent inactivity. If that call or meeting is on your schedule, then the system will recognize that you are busy offline. If nothing is on the books, it could look like you’re slacking off.
Hit the activity sweet spot, around 80%
Let’s not go any further without addressing the underlying question: How much downtime is permissible during the workday? After all, people have been scared to let managers see anything non-work-related on their screens since personal computers first arrived in offices.
No one knows this better than Roger Wagner, who is widely credited with creating the first “boss button” in the early 1980s. He designed a keyboard shortcut to instantly display a spreadsheet if the boss walked by your cubicle while you were playing a computer game. Boss buttons have been features of countless diversions since. (I confess to using one built into a March Madness streaming app.)
Wagner, the founder of computer-education company 1010 Technologies, says his original design was a joke—more of a commentary on overbearing managers than a cover for lazy employees. Good bosses understand workers need mental breaks throughout the day, he says.
This matches what I heard from Insightful Chief Executive Ivan Petrovic. He says customers that use his company’s workforce-management platform don’t expect employees to stay on task 100% of the time.
“On average companies are aiming for 60% to 80% of your time being utilized for work during the day,” he says.
Go ahead and exhale. It’s probably OK to watch an occasional YouTube video at your desk.
And if you’re going to artificially inflate your activity level, be careful. Hitting 90% could look suspicious.
Get physical
So don’t leave your mouse jiggler on all day. Choose the right one if you must resort to shenanigans.
There are lots of software applications that mimic the movements of a computer mouse, so you can appear to be working while away from your desk. There are also devices that plug into computer ports and do the same thing.
Corporate cybersecurity systems increasingly block these apps and devices, and productivity trackers claim to be able to detect them. But some workers swear by mouse docks, like one made by Tech8 USA, that keep cursors moving. The company originally made mouse-moving software but now focuses on physical jigglers.
“People are drawn to mechanical solutions because they’re so simple and don’t require software,” says Tech8 Marketing Director Sam Matthews. “As monitoring technology becomes more sophisticated, that distinction has become even more relevant.”
Use AI, but not too much
Another popular metric for employee-monitoring systems is AI usage. Companies want to know who is embracing new tools, and it can be tempting to think more is better.
“There’s a performative aspect where employees overblow their usage of AI so that they appear relevant in the organization,” says Andrea Derler, principal researcher at Visier, which helps companies track and analyze employee work habits.
In a recent Visier survey of 1,000 U.S. workers, 48% admitted to exaggerating their AI usage.
This is already an outdated strategy. Using AI for everything used to score points for experimentation. Now it can seem wasteful because many companies are watching AI token spending more carefully.
Look, productivity theater has always been part of work. Most of us aren’t trying to cheat the system, but expectations are changing so quickly that we need to be savvy about what the latest employee trackers are looking for.
Sometimes it takes a little gamesmanship to get full credit for our contributions.
Two coming 2027 models – the first of the “Neue Klasse” cars coming to the U.S. early next year – have been revealed.
Following the devastation of recent flooding, experts are urging government intervention to drive the cessation of building in areas at risk.
Lebanese luxury has always been defined by taste, creativity and an uncompromising pursuit of beauty. From fashion and beauty to food, travel and entrepreneurship, these 10 creators are taking Lebanon’s distinctive luxury identity to millions around the world — proving that Lebanese influence extends far beyond its borders.
8 min
Lebanese luxury requires a different frame from any other luxury narrative in the Arab world. It is not the luxury of oil wealth — it predates that by centuries. It is not the luxury of deliberate development — it was never planned. Lebanese luxury grew from something that the country has always had in excess and in spite of everything: taste. The fashion designers who put Lebanese names on the world’s most prestigious red carpets — Elie Saab, Georges Hobeika, Zuhair Murad, Reem Acra — did not build their reputations because Lebanon was a stable or prosperous country when they built them. They built them because Lebanese creative culture has a standard that is non-negotiable and not circumstantial.
The ten creators on this list are the people who carry that standard onto social media — and who have made the Lebanese luxury aesthetic visible to audiences of tens of millions globally. Karen Wazen is on the Business of Fashion 500, the definitive list of the people shaping the global fashion industry, produced by the publication that defines the global fashion conversation. Nour Arida walks the front rows at Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks as an invited editorial presence. Samer Khouzami turned a makeup artist’s chair in Beirut into a cosmetics brand stocked in international luxury retail. Each of them has taken something specifically Lebanese — the visual intelligence, the hospitality, the deeply held conviction that beauty is a serious pursuit — and made it visible at a scale that Lebanon’s creative tradition has always deserved.
| Lebanese luxury does not need a crisis narrative to justify itself. It exists at a standard that predates the crisis and has outlasted every attempt to diminish it. |
1. Karen Wazen – @karenwazen · Fashion Entrepreneur & BoF 500 Member Dubai (born & raised in Beirut)
Karen Wazen Bakhazi is the most globally credentialed Lebanese fashion creator operating today — a member of the Business of Fashion 500, the cover subject of Harper’s Bazaar Arabia and Elle Arabia, a collaborator of Dior, Prada, Cartier, Breitling and Guerlain, and the founder of Karen Wazen Eyewear, which is stocked by Net-a-Porter, Bloomingdale’s and Moda Operandi and has been worn by Sofia Richie, Olivia Culpo and Emily Ratajkowski. She has attended Cannes, the British Fashion Awards, and the major international fashion weeks, representing the Middle East at events where the region has historically been underrepresented.
Born and raised in Beirut, educated at the American University of Beirut, now based in Dubai — her career arc is the Lebanese luxury story in its most complete contemporary form. With more than 8 million Instagram followers and 15 million total social media followers, she is the highest-reach Lebanese luxury creator available to Kanebridge News ME, and the one whose trajectory most precisely embodies what the publication’s Lebanon luxury feature is here to celebrate.
2. Nour Arida – @nouraridaofficial · Fashion Creator & Entrepreneur Dubai/Beirut
Nour Arida occupies the rarest position in the Lebanese luxury landscape: a creator who has achieved genuine recognition from the world’s major fashion houses — present at Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks as an invited editorial presence, not a brand placement — while simultaneously building commercial enterprises of her own in the Gulf. In 2026, her children’s label Generation Peace expanded into premium department stores across the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia with the kind of backing that validates a brand rather than launches one.
With 6.9 million followers and a profile that is recognized internationally as well as regionally, she is operating at the junction of editorial credibility and commercial enterprise that defines the most significant luxury media figures. Her Lebanese identity is central to her brand narrative — she is not a Dubai creator who happens to be Lebanese but a Lebanese creator who operates globally. A Kanebridge News ME Lebanon luxury feature that places her in national context is precisely the editorial recognition that complements her international profile.
3. Nadine Nassib Njeim – @nadine.nassib.njeim · Actress & Former Miss Lebanon Beirut, Lebanon
Nadine Nassib Njeim is a Lebanese actress, former Miss Lebanon, and social media personality with 15.9 million Instagram followers — the largest individual following of any Lebanese creator, maintained from Beirut throughout everything the country has experienced. The decision to stay — to continue working, to continue creating, to continue being publicly visible in a city that has given her audience no shortage of reasons to look away — has given her a connection with the Lebanese public that no creator of her scale could have built from a safer distance.
Her luxury fashion content, event appearances, and lifestyle documentation reach an audience that spans the Lebanese diaspora globally and the broader Arab world. For Kanebridge News ME, she is the highest-reach Lebanese creator available for a collab post, and the one whose rootedness in Beirut makes the Lebanon edition of the publication feel most authentically located.
4. Samer Khouzami – @samerkhouzami · Celebrity Makeup Artist & Brand Founder Beirut/International
Samer Khouzami built a 2.1 million Instagram following as a celebrity makeup artist — and then built a cosmetics company around the skills and aesthetic sensibility that following was built on. His story is the Lebanese creative template: take a craft that Lebanese culture has always practiced at a high level, apply it to social media with the precision and intentionality that the craft demands, build an audience, and then turn that audience into a business that outlasts the platform.
The Lebanese beauty industry has a specific excellence — part French influence, part Mediterranean sensibility, part the competitive intensity of a small country where creative standards are maintained through cultural pride rather than institutional support. Khouzami’s work embodies that excellence and makes it legible to an international audience at a scale that earlier generations of Lebanese beauty professionals never had access to.
5. Lana El Sahely – @larmoiredelana · Fashion Entrepreneur Beirut, Lebanon
Lana El Sahely has built her fashion profile around a visual aesthetic that is specifically and unmistakably hers — a fusion of Middle Eastern and European sensibilities that reflects both her Lebanese heritage and an internationally educated eye. Her account, L’Armoire de Lana, has become a fashion reference for Lebanese and regional audiences who follow it not just for outfit inspiration but for the consistent editorial point of view it maintains from one post to the next.
In a fashion content landscape where originality is increasingly scarce, her distinctive voice has made her one of the most respected Lebanese fashion creators — recognized by her audience and by the fashion industry for a level of editorial consistency that most social media accounts do not sustain. That consistency, maintained through years in which sustaining anything in Lebanon has required real commitment, is the quality that Kanebridge News ME is recognizing.
6. Dana Hourani – @danahourani · Fashion Influencer & Musician Beirut, Lebanon
Dana Hourani’s 870,000-strong Instagram following is built on a content approach that merges fashion and music — two pillars of Lebanese cultural excellence that she inhabits simultaneously. Her minimalist fashion aesthetic and her musical artistry are not separate strands of a content strategy; they are the expression of a single creative sensibility that is particularly and recognizably Lebanese in its refusal to treat beauty and art as separate categories.
For Kanebridge News ME’s Lebanon luxury feature, Hourani represents the cultural dimension of Lebanese luxury that the fashion-forward creators on this list share but that she makes most explicit. Lebanon has always produced artists who dress beautifully, and designers who make music — the creative tradition does not observe the category boundaries that content strategy would impose on it.
7. Anthony Rahayel – @nogarlicnoonions · Lebanese Food & Culture Beirut, Lebanon
Anthony Rahayel’s No Garlic No Onions is one of the most recognized Lebanese food and culture platforms in the world — an award-winning documentation of Lebanese cuisine, restaurants, producers, chefs and hospitality that has become the definitive international reference for Lebanese food culture. Lebanese food is one of the most beloved and globally distributed culinary traditions on earth, and the restaurants, wine producers and hospitality venues of Beirut and the surrounding regions remain among the finest available anywhere in the Mediterranean.
His documentation of this scene — produced with the precision and cultural seriousness of someone who treats Lebanese food as a heritage to be preserved and celebrated rather than a lifestyle category to be curated — makes him the most important Lebanese luxury food voice operating on social media. For Kanebridge News ME’s Lebanon luxury feature, his inclusion brings a dimension of luxury that fashion and beauty alone cannot: the extraordinary pleasure of eating in Beirut, which has never required wealth to be available but has always represented a form of luxury that no amount of money elsewhere can fully replicate.
8. The Rahal – @the.rahal · Luxury Lifestyle & Travel · Dubai, UAE
The Rahal, created by Lebanese couple Miled and Melissa, has built a lifestyle platform around travel, fashion, hospitality and the polished experiences that define contemporary luxury in the Gulf. Based in Dubai, their content moves naturally between high-end destinations, fashion and everyday lifestyle, giving their audience an accessible window into the region’s increasingly sophisticated luxury culture. Their work has also earned industry recognition, including a Bronze TikTok Visionary Creator of the Year award.
What makes The Rahal particularly relevant to Kanebridge News ME’s Lebanon luxury feature is the way the platform reflects the modern Lebanese luxury consumer beyond Lebanon itself. Miled and Melissa represent a generation of Lebanese creators whose identity and influence travel with them — connecting Beirut’s instinct for style and hospitality with Dubai’s global luxury ecosystem. Their inclusion brings a distinctly contemporary dimension to the list: luxury not simply as ownership, but as travel, experience, fashion and the ability to move comfortably between cultures.
9. Nadine Wilson Njeim – Fashion, Beauty & Entrepreneurship · Beirut, Lebanon
Nadine Wilson Njeim has occupied a distinctive place in Lebanon’s fashion and lifestyle landscape since being crowned Miss Lebanon in 2007, building a career that has extended across television, acting, business and luxury fashion. Most notably, she founded Designer-24, a fashion rental platform built around access to leading international and Lebanese designers, including Elie Saab, Zuhair Murad, Rami Kadi, Valentino and Dolce & Gabbana.
Her relevance to luxury goes beyond the traditional trajectory of a beauty queen or media personality. Nadine represents a particularly Lebanese understanding of glamor: one shaped by couture, occasion dressing, entrepreneurship and an instinctive relationship with fashion. By turning designer fashion into a business proposition rather than simply displaying it, she positioned herself at the intersection of influence and commerce. For Kanebridge News ME’s Lebanon luxury feature, she represents the evolution of Lebanese glamour from image into enterprise — and the enduring influence of Beirut’s fashion culture across the region.
10. Rim Ammouri – @rim.ammouri · Fashion & Lifestyle · UAE
Rim Ammouri has built an influential digital presence around fashion, beauty, travel and contemporary lifestyle, while also becoming widely recognized as one half of the creator couple Ammar & Rim. Together, Rim and Ammar Al Samarrai have cultivated a substantial audience through a combination of aspirational lifestyle content and the humor, relationships and family moments that make their world feel personal rather than staged. Their combined TikTok community exceeds 4.6 million followers, demonstrating an ability to translate everyday life into large-scale digital influence.
What makes Rim particularly relevant to Kanebridge News ME’s luxury feature is the accessibility she brings to aspiration. Her presence reflects a newer definition of Middle Eastern luxury — less formal, less distant and increasingly shaped by the personalities audiences choose to follow every day. Fashion, travel and elevated experiences sit alongside marriage, motherhood and humor, creating a version of luxury that feels lived rather than simply displayed. Her inclusion represents the generation reshaping how luxury is communicated online: through personality, relatability and a lifestyle audiences can imagine themselves participating in.
Two coming 2027 models – the first of the “Neue Klasse” cars coming to the U.S. early next year – have been revealed.
Aston Martin has unveiled Valen, its most powerful front-engined V12 supercar to date, producing 850PS and 1,000Nm of torque from a 5.2-liter twin-turbo V12. Developed through Q by Aston Martin and the brand’s Special Vehicle Operations division, the limited-production model combines a full-carbon fiber body, up to 110kg in weight savings and a 0–60mph time of just 3.0 seconds.
8 min
Aston Martin is proud to introduce Valen; the world’s most powerful front-engined car from a manufacturer and the most powerful front-engined V12 supercar in the company’s 113-year history. The latest in an illustrious line of limited production twelve-cylinder specials, Valen explores provocative design themes and extremes of performance in pursuit of maximum visual impact and a truly distinctive driving experience.
Pushing the limits of design and engineering to achieve a supercar of unique drama and capability, Valen is clad in a full-carbon fiber body and powered by the brand’s most powerful version of its 5.2-litre twin-turbocharged V12 engine with 850PS and 1000Nm of torque from just 2500rpm. Combined with targeted hardware and extensive software calibration to steering, suspension and braking systems, Valen delivers a driver-focused configuration to match its raw performance.
Bestowed with an assertive design and character, Valen required a name with equal gravitas and meaning. Derived from the Latin word ‘valens’, with the etymology referencing “strong,” or “powerful”, Valen was the perfect name for Aston Martin’s most powerful front engined V12, continuing the long-standing dynasty of ‘V’ names.
The project, the latest special from Aston Martin’s bespoke service, Q by Aston Martin who previously gave us Valor, Valiant and DBR22 to name a few was realized thanks to the unique scope and expertise of Aston Martin’s newly formed Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) Department.
Aston Martin CEO, Adrian Hallmark said: “The latest in a bloodline of limited production special series models from our bespoke service, Q by Aston Martin, Valen’s world-beating performance required a design to capture the raw motion and unmatched output of our V12 powertrain. With more power, less weight, and a spectacular soundtrack, the dramatic design is backed up by equally dramatic performance.”
ENGINEERING
Reinforcing Valen’s position as the most powerful front-engined supercar, is a sharper-shifting 8-speed ZF transmission, which uses race-proven shift strategies developed for Aston Martin’s Vantage GT4 race program, with crisper and more engaging shifts in all drive modes, which has reduced Valen’s 0-60mph time to just 3.0 seconds*. Top speed is electronically limited to 214mph.
For Aston Martin Director of Vehicle Performance, Simon Newton, shaping Valen’s performance character was especially satisfying: “When your basis for a project is the world’s most powerful front-engined production car you know you’re going to have fun. Valen channels the more overt dynamic purpose of a true sportscar and amplifies that energy and focus to further unleash Valen’s potential. Everything we’ve done to the powertrain and chassis has been driven by the same objective; to intensify the character and capability to deliver a truly thrilling experience that’s accessible to all skill levels, but keen drivers will absolutely relish.”
To bring out the best from the V12 powertrain, Valen adopts a performance drive mode philosophy; Sport, Sport+ and Track modes to create a true feeling of urgency and focus befitting supercar levels of performance and dynamics.
Careful attention has also been paid to Valen’s throttle mapping, which changes according to drive mode. For spirited road driving in Sport and Sport+ modes the throttle pedal uses a shorter map to deliver more throttle earlier in its travel, while Track mode trades that urgency for a longer and more progressive delivery when on-limit precision is the priority.
Valen’s commitment to performance extends to a significant weight saving of up to 110kg over the core V12 platform – a central focus of the program. This is achieved through use of a variety of lightweight motorsport inspired materials including carbon fiber, aluminum, titanium and magnesium. An optional lightweight pack featuring machined-from-solid aluminum suspension arms, knuckles and titanium chassis bolts makes a 16.9kg weight saving alone through meticulous manufacturing and extreme attention to detail.
New lightweight magnesium wheels are fitted as standard, minimizing unsprung mass to further improve steering response and bring added polish to Valen’s wheel control and ride refinement. These wheels are shod with Aston Martin tuned Pirelli P Zero R (275/35 ZR21 front, 325/30 ZR21 rear) and or P Zero Winter 2 tires (275/35 R21 front, 325/30 R21 rear) developed specifically for Valen to ensure an optimal balance between everyday usability and dynamic track capability. These high-performance, bespoke tires deliver superior lateral and longitudinal grip that are tuned to maintain a level of approachability and control to the driver, giving the ultimate bandwidth in performance. Valen also adopts Pirelli’s latest Cyber™ Tyre technology**, the only hardware and software technology able to share real time tire data with the vehicle’s dynamic control systems. Developed in conjunction with Bosch Engineering the system is fully integrated into the car’s digital architecture, allowing the ESP, ABS and traction control systems to continuously adapt their thresholds optimizing control and safety.
A combination of significant hardware changes and targeted software calibration adjustments to the ESP, dampers, steering, cambers and braking system delivers a marked character shift to give Valen a unique dynamic signature. One with the bandwidth to sharpen response, precision and control without sacrificing the necessary compliance and refinement required in a car owners will want to take on proper journeys over long distances.
Focused front and rear lateral stiffness delivers precise response and confident direction changes. Reduced roll and pitch motions to driver inputs increases agility feel over the core V12 platform while preserving a playful handling balance for maximum enjoyment.
Intense development focus has been spent on the steering, tuned to deliver feel, connection and system stiffness through the chassis and software tuning. Steering efforts have been tuned for response, allowing Valen to behave like a shorter and lighter car.
Valen also employs a solid mounted rear subframe together with model-specific springs, helper springs and Bilstein DTX semi-active dampers. Steering calibration maximizes the feeling of agility and exploits the front-end’s limits of grip, but with meticulous care taken to ensure this rotational energy is matched by high levels of traction for a feeling of confident unity and connection front-to-rear.
To ensure all points of contact between car and driver have cohesive feel and response, Valen’s brake booster maintains a firm pedal for exceptional precision and complete driver confidence, allowing precise modulation of the 410mm front and 360mm rear carbon ceramic brakes from high and low speeds.
Through its new lightweight titanium exhaust system, Valen has a soundtrack to match its performance. The system has been developed specifically for Valen and features new micro mufflers ensuring compliance with homologation regulations; while saving weight and enhancing the sound quality that’s such an essential part of enjoying a V12-engined car to the full. It’s a key part of the strategy to ramp-up emotion to create a car of unmistakable visual, dynamic and aural character. Valen’s quad exhaust system evokes the design language of a mid-engine hyper car, molded into the form of a front mid-engined supercar, with four tailpipes split between two upper and two lower. These tailpipe finishers are formed with 3D printed titanium with the focus on light weighting and material craftsmanship. The upper exhaust exits are always open, with the lower exits valved, opening depending on drive mode for the ultimate emotive soundtrack.
Valen’s roar has been carefully tuned to deliver a more performance focused audible experience, reducing lower frequencies while amplifying higher tones. Optimized system dimensions enhance the progression to a dramatic crescendo, while the upper exhaust outlets are tuned akin to organ pipes to generate resonance at higher engine speeds, resulting in a significant increase in character and presence.
DESIGN
Valen presents a re-interpretation of Aston Martin’s iconic front-engined formula. Speaking of the creative impetus behind Valen’s design, Aston Martin EVP & Chief Creative Officer, Marek Reichman said: “Valen gave us the opportunity to explore and express more extreme emotions through a new form language and surface treatment. As such, Valen is a significant departure from what has gone before; sharply sculpted lines to reflect the aggressive dynamics, an attacking stance that emphasizes the front-engine rear-drive layout and a bespoke interior design that creates a more sporting cockpit environment. Valen is a provocative front-engined supercar exuding increased potency and sporting intent, yet still celebrating the elevated luxury, meticulous detailing and unmistakable design signatures expected of a flagship Aston Martin.”
Valen’s dramatic frontal treatment is characterized by deeply recessed slimline headlamp units which are hooded beneath the sharp leading edge of the plunging bonnet line. Together with the more angular treatment of the radiator aperture, bold geometric mesh grille and acutely angled front splitter create a distinctive character
The bonnet itself features a single top vent with perforations at the trailing edge. On each side the traditional side strake has been sharpened and elongated and is now fully incorporated into a large functional vent which extracts air from the wheel arch and guides it down the rounded flanks. The strake feature extends almost the full length of the door before the swollen rear haunches widen to cover the rear wheels.
The lower section of each side is dominated by a stepped sill, which creates a tightly cinched waistline that emphasizes the muscular front and rear fender sections. Sharp saw-tooth vortex generators positioned on the trailing edge of the sills pull highspeed airflow from beneath the car to reducing lift and generate downforce. New side-glass quarter windows add to Valen’s profile and demonstrate commitment to creating a car with a unique identity.
Valen’s rear-design treatment is equally bold. Instead of a fixed rear window and trunk lid both features have been replaced by a solid tailgate. Featuring an aerodynamic wing in its upper section, the tailgate opens onto a sizeable trunk (170 liters) which is available with an optional bespoke luggage set (Touring Pack) to make the most of the available space. A soft, tailored cover can be unfolded to protect the paintwork when lifting cases in and out.
A bespoke full-width light bar sits beneath the large upswept tail, which acts as a Gurney flap to generate downforce while incurring minimal drag and avoiding the need for motorsport-style wings. Below the vivid strip of light is a perforated panel to extract hot air from around the exhaust, which features a pair of high-set tailpipes mounted above the top of the rising rear diffuser and emits a soundtrack befitting of a V12 supercar.
The show car is specified in a Q Ultra developed paint color, Satin Andromeda Red. The satin top-coat accentuates the assertive lines in the design with the color shift from the Andromeda Red remaining highly impactful. Andromeda Red blends deep red, copper and rich golden highlights, which shift dynamically to intense undertones of blue. Innovating timeless color through ultra-luxury pigments, blended through with Chromaflair technology pigments. A commanding range of shifting hues, achievable even in low light environments, bringing new perspectives with an indulgent movement of color.
With a coach-built carbon fiber body, Valen is available with the option of a stunning fully exposed carbon fiber exterior. This exquisite example of material craftsmanship shows meticulous detail with the herringbone in the carbon weave running down the center of the car. In addition, the exposed carbon fiber can be tinted in a variety of colors, in both Satin and Gloss finish, with even the possibility of customers working with the Q by Aston Martin team to curate and develop their own bespoke tint.
The interior of Valen has been developed around a clear principle of visual lightness, reflecting the significant mass reduction engineered throughout the car. Central to this is a slim center console, enabled by advanced 3D-printed components and incorporating the performance-focused switch pack introduced on Valhalla. Angled towards the driver, the inclined console creates a more focused and controlled cockpit environment, reinforcing the connection between driver and machine.
Valen’s cabin offers a choice of newly developed Sports Plus seats, designed to combine support with long-distance comfort, or lightweight carbon fiber performance seats for a more focused driving experience. Together, these options allow customers to tailor the cockpit to their intended use and needs.
A new hierarchy of interior trim levels simplifies the selection process without limiting scope for individual choice. Customers first choose between a combination of Semi-Aniline Leather and Alcantara or full Semi-Aniline Leather, before choosing from five material splits (Monotone, Duotone, Light Duotone, Tritone and Driver Focused). Using the new upholstery quilting treatment developed for Valen as an example, the areas where this quilting is applied extends incrementally with each trim level, from door panels, doors and seats, to doors, seats and headlining in the top tier specification. The additional choice of a driver-focused option (which highlights the driver’s seat), and an accent pack which adds contrast color detailing ensures a near-limitless choice of combinations.
Elsewhere, 3D-printed elements are used throughout the cabin, echoing the approach with previous limited-edition specials, such as Valkyrie and DBS Zagato. These perforated sections reference the exterior cooling vents, adding visual intrigue and contributing to an increased sense of lightness and simplicity. The center console is also new, with elements taken from the Valhalla. The central touchscreen is reclined at more of an angle to better integrate within the sleek geometry of the pared-back interior design.
Functional items such as the air vents have been changed to further reduce visual clutter and a new palette of anodizing colors has been developed, expanding the scope for embellishment and personalization offered via Q by Aston Martin.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
Abu Dhabi sovereign investor L’imad, through ADQ, has launched a conditional cash offer to acquire the remaining shares of AD Ports Group at AED 6.25 ($1.70) per share. ADQ currently holds a 75.42% stake in the group.
< 1 min
Abu Dhabi sovereign investor L’imad will make a voluntary conditional cash offer, through its wholly owned unit ADQ, to acquire up to 100% of the issued and paid-up share capital of AD Ports Group.
Remaining shareholders will be offered 6.25 UAE dirhams ($1.70) in cash for each of their shares in AD Ports, with the matter to be presented to the Board of Directors.
L’IMAD, through ADQ, owns 75.42% of the shares of AD Ports Group. Other shareholders include Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management (1.74%) and the US-based Vanguard Capital Management (0.54%).
Rothschild & Co Middle East Limited is acting as financial adviser for the tender offer, with Emirates NBD Capital and First Abu Dhabi Bank acting as joint lead managers, and EFG Hermes UAE as co-lead manager. Emirates NBD Bank and First Abu Dhabi Bank are also joint-lead receiving banks, with Allen Overy Shearman Sterling acting as legal adviser.
New research suggests that bonuses make employees feel more like a mere cog in a wheel.
Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.
3 min
“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”
That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.
spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”
That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.
“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”
Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”
The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.
But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.
The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.
There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.
Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.
Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.
Paine Schwartz joins BERO as a new investor as the year-old company seeks to triple sales.
Saudi Arabia ranks among the world’s top 10 countries for private AI investment, according to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2026.
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Saudi Arabia emerged as one among the world’s top 10 countries for private AI investment, according to the latest World Bank report.
The World Bank Group’s World Development Report 2026, titled “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence,” highlighted Saudi Arabia’s growing position in the global AI landscape. “The Kingdom has become an attractive destination for AI talent and a model for government data integration,” the report pointed out.
This international recognition reflects the support and empowerment of the Kingdom’s leadership through an integrated national approach established by Saudi Vision 2030 to build an economy driven by data, compute, and innovation, and to reinforce the Kingdom’s position in shaping the future of artificial intelligence.
The recently released report is the World Bank’s first comprehensive assessment of the impact of artificial intelligence on developing economies, the opportunities it creates for individuals, firms, and governments, and the requirements needed to maximize its development impact
while managing associated risks.
The report is structured around three key dimensions that shape the impact of artificial intelligence on development: Capabilities, through which AI can broaden access to expertise and support decision-making; concentration, resulting from the production of advanced models, chips, and data centers being concentrated in a limited number of countries and companies; and complements, including infrastructure, data, skills, and institutions.
Through these dimensions, the report outlines a progressive pathway that begins with adopting available tools, moves toward adapting them to local languages, data, institutions, and needs, and ultimately advances toward developing cutting-edge technologies and the infrastructure that enables them.
The report emphasizes that harnessing the benefits of artificial intelligence depends not only on having the largest models, but also on building an interconnected ecosystem encompassing connectivity, compute, data, skills, and institutions. It notes that solutions tailored to local contexts can broaden access to expertise, increase productivity, improve public services, and support economic growth.
Under the Concentration dimension, which examines the concentration of advanced AI infrastructure and related investment, the report noted that Saudi Arabia combines tax incentives with special economic zones to attract investment in data centers and build compute capacity. This national approach links capital attraction with the development of a broader ecosystem encompassing talent, startups, energy, and the infrastructure required to support the growth of AI applications.
This recognition aligns with the rapid growth of the Kingdom’s digital infrastructure. Data center capacity increased from 68 MW in 2021 to 440 MW in 2025, before rising further to 467 MW in the first quarter of 2026, representing an increase of more than 6 percent since the beginning of the year and nearly sevenfold compared with 2021. The 4G and 5G network coverage reached 99 percent by the end of 2025, while average internet speed reached 216 Mbps, providing key enablers for the expansion of cloud services and AI applications.
Under the Capabilities dimension, the report highlighted Saudi Arabia’s ability to attract specialized talent, noting that in 2025 the Kingdom was among the economies with the highest net inflows of AI professionals per 10,000 LinkedIn members, alongside Luxembourg, Australia, and Switzerland. Saudi Arabia also recorded a net inflow of 3.08 among leading AI authors and innovators in the same year, reflecting the growing attractiveness of the Saudi technology ecosystem to highly specialized talent.
This momentum is accompanied by continued growth in the Kingdom’s national talent base. Saudi Arabia’s technology workforce has grown to approximately 426,000, representing cumulative growth of 186.6 percent compared with 2018, when it stood at 150,000. Women’s participation in communications and information technology professions has also risen to 35 percent, broadening the Kingdom’s talent pool and strengthening the diversity of capabilities supporting an economy driven by technology and innovation.
Under the Complements dimension, the report presents Saudi
Arabia’s experience as a model for building public data infrastructure. It highlights a platform operated by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) that enables data integration across more than 60 government entities while allowing the data to remain within their respective systems. The report presents this experience as a model for structured data exchange, enabling government entities to develop more effective applications while strengthening governance, trust, and data protection.
This progress builds on broader achievements across the digital economy, whose contribution has risen to 16 percent of GDP, while the communications and information technology market reached SR199 billion in 2025.
Saudi Arabia also ranked second globally in the World Bank Group’s 2025 GovTech Maturity Index. The preparation of the report also reflects the Kingdom’s presence in the international dialogue on artificial intelligence policy. The report’s High-Level Advisory Panel included Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha. The report team also benefited from consultation sessions involving the Saudi Competitiveness and Business Center and the WBG–Saudi Arabia Knowledge Hub, alongside national government, private-sector, and research entities that contributed their expertise in data, telecommunications, compute, and innovation.
The report’s release carries particular significance following the Cabinet’s approval, during its session chaired by Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, on March 10, 2026, to designate 2026 as the “Year of AI” in Saudi Arabia, underscoring the Kingdom’s national focus on future technologies and their role in advancing development, innovation, and competitiveness.
The findings highlighted in the World Bank report affirm that Saudi Arabia is advancing an integrated approach in the intelligent era, bringing together investment in infrastructure, compute and data, talent development, the regulatory environment, and the expanded application of technology across the economy and public services. This approach reinforces the Kingdom’s position as a global hub for data and artificial intelligence and supports the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
Kyndryl launches Agentic Modernization services-as-software, leveraging AI-powered workflows to help enterprises accelerate and scale continuous technology modernization.
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Kyndryl, a leading provider of mission-critical enterprise technology services, today introduced its Agentic Modernization services-as-software, which is built using the Kyndryl Agentic AI Framework and is scaled through Kyndryl Bridge. Services-as-software is an emerging model for delivering services through software-driven automation, intelligence and scalable digital workflows.
Kyndryl has codified its trusted mission-critical and engineering expertise, together with capabilities from AI ecosystem partners, into pre-defined agentic workflows that help customers unlock business outcomes, de-risk and accelerate their modernization objectives, while maintaining enterprise guardrails and cost visibility throughout their AI adoption journey.
“Modernization is becoming an operating discipline rather than a series of labor-intensive transformation programs that are difficult to scale and disruption-prone,” said Ismail Amla, Senior Vice President, Kyndryl Consult. “As technology innovation accelerates exponentially, organizations need to move toward continuous modernization so they can adapt faster to changing business needs. With Agentic Modernization services-as-software, customers can transform iteratively and seamlessly using proven agentic workflows designed to handle changing business priorities and built on Kyndryl’s deep mission-critical expertise and industrialized through Kyndryl Bridge, enabling faster execution and more predictable outcomes.”
The announcement comes as organizations race to scale AI but are challenged to achieve business value from their investments. Kyndryl’s recent survey of 1,100 business and technology leaders found that while 77% of executives say generative AI has already been scaled across multiple functions of their organization, only 32% report experiencing one of their top desired outcomes. Organizations cannot reliably adopt AI on aging technology estates; modernization is the prerequisite foundation and has become a top priority and a growing area of technology spend.
“Agentic AI is reshaping how enterprises think about modernization, moving the conversation from large, episodic transformation projects to continuous, agent-orchestrated implementations guided by human expertise,” said Bill Latshaw, Research Director, Worldwide Business Consulting Services, IDC. “Kyndryl’s Agentic Modernization services-as-software, with Kyndryl Bridge as the foundation, reflects that shift, combining pre-defined AI workflows and operational expertise, critically with the governance and guardrails needed to enable organizations to modernize with greater speed and consistency by reducing indecision and complexity traps.”
Run on the Foundation of Kyndryl Bridge
Since its launch in 2022, Kyndryl Bridge has become the trusted foundation for managing and modernizing mission-critical and regulated technology environments for more than 1,400 customers. Kyndryl Bridge generates more than 16 million AI insights each month and has demonstrated a reduction in IT incidents by up to 50%.
As organizations adopt AI-powered workflows, Kyndryl Bridge serves as the robust enterprise-grade technology foundation, for deploying and managing mission-critical AI across hybrid IT estates, with well-established controls for cost visibility, security and regulatory requirements. Kyndryl Bridge also provides agentic memory management for customers, helping them preserve and evolve critical institutional knowledge and operational context to support continuous modernization.
Scaling modernization outcomes with services-as-software
Kyndryl’s services-as-software helps customers execute modernization programs of any size or complexity in radically compressed timelines and at significantly lower cost by scaling pre-built agentic workflows — making specialized skills less of a constraint.
This approach also enables customers to adopt new frontier models and tools as they become available, based on their business requirements, cost, performance and governance needs, without locking them into a specific technology stack. As a result, modernization programs can be delivered with greater consistency, repeatability, quality and predictable outcomes for every customer.
Expert-guided, agent-orchestrated continuous modernization
Anchored in Kyndryl’s decades of experience managing and modernizing mission-critical systems, pre-defined enterprise-grade agentic modernization workflows support a broad range of infrastructure, application and business transformation initiatives across distributed and mainframe environments, public, private cloud and network infrastructure, software development and IT operations. These AI workflows orchestrate autonomous AI agents across the modernization lifecycle, helping accelerate activities such as discovery, code analysis, dependency mapping, target-state design, code generation, testing and validation.
Kyndryl’s pre-defined agentic modernization workflows also reduce the effort and costs required to experiment with AI and accelerate modernization by giving customers a proven, reusable foundation for generating consistent, high-quality outcomes at scale.
Two coming 2027 models – the first of the “Neue Klasse” cars coming to the U.S. early next year – have been revealed.
Apple shares came under pressure after Jefferies downgraded the stock to Underperform and cut its price target to $263.66, citing concerns that plans for a highly anticipated all-glass iPhone have been scrapped. Analyst Edison Lee pointed to production challenges, rising memory costs and uncertainty around Apple’s AI strategy, adding to recent concerns over the tech giant’s growth outlook.
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Apple AAPL -1.53% stock was downgraded by a major Wall Street firm on Monday, as an analyst predicted that a radical iPhone redesign has been scrapped.
Jefferies analyst Edison Lee cut his rating on Apple to Underperform—generally graded as a moderate Sell rating—from Hold. He also slashed his price target to $263.66 from $285.56, placing it among the lowest on Wall Street.
The downgrade hinges on the suspected cancellation of Apple’s all-glass iPhone. Although the project was reported to be in development as far back as 2025 and rumored to launch as early as 2027, Apple never commented on the speculation. However, the company quietly filed a patent application for a “six-sided glass enclosure” in 2019.
While Jefferies once viewed the release of an all-glass iPhone as plausible, Lee believes development has come to a halt. According to the analyst, supply-chain checks suggest the project was canceled due to “poor production yield.” This refers to the percentage of defect-free units successfully generated during manufacturing.
Lee views the decision as “a major setback to efforts to bring in higher-priced iPhones amid soaring memory costs.” Had it launched in September 2027 to commemorate the iPhone’s 20th anniversary, the device would have carried an estimated blended retail price of $2,060—higher than the average price of any previous model.
“More importantly, we believe the plan was to extend the all-glass features to future iPhone Pro and Pro Max models, further raising their average selling price and margin,” Lee wrote. He believes an all-glass model would have been a crucial defense against soaring memory costs, warning that Apple otherwise faces lower prices for years to come.
In the same breath, the analyst provided a conservative outlook on both Apple’s AI strategy and component costs for the iPhone 19 Pro Max, which is slated for release in 2027. Other supply-chain checks suggest that Apple is considering an upgrade for the iPhone 19 Pro Max, potentially increasing its memory to 16 gigabytes from 12 gigabytes.
In Lee’s view, the slow rollout of Apple Intelligence makes it difficult for Apple to justify the expense of equipping its phones with more memory. Extra RAM is needed to run complex AI models directly on a device.
Apple shares dropped 1.5% on Monday as the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP -0.32% index fell 0.3%. Heading into the session, Apple had gained over 15% in 2026, marginally outperforming the index.
The stock’s momentum stalled last month when underwhelming fiscal third-quarter earnings triggered a selloff that erased $359 billion in market capitalization, allowing Nvidia NVDA -2.86% to overtake Apple as the world’s most valuable company.
Lee isn’t the only analyst to sour on Apple stock in recent weeks. KeyBanc analyst Brandon Nispel downgraded shares to Underweight from Sector Weight in July, arguing that Apple’s growth was beginning to stall following a boost in 2025. Sluggish iPhone sales could drag down other hardware categories, Nispel wrote, making the stock look “too expensive” over time.
Even with this recent shift in sentiment, Wall Street hasn’t lost faith in Apple. Of 51 analysts surveyed by FactSet, 32 rate the stock a Buy or the equivalent. Fourteen maintain a Hold rating, while just five—Lee and Nispel included—have issued a negative opinion on the shares.
Many of the most-important events have slipped from our collective memories. But their impacts live on.
