The 2026 Winter Olympic Games kick off in Italy on Friday, with top athletes from across the world competing for not just any prize, but for the most expensive medals in Olympics history.
The Milano Cortina-based games come as the value of precious metals have skyrocketed, most notably gold and silver. Gold was worth about $2,500 per ounce when the Paris Summer Olympics took place in 2024.
Now, less than two years later, gold sits at just over $4,800 per ounceand even thats a significant drop from its recent record-high of about $5,600 per ounce just last week.
Silver averaged around $28 per ounce during the last Olympic games, but is now valued at about $77 per ounce. Again, this is a downturn from a high of over $121 per ounce at the end of January.
[Photo: Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026]
How much are Olympic medals worth during the 2026 winter games?
At time of writing, a rough calculation shows that each gold medal is worth about $2,176up from about $900 in Paris. Meanwhile, a silver medal is valued at about $1,245, based on the metals current worth.
Notably, the Olympic gold medals havent been pure gold in over 100 years, as CNN previously reported. Instead, they are now made up of 500 grams of silver and just six grams of gold. The silver medal is solely made of 500 grams of, well, silver.
There will be 735 Olympic medals and 411 Paralympic medals awarded during the two events. Each medal is a thickness of just 10 millimeters with an 80 millimeter diameter.
Of course, the cost of each medal is more significant for the manufacturer than the recipient (you can learn more about how the Olympic medals are made here). Olympic medals are not commonly sold and, when they are, typically go for a lot more than face value. In January, swimmer Ryan Lochte sold three gold medals for about $385,000, Swimming World reports. Previously, he sold six Olympic medals for $166,000.
Large-language models (LLMs) have taken the world by storm, but theyre only one type of underlying AI model. An under-the-radar company, Fundamental, is set to bring a new type of enterprise AI model to the masses: large tabular models, or LTMswhich could have an even bigger impact for businesses.
What are LTMs?
A major difference between LLMs and LTMs is the type of data theyre able to synthesize and use. LLMs use unstructured datathink text, social media posts, emails, etc.
LTMs, on the other hand, can extract information or insights from structured data, which could be contained in tables, for instance.
Since many enterprises rely on structured data, often contained in spreadsheets, to run their operations, LTMs could have an immediate use case for many organizations.
What does Fundamental do?
San Francisco-based Fundamental, founded roughly 18 months ago by CEO Jeremy Fraenkel, has made a public LTM model, NEXUS, which will allow organizations to tap into that data to make predictions and forecasts.
The data types in the mix could include customer behavior, information from various sensors, or myriad other thingsbut again, its all locked up in rows and columns.
If you look at what LLMs have done with unstructured data, its been amazing. But it only covers 20% of [overall] data, Fraenkel says. Thats the opportunity were going after.
Its potentially a big deal, because Fraenkel says that roughly 80% of enterprise data used by companies to make predictions and decisions is structuredmeaning that its on private servers in columns and rows, not really usable by LLMs.
You can try things with LLMs, but theyre not really adapted to do it, Fraenkel says. They dont work well with the structured data. They can work with, say, 100,000 rows. But a bank might have tens of billions of rows of data, which can overwhelm the model. Fundamental’s aim is the ability to make better predictions using that structured data.
Fundamental is also announcing that its closed a $225 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Oak HC/FT, and included participation from Battery Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Salesforce.
And it’s already worked out some big partnerships, too. That includes one with Amazon Web Services, meaning AWS customers can buy and deploy NEXUS directly through AWS dashboard, and even make payments using Amazon credit, and its available today. Well be fully integrated with AWS, Fraenkel says. AWS customers will have access to Fundamentals model through their existing contracts, and any company can use it out of the box.
Annie Lamont, the founder and managing partner at VC firm Oak HC/FT, which led Fundamentals Series A round, says that at first, she was a little skeptical, but that was soon replaced by excitement as to what the company could be capable of.
Werent these LLM companies, with endless capital, going to do this? Theyre not. Theyre different, she says. We knew that LLMs are great with unstructured data, but theres a hole when it comes to structured datawe hadnt heard of anybody solving the problem.
Nobody has commercialized [this type of AI model] for enterprise, so they have a good head start, she adds.
As for whats ahead? Deployment, adoption, and proliferation, Fundamental hopes. And if LTMs take off as LLMs did, theres a very high ceiling: A few years from now, every Fortune 50 will need to rely on these models to make better business decisions, Fraenkel predicts.
Work has a way of waking up parts of us we thought wed outgrown.
You can move forward professionally, take on more visible roles, and be widely regarded as capableand still find yourself unsettled by moments that seem, on the surface, fairly ordinary. A comment lingers longer than expected. A meeting leaves you tense for days. A role you worked hard to earn suddenly feels exposing rather than energizing.
When that happens, its tempting to assume something is wrong now: that youre underprepared, out of your depth, or simply not built for this level of responsibility. But often, whats being stirred up has less to do with the present moment than with experiences that shaped you much earlier in your career.
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The past isnt gone. Its patterned.
Consider Anna, a senior public health leader who had built a reputation for sound judgment and steady leadership. When she accepted a high-profile role in government, it looked like a natural next step.
Internally, it felt like a step backward.
Almost immediately, she began doubting herself in ways that were unfamiliar. She grew anxious before meetings and unusually sensitive to tone and hierarchy. After speaking, she would replay her comments, convinced shed revealed some fundamental gap.
What made this disorienting was that nothing objectively negative was happening. Her colleagues were engaged. Her supervisor was supportive. Her performance was strong.
And yet her body reacted as if the stakes were much higher.
Over time, a pattern became clear. Anna had trained in an elite graduate program where intimidation was framed as rigor. Public critique was common. Questions were treated as exposures. Authority felt unpredictable.
At the time, she adapted in ways that made sense. She became meticulously prepared. She learned to anticipate criticism before it arrived. She made herself intellectually airtight.
That strategy worked. She succeeded. She moved on.
Except that some part of her never quite did.
Her new role didnt create anxietyit activated an old internal map, one shaped in an environment where visibility carried real risk. Intellectually, she knew she belonged. Psychologically, she was responding to an earlier chapter.
This is how the past often shows up at work: not as a memory, but as a reflex.
Why some roles feel heavier than others
Psychologists have long observed that unresolved experiences dont fade with time. They flatten. They remain emotionally vivid and are reactivated when something feels familiar enoughespecially situations involving evaluation, authority, or public exposure.
In those moments, the brain doesnt reliably distinguish between then and now. The body responds as if the original stakes have returned.
This helps explain why certain roles or environments feel disproportionately taxing. Its not always about the workload or the people involved. Sometimes its about what the role resemblesearlier contexts where the cost of being visible, wrong, or unprepared felt genuinely high.
Professional life has a developmental history
We tend to think of our professional selves as separate from our psychological development. But careers have formative periods, too.
Early mentors, first failures, environments where we learned what was rewarded, punished, or ignoredthese experiences quietly shape how we lead, speak, take risks, and respond to authority years later.
Most of us already accept this logic when it comes to parenting. We know that unexamined childhood experiences can spill into how we parenthow we discipline, soothe, or overcorrect.
Professional life follows the same pattern.
Unprocessed career experiences dont show up as stories we consciously tell ourselves. They show up as leadership styles, communication habits, and emotional reflexes that can feel confusing in hindsight.
What effective leaders tend to notice
Leaders who navigate this terrain well arent necessarily the most confident or fearless. Theyre often the most curious.
They notice when a reaction feels bigger than the situation warrants. They pause before assuming the problem is a lack of skill or effort. Theyre willing to ask whether an old pattern is being activatedand whether it still fits the present context.
That kind of reflection doesnt make leaders less decisive. If anything, it tends to make them steadier. Decisions become less reactive. Authority feels less charged. Visibility becomes tolerable rather than threatening.
Letting the present have more say
This isnt about fixing yourself or endlessly revisiting the past. Most high-performing professionals are already capable, conscientious, and deeply invested in doing their work well.
Whats often missing isnt insight, but the space to notice whats being activated and to treat those reactions as information rather than directives.
Unexamined professional experiences tend to resurface indirectly: as tension, hesitation, over-effort, or a familiar sense of bracing. Its easy to mistake those signals for evidence that something is wrong now, rather than residue from an earlier context.
Over time, what tends to change isnt the absence of discomfort, but how much authority its given.
The past doesnt disappear. It simply stops running the meeting. And for many people, thats what makes work feel steadier again.
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Bobs Discount Furniture, a Connecticut-based furniture retailer backed by Bain Capital, is putting it all on the table.
The company is going public, with shares expected to begin trading on Thursday, February 5, after being priced at $17.
The retailer raised $331 million in its initial public offering (IPO). Shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol BOBS.
The IPO was originally announced last month.
The company’s retail operations are expansiveit has more than 200 locations in 26 states as of September of last year, but the East Coast is its stronghold.
Data from Renaissance Capital shows that 61% of its revenue came from stores in New England, New York, and the Mid-Atlantic.
Retail headwinds and risk factors
Bob’s listing will test investor appetite for traditional retail businesses as the space has faced headwinds. Many brick-and-mortar chains are pushing through a difficult environment and market conditions, particularly as consumers have struggled with increased prices in recent years.
Home furnishings retailers, in particular, have had a rough run lately. Chains including Circle Furniture, American Signature, and At Home have all filed for bankruptcy, along with adjacent retailers such as Bed Bath & Beyond and Big Lots.
Another important detail: Bobs sources a lot of its furniture stock from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia, which are subject to (or could become further targeted by) the Trump administrations tariffs.
It’s a risk factor that stands out in the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
We may not be able to fully or substantially mitigate the impact of these or future tariffs, pass price increases on to our customers or secure adequate alternative sources of products, which would have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial performance,” the filing reads.
The company has been performing well, however. It reported net revenue of more than $1.7 billion for the nine months ended September 28, 2025, which was an increase of more than 20% during that same period the year prior, per the filing. During that same period, net income rose 64%.
The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it wants to create a critical minerals trading bloc with its allies and partners, using tariffs to maintain minimum prices and defend against China’s stranglehold on the key elements needed for everything from fighter jets to smartphones.Vice President JD Vance said the U.S.-China trade war over the past year exposed how dependent most countries are on the critical minerals that Beijing largely dominates, so collective action is needed now to give the West self-reliance.“We want members to form a trading bloc among allies and partners, one that guarantees American access to American industrial might while also expanding production across the entire zone,” Vance said at the opening of a meeting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted with officials from several dozen European, Asian and African nations.The Republican administration is making bold moves to shore up supplies of critical minerals needed for electric vehicles, missiles and other high-tech products after China choked off their flow in response to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs last year. While the two global powers reached a truce to pull back on the high import taxes and stepped-up rare earth restrictions, China’s limits remain tighter than they were before Trump took office.The critical minerals meeting comes at a time of significant tensions between Washington and major allies over President Donald Trump’s territorial ambitions, including Greenland, and his moves to exert control over Venezuela and other nations. His bellicose and insulting rhetoric directed at U.S. partners has led to frustration and anger.The conference, however, is an indication that the United States is seeking to build relationships when it comes to issues it deems key national security priorities.While major allies like France and the United Kingdom attended the meeting in Washington, Greenland and Denmark, the NATO ally with oversight of the mineral-rich Arctic island, did not.
A new approach to countering China on critical minerals
Vance said some countries have signed on to the trading bloc, which is designed to ensure stable prices and will provide members access to financing and the critical minerals. Administration officials said the plan will help the West move beyond complaining about the problem of access to critical minerals to actually solving it.“Everyone here has a role to play, and that’s why we’re so grateful for you coming and being a part of this gathering that I hope will lead to not just more gatherings, but action,” Rubio said.Vance said that for too long, China has used the tactic of unloading materials at cheap prices to undermine potential competitors, then ratcheting up prices later after keeping new mines from being built in other countries.Prices within the preferential trade zone will remain consistent over time, the vice president said.“Our goal within that zone is to create diverse centers of production, stable investment conditions and supply chains that are immune to the kind of external disruptions that we’ve already talked about,” he said.In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said in response to a question about the trading bloc that “we oppose any country undermining the international economic and trade order through rules set by small cliques.”To make the new trading group work, it will be important to have ways to keep countries from buying cheap Chinese materials on the side and to encourage companies from getting the critical minerals they need from China, said Ian Lange, an economics professor who focuses on rare earths at the Colorado School of Mines.“Let’s just say it’s standard economics or standard behavior. If I can cheat and get away with it, I will,” he said.At least for defense contractors, Lange said the Pentagon can enforce where those companies get their critical minerals, but it may be harder with electric vehicle makers and other manufacturers.
US turns to a strategic stockpile and investments
Trump this week also announced Project Vault, a plan for a strategic U.S. stockpile of rare earth elements to be funded with a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and nearly $1.67 billion in private capital.In addition, the government recently made its fourth direct investment in an American critical minerals producer, extending $1.6 billion to USA Rare Earth in exchange for stock and a repayment deal. The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to spur mining.The administration has prioritized the moves because China controls 70% of the world’s rare earths mining and 90% of the processing. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone Wednesday, including about trade. A social media post from Trump did not specifically mention critical minerals.Heidi Crebo-Rediker, a senior fellow in the Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the meeting was “the most ambitious multilateral gathering of the Trump administration.”“The rocks are where the rocks are, so when it comes to securing supply chains for both defense and commercial industries, we need trusted partners,” she said.Japan’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Iwao Horii, said Tokyo was fully on board with the U.S. initiative and would work with as many countries as possible to ensure its success.“Critical minerals and (their) stable supply is indispensable to the sustainable development of the global economy,” he said.
Agreements and legislation move forward
The European Union and Japan together as well as Mexico announced agreements to work with the United States to develop coordinated trade policies and price floors to support the development of a critical minerals supply chain outside of China. The countries said they would develop an agreement about what steps they will take and explore ways to expand the effort to include additional like-minded nations.Also Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House approved a bill to accelerate mining on federal land despite objections from Democrats and conservation groups that it amounted to a blank check to foreign-owned mining corporations.The bill, which next heads to the Senate, would codify Trump’s executive orders to boost domestic mining and processing of minerals important to energy, defense and other applications.
Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
Didi Tang, Josh Funk and Matthew Lee, Associated Press
AI coding agents are suddenly everywhere, the latest thing Silicon Valley cannot stop talking about. From venture-backed startups to splashy big tech keynotes, the promise sounds the same: just describe what you want, and the AI will build it for you. It is a seductive idea, especially in a world where software projects are notorious for moving slowly. But inside large companies, that vision is already starting to unravel.
What looks impressive in a demo often falls apart in the real world. As soon as AI-generated code runs into actual enterprise data, the problems show up. Schemas clash, governance breaks down, and a supposed breakthrough can quickly turn into a liability.
Coding agents tend to break down when theyre introduced to complex enterprise constraints like regulated data, fine-grained access controls, and audit requirements, Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake, tells Fast Company.
He says most coding agents are built for speed and independence in open environments, not for reliability inside tightly governed systems. As a result, they often assume they can access anything, break down when controls are strict, and cannot clearly explain why they ran a certain query or touched a specific dataset.
This gap between what AI can write and what it actually understands is becoming one of the most expensive problems in enterprise AI. Gartner predicts that 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027 because they lack proper governance, and only 5% of custom enterprise AI tools will ever make it into production.
Ramaswamy says the core issue in enterprise AI is writing functional code in a way that is secure, transparent, and compliant from the start. He argues that companies need to put trust, accuracy, and accountability ahead of unchecked automation, and that most coding agents today sit outside existing data governance systems instead of being built into them.
Snowflakes answer is Cortex Code, a data-native AI coding agent designed to work directly inside governed enterprise data, not as a layer sitting on top of it. It comes alongside with a newly announced $200 million partnership with OpenAI. Together, they reflect a contrarian bet that the real battle for enterprise AI will be won at the data layer.
AI Coding Agents Dont Understand Enterprise Context
Most AI coding agents are great at writing code on their own, but they struggle once that code has to run inside a real company. Large organizations live with constant constraints, from security rules and uptime demands to shared business logic that evolves over time. Agents trained mostly on public code and synthetic examples rarely absorb those realities, and the disconnect shows up almost right away.
Enterprise data also lives across data warehouses, third-party platforms, and legacy systems, and it carries layers of organizational meaning with it. Most coding agents treat that data like any other dataset, instead of the most tightly regulated asset a company has. The fallout shows up fast in production. Some enterprises say they spend weeks cleaning up AI-generated code that ignores internal data standards.
In production, agents most often fail due to poor data integration, lax identity and security permissions, and hallucination for complex code workflows,” says Arun Chandrasekaran, vice president and analyst at Gartner. “Vendors often underestimate the gap because they assume that enterprises have centralized data and codified access policies, which isnt true in most large enterprises.
Chandrasekaran adds that AI agents are embedded into developer IDEs without grounding in enterprise system semantics, which is the key reason why this issue persists. This can result in trust erosion and security exposure,” he says, “which can hinder production.
According to a CodeRabbit study, AI-generated code introduces 1.7 times more issues than human-written code, including 75% more logic errors and up to twice the security vulnerabilities, conflicting with enterprise standards. Likewise, another study found that 45% of AI-generated code samples fail security tests, posing critical web application security risks.
Ramaswamy says the most immediate consequence is slowed development. In some cases, teams quietly abandon agents altogether after early pilots fail governance checks. Even when the consequences are minor in nature, the perception of risk alone can cause organizations to roll back or freeze AI initiatives until stronger guardrails are in place, he says.
According to Anahita Tafvizi, Snowflakes chief data analytics officer, this pattern points to a deeper design problem: Many coding agents can generate technically correct code, but they do not understand how business rules are applied, how access controls limit what is allowed, or how audit requirements determine whether a system can actually be trusted once it goes live.
Meaningful enterprise innovation depends on context, she says. When an agent understands not just how to write code, but why certain controls exist and how decisions are governed, teams can build with confidence.
Snowflakes Thesis: Context Beats Cleverness
Snowflakes latest product, Cortex Code, is a data-native AI coding agent built directly into its governed data platform, rather than layered on top of it. That distinction matters. Instead of trying to guess enterprise rules from prompts, Cortex Code is designed with built-in awareness of schemas and operational constraints. The company says the goal is to make AI follow the same rules people already do.
Ramaswamy says Cortex Code is not just about producing code faster than tools like Claude Code, but about understanding the realities of enterprise environments. Its value, he argues, comes from what he calls its deep awareness of the context and constraints that shape how large organizations operate, which allows a much wider range of employees to build solutions that are safe and reliable, even without advanced technical skills.
Snowflake’s $200 million partnership with OpenAI further reinforces its architectural bet. Its a direct, first-party relationship that allows OpenAIs models to operate natively inside Snowflake, on top of enterprise data, Ramaswamy says. By bringing OpenAIs frontier model capabilities into Snowflake, we remove the operational friction of stitching together disparate tools and significantly lower the barrier to deploying advanced AI responsibly.
An Inflection Point or a Higher Bar?
Industry experts say that while Snowflake is making a big bet on a data-first approach with Cortex Code, it is far from alone. Rivals such as Databricks, Google BigQuery, and AWS Redshift are moving in the same direction, putting governance and auditability ahead of raw speed.
Experts say Snowflakes main point of differentiation is how closely Cortex Code is tied to production data. As Doug Gourlay, CEO of data stoage company Qumulo, puts it, most companies have grafted increasingly capable agents onto developer tools and then tried to manage risk after the fact. Snowflake, he says, is flipping that model by treating governance and data semantics as the foundation on which AI operates. (While rivals excel in niche strengths like machine learning flexibility or platform scale, Cortex Code is built for teams that need governed, low-maintenance AI coding directly on live enterprise data.)
Over time, this approach is likely to become table stakes. Enterprises will increasingly view AI that operates outside their governed data fabric as an unacceptable risk, regardless of how impressive its capabilities appear in isolation, says Gourlay.
Coding tools such as Anthropics Claude Code, for instance, are largely optimized for developer-centric workflows, emphasizing controls like explicit change approvals and tight IDE integrations. Claude Code, in practice, requires being combined with additional governance layers or secure platforms for enterprise compliance. Snowflake and Anthropic recently partnered to enable the direct integration of Claude models into Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex AI, allowing its models to run inside Snowflakes governed data environment.
Snowflake says its edge comes from working directly with enterprise metadata and semantic context. The company is betting that as organizations grow more cautious, they will turn away from agents that appear powerful but act unpredictably. If that proves true, those who ignore data context may define todays hype, while those who embrace it will shape what comes next.
What can viewers expect from Bad Bunny’s highly anticipated Super Bowl halftime performance? So far, all we know is that he’s expected to perform solely in Spanish, bringing Latin identity at the center of America’s most-watched television event.But Bad Bunny could reveal more details Thursday in San Francisco when the Grammy winner speaks ahead of Sunday’s game.Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and Ebro Darden will interview Bad Bunny and pregame performers beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday. The Puerto Rican superstar has become one of the world’s most streamed artists with albums such as “Un Verano Sin Ti” and “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which won album of year at Grammys Sunday night. It’s the first time an all Spanish-language album has taken home the top prize.Last year, Bad Bunny’s historic Puerto Rico residency drew more than half a million fans.Apple Music will broadcast the interview on its platform and social media sites like YouTube and Facebook.The pregame media session might reveal some details about the performance, but headliners often keep a few secrets. Rihanna sure did, waiting until her Super Bowl performance in 2023 to reveal she was pregnant with her second child.The Super Bowl will be held Sunday at the Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, with the Seattle Seahawks facing off against the New England Patriots.
Who else is performing at the Super Bowl?
The Super Bowl pregame show will open with several standout performers in Northern California: Charlie Puth will hit the stage to sing the national anthem, Brandi Carlile will take on “America the Beautiful” and Coco Jones will sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”The national anthem and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” will be performed by deaf performing artist Fred Beam in American Sign Language. Julian Ortiz will sign “America the Beautiful.”Before the game, Green Day will play a set to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Super Bowl. The band, which has its roots in the Bay Area, plans to “Get loud!” according to lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong.In a historic first, the halftime show will include a multilingual signing program featuring Puerto Rican Sign Language, led by interpreter Celimar Rivera Cosme. All signed performances for the pregame and halftime shows will be presented in collaboration with Alexis Kashar of LOVE SIGN and Howard Rosenblum of Deaf Equality.
For more on the Super Bowl, visit https://apnews.com/hub/super-bowl
Jonathan Landrum Jr., AP Entertainment Writer
Its a hard time to be an XRP investor. The token, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has been on a downward trajectory for nearly half a year. And this week, things have gotten much worse. Heres what you need to know about XRP and the beating the coin is taking.
Whats happened?
The price of XRP is getting pummeled today. In the last 24 hours, the tokens value has plunged nearly 14.5% as of the time of this writing, falling from above $1.50 per coin to around $1.36.
And thats just the most recent price shock for the coin. Looking back over the past month, XRP is down more than a staggering 41%, according to Yahoo Finance data. On January 5, the coin was trading as high as $2.41.
Even more astounding: XPR topped $3.60 a coin in July 2025, meaning it’s now down more than 60% from its summer high.
For XRP investors, the tokens fall over the past six months is difficult to stomach. Many had high hopes for the rising cryptocurrency star, especially after Donald Trump entered the White House for a second term last January, leading an administration seen as very crypto-friendly.
Why is XRP falling?
It’s important to note that XRP is not the only token that has been hit hard in the past several months. Most major cryptocurrencies are on the decline as of late, including Bitcoin (down nearly 25% in the past month), Ethereum (down 35%), and BNB (down 25%).
As Fast Company previously reported, two main factors are driving the fall of cryptocurrencies this year. The first is the renewed strength of the U.S. dollar (USD). At the end of last month, President Trump announced his pick for the new chair of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh. The news sent the U.S. dollar surging.
But because cryptocurrencies are generally priced in U.S. dollars, a stronger dollar means more tokens can be bought with the same amount of fiat currency, making them appear cheaper and thus lessening their value.
The rising dollar has led to a selloff in some cryptocurrencies as investors try to protect their digital gains before they fall further.
And then there is the seemingly unending geopolitical uncertainty rocking the world, most of it spurred on by Trump himself. First it was Americas attack on Venezuela, then it was Trumps threats to take Greenland from Americas allies by force, and now its the possibility of military strikes on Iran.
All this geopolitical uncertainty breeds risk, and increased risk typically sends investors into safe-haven assets: typically gold or U.S. dollars. Given that cryptocurrencies are historically highly volatile, the digital coins are seen as anything but a safe haven.
Ripple comments anger XRP ardents
Given that XRP is the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, its no surprise the digital token has a large number of ardent supporters behind it. Recently, some of those supporters were angered by comments made by David Schwartz, CTO emeritus of Ripple.
Ripple is a private company that offers software to financial institutions that facilitate international money transfers. Ripple is also the largest owner of XRP tokens in the world.
This connection is one of the reasons why some supporters of XRP may have been angered by online comments that Schwartz had made earlier this month. As noted by Benzinga, Schwartz said he thought it was unlikely XRP would ever hit the $50 to $100 price range. But Schwartz noted that his past predictions had been wrong before.
While Schwartzs comments dont seem to be a big driver of XRPs price in either direction, they may have contributed to fears that astronomical gains for the coin are out of reach for the foreseeable future.
Indeed, as CoinDesk reports, XRP is now at its lowest level since October 2024wiping out all the gains it had achieved after the crypto-friendly Trump administration returned to office. And now there are fears that the token may fall to the $1 mark if its trajectory does not change course.
Whether that actually happens remains to be seen.
On most golf courses, silence is sacred. At the WM Phoenix Opens 16th hole, noise is the point.
Every year, tens of thousands of fans pack into a stadium-like enclosure at TPC Scottsdale, turning a short par 3 into one of the most recognizableand rowdiestsettings in sports. Missed putts are booed. Holes in one trigger cascades of beer. The atmosphere is closer to a college football rivalry than a PGA Tour stop.
But as iconic as the 16th hole has become, its future wasnt guaranteed by tradition alone. Behind the spectacle, the structure itself had reached a limitarchitecturally, operationally, and environmentally.
We made the decision that that was as good as that structure was going to get, says Jason Eisenberg, the 2026 tournament chairman. If we want to continue to have an amazing fan experience, if we want fans to come back and see something new, we were going to have to elevate that experience.
That realization sparked a full redesign of the 16th holeone that goes far beyond aesthetics. Whats emerging ahead of the 2026 tournament is a case study in how physical design, systems design, and cultural design can align to quietly change how large-scale events are built and run.
[Rendering: courtesy WM Phoenix Open]
The result isnt just a louder or flashier venue. Its a reusable, modular structure designed to last decades, embedded within one of the worlds largest certified zero-waste sporting eventsand supported by a culture that treats experimentation as essential, not optional.
TPC Scottsdale is a publicly owned course, operated by the City of Scottsdale and host to the Phoenix Open for decades. Its ownership structureand the regulatory constraints that come with itmeans that even the tournaments most iconic spaces must be built to appear and disappear each year.
[Image: courtesy WM Phoenix Open]
Design Change
Like every structure on the PGA Tour, the 16th hole at the WM Phoenix Open is built from scratch each year and dismantled once the tournament ends. What makes it unusual isnt that its rebuilt annually, but that it has reached the practical limits of how much a temporary structure can evolve without fundamentally changing how its designed.
Every year, we would add to the 16th hole, says Danny Ellis, senior vice president of sales and business development at InProduction, the company that has built the structure for nearly three decades. Every year it would take on another section, another layer. Eventually, we reached a point where the footprint couldnt expand anymore.
[Rendering: courtesy WM Phoenix Open]
By 2020, the grandstand had reached three levels wrapping fully around the hole. The Thunderbirds, who operate the tournament, were satisfied with its location and scale. What wasnt sustainable was how it was built. The structure relied heavily on timber and cut plywood, requiring all three levels to be recut, modified, and refinished every yeara process that was increasingly misaligned with both modern fan expectation and the tournaments zero-waste ambitions.
Across the PGA Tour, temporary construction is the norm. Each week, courses are outfitted with general-admission grandstands, hospitality structures, media centers, broadcast towers, volunteer headquarters, and fan walkways, all designed to exist for a single event. A typical Tour stop might involve roughly 200,000 square feet of temporary flooring spread across an entire course. At most tournaments, those elements are distributed across multiple holes; at the WM Phoenix Open, they are concentrated, layered, and intensified within a single one.
From disposable to reusable
The 16th hole alone doubles that footprint. With approximately 400,000 square feet of flooring contained within a single hole, it operates less like a golf installation and more like a stadium buildrebuilt annually, but engineered for one of the most densely packed fan environments in sports. By both scale and construction method, the 16th hole now occupies a category of its ownwithout direct analogue on the PGA Tour or at any other sporting event worldwide.
The redesign addresses that mismatch by shifting from disposable construction to modular reuse. Levels two and three have been rebuilt using fully modular decking systems encased in metal frames, eliminating the need for annual cutting on two-thirds of the structure. Only the first level still relies on plywood, reducing constructionrelated waste at the 16th hole by roughly two-thirds compared to previous builds.
Designing for reuse also changed the structures internal logic. Long-span engineering allows for wider interior spaces, fewer vertical supports, and cleaner sight linessubtle changes that have an outsized impact on how fans move through and experience the space.
Robert MacIntyre of Scotland throws items to fans in the stands on the 16th hole during the third round 2025 tournament. [Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images]
The spans we created inside literally took out every other leg in the structure, Ellis says. Before, we had a support every 10 feet. Now, its every 20 feet.
[Image: courtesy WM Phoenix Open]
The materials themselves reflect a shift toward permanence without permanence. The structure is built from galvanized steel and aluminum, and incorporates I-beams, bar joists, and glass guardrailscomponents typically associated with fixed buildings rather than temporary events.
Reducing material use
Dismantling and load-out takes roughly eight weeks, after which the modular components will be stored locally at InProductions facility in Goodyear, Arizona. Because much of the structure is custom-sized for the 16th hole, about 20% of the decks and beams will be redeployed to other events, while the remaining components will be reserved for annual assembly. Across InProductions broader inventory, those same modular systems will be reused across roughly 300 events each year, allowing materials to circulate continuously rather than being rebuilt from scratch.
For InProduction, aligning with the tournaments sustainability requirements was a core design constraint. As Ellis explains, the shift to a fully reusable structure was driven in part by a long-running effort to reduce material usage, particularly wood, scrim, and paint that previously had to be recycled, donated, or discarded after each event. From the outset, the goal was to cut construction-related material use. While the cassette flooring system required a higher upfront investment than traditional lumber, Ellis says it delivers long-term savings while eliminating painting and significantly reducing scrim usage, bringing the rebuild into closer alignment with the tournaments zero-waste strategy.
This is a different interpretation of temporary architecture: one that still appears overnight and disappears just as quickly, but behaves more like infrastructure than spectacle. In doing so, the 16th hole becomes less a one-off anomaly and more a case study in how large-scale events can rethink durability, waste, and experience.
[Image: courtesy WM Phoenix Open]
Designing for Experience
The new structure firmly aligns with and reflects the Phoenix Opens long-standing zero-waste ambitions.
For Tara Hemmer, chief sustainability officer at WM, that significance of the redesign lies less in any single material choice than in how the structure fits into a broader closed-loop system. (Waste Management became the named sponsor of the Phoenix Open in 2010 and rebranded to WM in 2022.)
Reimagining the construction of the 16th hole and making it modular and completely reusable really speaks to the heart of what it means to be a zero-waste event, Hemmer says. This is just another step in that evolution.
The WM Phoenix Open officially became a zero-waste event in 2013, but Hemmer is quick to point out that it didnt start with a playbook.
When we decided to try this, we had no idea how to get to a 100% zero-waste event, she says. So we had to try a lot of different things.
What emerged is a system designed across time, not just space. The process begins months before the tournament, immediately after the previous one ends. The minute the tournament ends, Hemmer and her team are already working on matters for the following years tournament.
Aligning with vendors
WM works directly with vendors, specifying which materials can and cannot be used. We go to them and say, These are the types of materials that you can and cant use'” Hemmer explains. Those are selected by the WM team, embedded by the WM team.
Vendors can propose alternatives, but only if those materials fit into the broader system. Sometimes we take those and say, That might be a best practice for all of our vendors, she says. The goal is simple but demanding: How can each item that comes onto the course be reused, donated, or recycled.
That lifecycle thinking extends into unexpected areas.
One example Im really proud of on 16 is beverages, Hemmer says. There are a lot of cold beverages, kept cold by ice. Ice melts, and that water has to go somewhere.
Instead of discharging it, WM designed a reuse loop. Several years ago, someone came up with the idea: Can we take that water as its melting and use it as gray water for our portable toilets?, said Hemmer. Thats a great example of design thinking that happens throughout the year.
The WM Green Scene
At the Phoenix Open, there are no trash binsonly compost and recycling. The success of that approach depends as much on psychology as infrastructure.
We have to make things exciting but also easy,” Hemmer says. Especially on 16, which tends to be very crowded.
Signage, bin placement, and staff engagement are carefully designed to reduce contamination. But the ambition goes further. WM spends a lot of time in researching how fans take their messaging home, and apply it.
Compost and recycling bins at the 2024 edition. [Photo: Ben Jared/PGA TOUR/Getty]
The WM Green Scene, an interactive fan zone, functions as the tournaments sustainability classroom. Staffed by WM employee volunteers, the space uses golf-themed games and hands-on demonstrations to teach fans how to identify recyclable and compostable materials. In past years, visitors chipped items resembling cans, bottles, and food waste into the correct bins. This year, the space will also feature a three-dimensional WM Phoenix Open logo that allows fans to recycle bottles and cans directly. Free hydration stations encourage reusable bottles, while the tournaments 50/50 raffles tie sustainability engagement to charitable giving.
Weve learned so much by watching how fans interact, Hemmer says. And yes, weve also learned how many beverage containers can be consumed in a short period of time.
Behavior-led system design
Weve all seen those cup snakes [collection of stacked cups] going up the 16th hole, Hemmer says. Thats important because we need to think through what fans are going to do and how we get those materials back.
On the 16th hole, behavior is part of the system design. All cold beverages cups used on course are recyclable. WM anticipates misplacement, cup snakes, and even thrown cups, collecting materials from the course and manually sorting every bag to ensure proper processing.
[Photo: Ben Jared/PGA TOUR/Getty]
Why Sports Are the Perfect Test Lab
Sporting events offer a rare advantage for experiments such as the modular system: controlled chaos.
These events are remote, Ellis says. They always need infrastructure built temporarilyon a racetrack or a golf course. The level of detail increases every year.
Hemmer agrees. The Phoenix Open is a closed event across several hundred acres, she says. We can test things at the 16th hole that we test differently at the 12th hole and see what works.
The stakes are high, but so is the payoff. All of this depends on leadership willing to push past comfort zones.
The WM Phoenix Open is the WM Phoenix Open because we take chances, Eisenberg says. We do things that not just other golf tournaments, but most other events dont do.
Min Woo Lee of Australia and Akshay Bhatia, 2025. [Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images]
Nearly a century of community commitment
That confidence comes from trust that has been built over 90 years of community involvement. We have faith that if we build something and say its going to be great, our fans will support us, he says.
The Thunderbirds rotating leadership structure reinforces that mindset. There is no dictator sitting on the throne for 10 years, Eisenberg says. Everybody comes in with fresh ideas, each trying to make it better.
That culture extends beyond spectacle. Eisenberg points to accessibility improvements and the addition of a family care center as examples of design thats easy to overlook but deeply intentional.
I hope they dont feel any burden getting in and out, he says of fan accessibility. I hope it just runs in the background.
When asked what other tournaments would struggle to replicate, Eisenberg is blunt. Its hard to replicate the time weve invested, he says. We have 90 years of goodwill in our community. But he also believes the responsibility is clear. If we can do this at our size and scale, no event has an excuse.
This weekend, fans will pack into the 16th hole once again. Theyll cheer, boo, and raise their cups skyward. What they likely wont notice is the modular decks beneath their feet, the materials already destined for reuse, or the systems designed months earlier to make the experience feel effortless. I hope they walk away thinking it was the most incredible temporary structure theyve ever been in, Eisenberg says. And the best sporting event theyve ever attended.
The Super Bowl is mere days away and chances are youve seen most of the ads already. Right?
Lets rewind for a 10-second Super Bowl ad history lesson that goes like this: In 2011, Volkswagen decided to drop its full adcalled The Forceonline the Wednesday before the Super Bowl. This was brand marketer blasphemy! But it worked. Ever since, more and more brands began dropping ads earlier and earlier, which then evolved into creating teasers for the ads to run even earlier.
If youre confused as to why this happens, dont sweat it, even Christopher Walken wasnt sure in BMWs 2024 Super Bowl teaser.
Super Bowl commercials are no longer just Super Bowl commercials. They are Super Bowl campaigns that run for weeks before and after the game. Now, say it in your best Walken voice, Why would they do that?
So much more than $8M
The last time the Patriots and Seahawks met in the Super Bowl in 2015, 30 seconds of commercial time on NBC went for about $4.4 million. This year, a 30-second spot averaged $8 million, plus another $8 million in required spend for other NBC sports broadcasting and the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, according to Ad Age. That price tag could go as high as $10 million, when you consider expanding that to Peacock and Telemundo. And thats all before you spend a dime on actually making the ad.
With this much at stake, brands are investing even more to extend the life of their Super Bowl ads. Which is why we start hearing about them in early to mid-January.
Given the sheer size and scale of the Super Bowl season, we decided to do a power-rankings list to break down the five brands we believe have the most momentum heading into the game.
1. Budweiser
Created by BBDO New York, “American Icons” traces the friendship and bond between a foal and an eaglet. I mean, come on. Buds done it before with a puppy in 2014, so why not adapt the audience-winning concept to celebrate Buds 150th (horse!) and Americas 250th (eagle!) anniversaries?
Creative data firm Daivid analyzed early-release Super Bowl commercials to identify those that are most likely to resonate with consumers. This spot topped its pregame rankings after generating intense positive emotions among 54% of viewers11% higher than the U.S. average. It was also 155% more likely than the average ad to evoke intense nostalgia, and nearly twice as likely to generate strong feelings of warmth (+99%). Per Daivids analysis, the spot drove elevated feelings of adoration for its use of animal characters (+80%) and joy (+71%)and maintained above-average attention throughout.
Budweiser consistently puts out top-rated ads, from comedy with the frogs and Wassup to all the variations on heartwarming puppies, dogs, and horses. Its so iconic, even Jason Kelces Garage Beer made a funny Clydesdales spoof for this years game.
Here Bud is going full Murica, but manages to thread the nonpartisan needle to find a sweet spot that everyone can enjoy. Just dont be surprised if the guy next to you spontaneously holds his light in the air.
2. Pepsi
Back in 1995, Pepsi dropped an iconic Super Bowl ad in which a Coke delivery truck driver takes an impromptu Pepsi Challenge in a diner.
Many brands shy away from directly challenging their biggest rivals, especially on such a big ad stage, for fear of giving any oxygen to another brand. But Pepsi famously rode the Pepsi Challenge to success, constantly trolling Coca-Cola and scoring an impressive eight spots in the USA Today Ad Meters 10 Best Super Bowl Ads of the 1990s.
Here, the brand goes back to the well and puts Cokes famous polar bear mascot in the delivery truck drivers roleanother symbol of Coke choosing Pepsi.
The simplicity may seem like a waste of Taika Waititis talents, but its going to score big with Super Bowl audiences. According to the Daivid survey, the spot is 56% more likely to make viewers laugh than the average ad, and most likely to make viewers’ mouths water.
3. Rocket and Redfin
Heres an idea: Lets get one of the biggest pop stars on the planet to reimagine a childhood classic. Right then and there you have a potential winner. Thats exactly what Rocket Mortgage and Redfins teaser featuring behind-the-scenes footage of Lady Gaga singing Fred Rogerss Wont You Be My Neighbor? does.
This looks like it might be one of those vibe-shift adsthe one people shush the party for because they want to hear it.
The Daivid data backs this up, reporting it generated the most intense positive emotions of any teaser or ull Super Bowl ad so far.
4. State Farm
Just a Super Bowl shopping list of good stuff here: funny? Danny McBride and Keegan-Michael Key. (Check.) Celebrity? Hailee Steinfeld and Katseye. (Check.) Nostalgic sing-along? Bon Jovi remix. (Check.) And the teasers with McBride and Key doing full ads for Halfway There Insurance are also a nice touch.
This continues State Farms long-running formula for its Super Bowl ad campaigns. In 2024, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger making the brands tagline his own with “Like a Good Neighbaaa. Last year, it was Jason Bateman becoming a less-than-ideal version of Batman. (The brand actually pulled that spot out of the big game due to sensitivities around the Los Angeles wildfires, but ran it a month later for March Madness.)
CMO Kristyn Cook told me the strategy has been working. Insurance is very complex, and we’re able to break it down in a way that’s humorous enough for people to hopefully pay attention and get them thinking about it, she says. Do I have the right coverage? Are people going to be there when I need them? Just trying to create those opportunities for people to think about it and then drive action. It’s a formula for us, but it’s a big stage and we want to do it really well with the standards that we have that are very high.
5. Novartis
Im not saying this spot involves a poop joke, but its pretty close. And its not going full Raisin Bran, but were in the vicinity. Directed by Eric Wareheim, Relax Your Tight End stars celebrated NFL tight ends and a playful double entendre for prostate cancer screening awareness.
Set to Enyas Only Time (shout-out to Volvo and Van Damme), getting big tough guys talking about an uncomfortable health issue is important. Showing them all relaxing their buns when they hear its just a blood test will definitely clinch (clench?) some major attention.
According to Daivid, so far the campaign has generated intense positive emotions among 52.6% of viewers8% higher than the U.S. norm.
