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Boom phases in the development of artificial intelligence, such as the victory of the chess computer Deep Blue over at the time world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1996 and 1997, have been around for decades. However, none have piqued the interest of investors and big tech companies as much as the current one. This wave of AI investment began with the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, a direct-to-consumer application based on the GPT language model. Critics see this type of artificial intelligence as little more than "stochastic parrots" that put together words and sentences according to statistical probabilities. AI evangelists, on the other hand, champion ChatGPT as the first big step towards a true "Artificial General Intelligence" that could exhibit the same cognitive abilities as a human. Companies and investors aren't afraid to spend big to accelerate this development. An analysis of CB Insights data shows that OpenAI was valued at $300 billion as of July 2025, having raised around $64 billion in capital through partnerships with Microsoft and other investments. This makes it the highest-valued AI unicorn by far. Big data analysis platform Databricks ranks second with a $62-billion valuation, while Anthropic, the company behind ChatGPT competitor Claude, is not far behind in third place, valued at $61.5 billion. Both have received funding approaching $20 billion. Together with Elon Musk's xAI, four AI companies were among the 10 highest-valued unicorns in the world as of the most current data. Another striking fact: Seven of the eight highest-valued AI companies are based in the U.S. The sole outlier is Celonis, a German company founded in 2011 in Munich, but very active in the United States as well. It grew with the help of partner-turned-competitor SAP and specializes in process mining, where AI and other tools are used to optimize company processes. Celonis is valued at $13 billion at funding of $2.4 billion. Another high performer is U.S. company Safe Superintelligence, valued at $30 billion despite funding of just $3 billion. Founded just one year ago by former OpenAI and Apple employees as well as AI researchers, it aims to create a superintelligent AI that is also exceptionally safe.

China saw a 10.7 percent drop in exports to the United States in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. According to customs data, this amounts to a decrease of around $25.7 billion. This drop is even with reports of firms stockpiling shipments from China in anticipation of higher tariffs. But as the following chart shows, Chinese exports to other countries and groups of nations have filled this gap. Exports to the ASEAN countries were up 13 percent when comparing H1 2024 and H1 2025, or $37.1 billion, while exports to the European Union increased by 6.9 percent (+$16.3 billion) and countries in Africa together increased by 21.4 percent (+$18.2 billion). Chinese exports also dropped significantly to Russia in this time period, down 8.7 percent ($-4.5 billion). According to the OEC, while it may seem that China’s exports to the U.S. have decreased at first glance, a deeper dive shows that the country has rerouted some of its goods through its value chains. "While finished goods may no longer be "Made in China," the parts that power them still are", OEC analysts explain. "China has been fueling new manufacturing hubs, such as Vietnam, Mexico, and India, that have become key sources of electronics for the United States.” However, even if other countries increase their trade still further with China, it would be a challenge to fully offset the potential losses should U.S. demand decrease significantly. In H1 2025, the U.S. remained one of China’s biggest trading partners, despite the 10.7 percent decline, accounting for $215.6 billion of Chinese exports (11.9 percent of total Chinese exports).

As the Northern Hemisphere’s summer holiday season is in full swing, millions of tourists are heading towards Southern Europe to spend their summer vacation on the pristine beaches and coastlines the region has to offer. With Covid-19 no longer a concern, countries like Spain, Italy and France are expecting a very busy, if not a record-breaking summer, as memories of empty beaches and travel restrictions are quickly fading. In fact, countries like Portugal, Greece, Spain and France – the latter still the number 1 destination for international tourists worldwide in 2024 – already surpassed pre-pandemic visitor numbers in 2023, thereby leading the way in the tourism sector’s impressive recovery from this unprecedented crisis. In 2024, an estimated 1.47 billion people traveled internationally, which is virtually the same as in 2019 and up 260 percent from 2020, the worst year in history for international tourism. As our chart shows, Europe is the world international tourist hotspot, with the region accounting for more than 50 percent of international tourist arrivals last year. Thanks to strong intra-European travel demand and many people's reservations to travel to the U.S. in the current political climate, the region is expecting another record-breaking summer, fueling overtourism concerns in some countries and regions. In cities like Lisbon and Barcelona, the proliferation of short-term rental apartments has driven up housing costs, pushing locals out of popular neighborhoods and threatening the very character that made these areas popular in the first place. Spain's Balearic and Canary Islands have also seen more and more protests against mass tourism in recent years, as local residents are vastly outnumbered by foreign visitors each year.

A little more than two years after NVIDIA first revealed how much it expects to profit from the rise of generative AI back in March 2023, the company's unprecedented growth spurt continues. On May 28, the company reported results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2026 and once again it managed to meet or exceed Wall Street's lofty expectations. In the three months ended April 27, 2025, Nvidia's revenue grew 69 percent from the same period a year earlier, reaching $44.1 billion compared to its own outlook of $43.0 billion plus/minus 2 percent and analyst expectations of $43.3 billion. Once again, Nvidia's data center business was at the heart of the company's blowout quarter, as it saw a 73-percent jump in revenue versus a year ago and accounted for almost 90 percent of total sales. Net income amounted to $18.8 billion in the quarter, which is more than four times the company's full-year profit for fiscal 2023, the last year without the impact of AI. For the current quarter, Nvidia expects revenue of $45 billion, which would be a 50-percent increase over the same quarter of last year, when the company's revenue had already surged to $30 billion. While some shareholders, spoiled by the past two years, may sniff at 50 percent growth, it's inevitable that growth rates come back to earth after a period of such extreme expansion. After all, Nvidia's revenue has grown more than sixfold over the past two years, meaning that it's virtually impossible to keep growing at the triple-digit rates seen in the early quarters of the company's revenue surge. "Global demand for Nvidia’s AI infrastructure is incredibly strong. AI inference token generation has surged tenfold in just one year, and as AI agents become mainstream, the demand for AI computing will accelerate," founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. "Countries around the world are recognizing AI as essential infrastructure - just like electricity and the internet - and Nvidia stands at the center of this profound transformation," he added.

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After briefly touching the milestone on Wednesday, NVIDIA officially became the first company to close at a valuation of $4 trillion on Thursday, leaving behind companies like Apple and Microsoft, who have been the trailblazers in terms of stock market records for the past few years, prior to Nvidia’s meteoric rise. Having had some ups and downs along the way, Nvidia’s share price is up more than 1,000 percent over the past two and a half years, as the AI gold rush has catapulted the chipmaker powering the transition to the AI-centric future into new spheres. As $4 trillion is hard to grasp, we put together a chart that adds a little perspective to that stunning number. Not only is Nvidia now worth more than Microsoft and Apple, the only other companies with a market cap above $3 trillion, but the company’s market cap exceeds the COMBINED value of Alphabet and Meta, two tech powerhouses in their own right. Looking further, Nvidia is worth more than Amazon, Walmart and Costco, the world’s three largest retailers, combined. Tesla, GM, Ford and Chrysler parent Stellantis have a combined market cap of $1.2 trillion, while Netflix, Disney and Comcast, some of the world’s largest media conglomerates, don’t even reach the $1 trillion mark. The same is true for Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Chipotle – all global household names whose joint market cap is less than 20 percent of Nvidia’s. All this goes to show how highly Wall Street values Nvidia’s future potential. While some skeptics view the company’s meteoric rise with suspicion, fearing that the AI hype is a dot-com style bubble that could burst at any time, Nvidia bulls think that the company will be at the heart of the golden AI age for years to come. In the end, only time will tell who is right, but so far Nvidia has surprised its skeptics time and time again, growing from a market cap of around $750 billion in May 2023 to $4 trillion at a breathtaking pace.

By 2030, space cooling - which includes air conditioning - is projected to require an additional 697 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA). This means it will account for 10 percent of the world's growing electricity demand. By contrast, electric vehicles will account for 13 percent of global growing electricity needs, while heating will account for seven percent. The IEA defines space cooling as any means of lowering indoor temperatures, including air conditioning. Looking ahead, the IEA states that by 2050, around two-thirds of the world’s households will own an air conditioning unit. But most AC units are powered by electricity that, in many parts of the world, is still generated from fossil fuels, therefore contributing to the planet's warming. The availability and affordability of air conditioning remains unequal, with richer households and countries tending to have far greater access to cooling technology. This exacerbates existing global inequalities, with the effects of climate change felt disproportionately by frontline communities who are likely not the ones benefiting from such cooling systems. The IEA states that investing in more energy-efficient AC units could cut future energy demand in half, reduce local air pollution and lower operating costs. Meanwhile, setting higher efficiency standards for cooling and greener building designs could reduce the need for new power plants and cut costs.

While the last few years have served up several reminders of the drawbacks and vulnerabilities of a globalized world - just think of the trade and supply chain disruptions caused by Covid-19, the Russia-Ukraine war or, more recently, the uncertainty over U.S. tariffs, it is widely undisputed that international trade is a net positive, as there is much to be gained from openness to foreign markets and investment. Over the past decades, the importance of international trade to the global economy has been growing, as globalization progressed and international corporations began sourcing materials and labor from all around the world. According to World Bank estimates, the global trade-to-GDP ratio, i.e. total trade volume as a share of gross domestic product, has grown from 39 percent in 1980 to 57 percent in 2024, with many high-income countries having an even higher ratio of trade to GDP. For India, the importance of international trade has also grown steadily over the past four and a half decades. After hovering between 12 and 15 percent throughout the 1980s, the country's trade-to-GDP ratio climbed from 15 to 27 percent between 1990 and 2000, exceeded 50 percent for the first time in 2008 and peaked at 56 percent in 2012. In 2024, India's trade-to-GDP ratio stood at 45 percent, ahead of China (37 percent) and the United States (25 percent), but far behind the EU (92 percent) and the global average (57 percent). While the trade-to-GDP ratio is a widely used indicator of the relative importance of international trade to the economy of a country, it does have its limitations. First of all, it makes no difference between imports and exports, as it takes into account total trade volume, i.e. the sum of both. That means, a country running a large trade deficit can have the same trade-to-GDP ratio as a country with a large trade surplus. Furthermore, and this is more relevant to India, large economies tend to have lower ratios than smaller ones, despite moving large trade volumes. Take the U.S. and China for example: while one is the world's largest importer and the other is the world's largest exporter, both countries have a relatively low trade-to-GDP ratio, due to the sheer size of their respective economies. Looking at similar-sized economies in terms of GDP, India's trade-to-GDP ratio is roughly the same as Japan's but significantly lower than Germany's - a country whose economy is highly reliant on exports.