#26013 China's empty spacecraft & Germany’s EV subsidies are back

The Efficiency Leap in Photovoltaics

Perovskite solar cells have demonstrated an unprecedented efficiency jump from 3.8% in 2009 to over 33% in tandem configurations in 2023, challenging the decades-long dominance of silicon. This rapid evolution in material science promises to significantly lower manufacturing costs and increase the viability of solar energy in low-light environments, reshaping global energy infrastructure strategies.

If you had “AI safety” on your 2026 bingo card, you can finally mark a square, though maybe not for the reasons we hoped. Elon Musk’s xAI is currently in the doghouse, forced to bar its Grok bot from editing images of real people after it went a bit too "wild west" with explicit deepfakes. Meanwhile, Anthropic is leaning into the chaos by expanding its "Labs" to let users tinker with experimental Claude features, because who doesn’t love a high-stakes science fair? Over at Apple, the Siri-Gemini marriage is getting cozy, with rumors swirling that our favorite digital assistant will soon be able to write and save research notes directly to your iPhone, saving us the grueling labor of... copy-pasting. And if you’re a Samsung fan, you might want to hold your breath: the new Galaxy Z TriFold is already making headlines for spontaneous screen failures. One owner reported a "death line" of pixels after just a month. It turns out that folding your phone like a fancy napkin still has its aerodynamic challenges.

Gold is officially the "cool kid" of the 2026 economy, hitting a jaw-dropping all-time high of over $4,644 per ounce this week. Investors are clearly looking for something shiny to hold onto while the rest of the market acts like a toddler on a sugar crash. Over in the crypto corner, Bitcoin is flirting with six figures like a nervous prom date, while MicroStrategy continues its quest to own every coin in existence by scooping up another $1.25 billion worth. On the corporate side, TSMC is laughing all the way to the bank with a 35% profit jump, proving that as long as we’re obsessed with AI, they’re the ones selling the shovels in this digital gold mine. Oh, and keep an eye on Disney; they just "pocketed" $2.2 billion by filming outside the U.S., which is one way to handle the budget for the next eighteen Marvel sequels.

Humanity might actually be okay after all, or at least our medicine cabinets will be. Researchers are hailing a "major breakthrough" in non-addictive pain relief this week, with a new class of drugs that blocks pain signals in the peripheral nervous system without messing with your brain or heart. It’s the first real innovation in the field in two decades, and it could finally give us a way to kick opioids to the curb. Up in the stars, the International Space Station is doubling as a viral laboratory; scientists found that viruses sent to space evolve in "surprising ways" in microgravity, which sounds like the start of a sci-fi thriller but is actually helping us understand how to keep future Mars colonists healthy. Plus, the James Webb Space Telescope got a literal "vision correction" thanks to some clever AI software developed by PhD students.

Geopolitics is currently a high-stakes game of "Real Estate Tycoon" as the U.S. continues its very public (and very awkward) attempt to acquire Greenland. Denmark and France aren't exactly rolling out the red carpet, with France announcing a new consulate in Greenland specifically to signal their rejection of the "coercive" American interest. Back in the States, the Trump administration is keeping everyone on their toes by suspending immigrant visa processing for 75 countries, sparking protests and a flurry of judicial blocks.

On a lighter, and significantly weirder note, a cow named Veronika in southern Austria has stunned the scientific community by becoming the first documented case of consistent tool use in cattle. She’s been using objects to swat away bothersome horseflies, officially moving "cow intelligence" up a few rungs on the ladder. If the cows start organizing, we’re in real trouble.

Our Money, Our Risk, Real Investment, No Advice

Geopolitics Crashes the Party and Everyone’s Checking Their Exits

A $1000 bet on a global basket a week ago would have shrunk to roughly $980, which you could still spend on a nice dinner to forget about your portfolio.

Your American, European, and Indian stocks provided a synchronized slide, with all three markets catching a case of the jitters over renewed US-Europe trade tensions, specifically the bizarre headlines around "Greenland tariffs." The S&P 500 and Europe's Stoxx 600 both gave up around 1.5% as investors decided that cash looked a lot prettier than potential trade war exposure. Your Indian slice (Nifty 50) followed suit, dipping nearly 2% as foreign funds packed their bags.

Meanwhile, your Bitcoin slice acted like a moody teenager who got grounded right before the big dance. After flirting with $96k last week, it sulked its way down to the $92k level, shedding nearly 4% of its value in a "risk-off" tantrum. It was not a jackpot, but rather a reminder that when the geopolitical temperature rises, speculative assets are the first to start sweating.

Fund Summary: The global market is currently like a family reunion where an old argument just resurfaced: the food is still on the table, but everyone has stopped eating and is awkwardly staring at their phones.

Germany just dropped a new €3 billion EV subsidy package to jumpstart its stalling electric car market. The program applies retroactively to January 1, 2026, and offers buyers between €1,500 and €6,000 depending on income and family size.

The big twist? Unlike France or the US, Germany isn’t blocking Chinese automakers. If the car meets the specs, it gets the cash, regardless of where it was built. The government argues they don’t see a "major influx" of Chinese cars yet, so they’re keeping the market wide open.

My Take: It is genuinely wild to watch Germany hand out cash that will partly fund its own auto industry's biggest competitors. While the rest of the Western world is busy building tariff walls and checking birth certificates for batteries, Berlin is basically saying, "If it plugs in, we’ll pay for it."

It’s a bold gamble. They’re betting that German engineering can survive a fair fight if the price tag is lowered for everyone. Or, they’re just so desperate to get EV numbers up that they don’t care if your new car comes from Wolfsburg or Shenzhen, as long as you buy one.

Why It Matters: This is a massive win for brands like BYD and MG, who now have a level playing field in Europe’s largest car market. For German consumers, it means cheaper cars immediately. For Volkswagen and friends, the pressure is officially on, they can’t rely on protectionism here; they actually have to compete on price and tech.

China just launched the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft to its Tiangong space station with absolutely nobody inside. This was not a mistake. The previous return capsule, Shenzhou 20, took a hit from space debris that cracked a window. Since re-entering the atmosphere with a compromised window is a suicide mission, the crew was effectively stranded without a safe "lifeboat." China fast-tracked the next mission and sent it up empty to serve as their new emergency ride home. It even carried repair gear to try and fix the damaged ship in orbit.

My Take: It is basically the orbital equivalent of ordering a replacement Uber because your first driver got a flat tire. Except this spare tire costs a fortune and requires a rocket launch. What is actually interesting here is the transparency. Beijing usually treats its space program like a state secret until the mission is a guaranteed success. Admitting to a "serious problem" and live-streaming the fix is a massive shift in confidence. It shows they are comfortable enough to let the world watch them handle a crisis.

Why It Matters: This highlights the absolute nightmare that is space junk. We are talking about debris the size of a nut or bolt grounding a major mission. It also proves China’s space program has matured enough to handle "bad days" with the same safety protocols as the ISS. If you are going to run a permanent station, you need a backup plan for when things break. This was that backup plan in action.

Mistral AI, the French startup currently valued around $14 billion, is making a bold claim. CEO Arthur Mensch recently told Business Insider that their biggest competitive edge over Silicon Valley isn’t smarter code or better chatbots. It is simply that they are not American.

Mensch argues that raw AI performance is plateauing and models are starting to look the same. So the new battleground isn't intelligence, it is trust. European governments and regulated industries are terrified of relying on US tech giants for their critical infrastructure. They want "sovereign AI", systems they own, control, and run locally without fear of a kill switch from Washington. Mistral is leaning hard into this, recently signing a deal with the French military to prove they are the safe, independent alternative to OpenAI.

My Take: This is a brilliant pivot. When you can’t out-spend Google or Microsoft on computing power, you beat them on politics.

For years, "European tech" was code for "slower and more regulated," but Mistral is flipping that script. They are betting that paranoia is a better sales channel than hype. And frankly, they are probably right. If you are a foreign government, do you really want your national secrets processed by a company that has to listen to the White House? Mistral is positioning itself as the Switzerland of AI, neutral, secure, and crucially, not looking over your shoulder. It is the ultimate counter-positioning play.

Why It Matters: This signals the start of the "Nationalist AI" era. We are moving away from a global standard where everyone uses the same US tools. Instead, we are heading toward a fractured map where regions build their own tech stacks to protect their sovereignty. If Mistral succeeds, it proves that AI will be multipolar, not a US monopoly. This opens the door for other regional champions in India, the Middle East, and Asia to reject Silicon Valley in favor of home-grown control.

On this day in 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the United States in a patient from Washington state, while simultaneously, global health officials publicly recognized the critical factor of human-to-human transmission.

In How to Make a Few Billion Dollars, serial entrepreneur Brad Jacobs provides a high-octane manual for massive wealth creation, arguing that extreme success requires "rearranging your brain" to see problems as assets rather than obstacles. Distilling lessons from founding seven multi-billion-dollar companies, Jacobs advocates for a ruthless focus on "string of pearls" acquisitions, leveraging exponential technology (specifically AI), and overpaying for outlier talent to build corporate "superorganisms."

His approach is unapologetically centered on shareholder value and "radical acceptance", a mental discipline used to cut losses quickly and double down on winning trends. It’s a punchy, tactical guide that swaps generic business platitudes for a concrete playbook on how to find and dominate the "bingo quadrant" of large, complex, and highly profitable deals.

IN OTHER NEWS

Netflix subscribers will be able to either pick a selection from a multiple-choice menu or rate someone’s performance on a scale of five stars. Votes can be cast using either a TV remote or the Netflix app.

This project targets one of heavy industry’s toughest problems: producing reliable steam without burning fossil fuels. The system is designed to turn surplus renewable electricity into round-the-clock industrial heat, cutting emissions while supporting a power grid increasingly dominated by wind and solar.

Chinese humanoid robotics developer UBTech Robotics said on Sunday that it has reached a new agreement with European aviation leader Airbus to supply robots for use inside aircraft manufacturing facilities.

Similarweb’s data shows that Threads had 141.5 million daily active users on iOS and Android as of January 7, 2026, after months of growth, while X has 125 million daily active users on mobile devices.

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