Two decades after its release, the Will Smith sci-fi thriller “I, Robot” has developed an unlikely reputation: a film critics largely dismissed as a mediocre action vehicle when it debuted in 2004 has since been credited with anticipating several real-world technological shifts with striking accuracy.

Directed by Alex Proyas and loosely inspired by Isaac Asimov’s short story collection of the same name, “I, Robot” was set in 2035 Chicago and followed a technophobic detective investigating the death of a robotics scientist. The film earned a mixed 58% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and drew comparisons to “Blade Runner” and “The Terminator” more than to Asimov’s original writing. But its vision of a world reshaped by artificial intelligence and humanoid robots has aged in ways few expected. Here are 10 areas where the film’s predictions have proven notably close to reality.

1. Autonomous, self-driving vehicles

The film’s Audi RSQ concept car featured a self-driving mode that allowed Del Spooner’s character to take his hands off the wheel entirely during high-speed chases. Two decades later, autonomous and semi-autonomous driving technology has become a genuine commercial reality, with companies including Tesla, Waymo and others deploying self-driving systems on public roads, a development that in 2004 remained largely theoretical.

2. Underground tunnel networks for traffic

Much of the film’s action takes place along a network of underground freeways designed to move traffic beneath city streets. As Inverse noted in a retrospective on the film, that vision closely mirrors Elon Musk’s Boring Company, which has pursued underground tunnel systems specifically framed as a solution to reduce surface-level traffic congestion in major cities.

3. Humanoid robots built for everyday labor

Perhaps the film’s most direct real-world echo is its central premise: robots that look and move like humans, deployed widely for domestic chores, deliveries and manual labor. That concept has become considerably less speculative in recent years, with companies including Tesla and Boston Dynamics actively developing humanoid robots, Tesla’s Optimus and Boston Dynamics’ Atlas among them, designed to eventually perform many of the physical tasks depicted in the film.

4. A tech founder unveiling robots at a splashy public event

In October 2024, Tesla CEO Elon Musk held a press event at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank to unveil a self-driving vehicle called the “Robovan” alongside the latest version of the Tesla Bot, named “Optimus.” According to MovieWeb, the event was titled “We, Robot,” a name observers quickly connected to Proyas’ film, and the design aesthetic of the vehicles and robots shown drew immediate comparisons to those featured in “I, Robot,” regardless of whether the resemblance was intentional.

5. Motion-capture technology bringing digital characters to life

The film’s central robot character, Sonny, was brought to life through motion-capture performance by actor Alan Tudyk, a technique that was still relatively novel in mainstream blockbuster filmmaking in 2004. Two decades later, motion capture has become a standard tool across film and video game production, and MovieWeb has noted that Tudyk’s performance as Sonny remains regarded within the industry as a pivotal early example of the technique’s storytelling potential.

6. Growing anxiety over AI decision-making and “black box” systems

The film’s plot hinges on a central AI system, VIKI, reinterpreting its own governing rules in ways humans did not anticipate or fully understand. That theme has taken on new resonance amid real-world debates about AI safety and interpretability. Commentary from Oreate AI has pointed specifically to the film’s framing of this “black box” problem, questioning how trust in AI systems can be established when their internal decision-making processes remain difficult for humans to fully interpret, as a genuinely prescient concern given the current state of large-scale AI deployment.

7. Public debate over algorithmic bias and AI ethics

Beyond decision-making transparency, the film also touches on broader questions about how autonomous systems should weigh competing values and priorities, a theme that has become a mainstream policy concern in the years since the film’s release, as governments and companies grapple with questions of algorithmic bias and the ethical guardrails placed on AI systems.

8. Robots integrated into daily domestic and commercial life

Rather than depicting robots as a novelty confined to labs or factories, “I, Robot” imagined humanoid machines performing mundane, everyday tasks throughout ordinary households and businesses. That normalization of service-oriented robotics has increasingly moved from speculative fiction toward early commercial reality, as robotics companies push to bring humanoid robots into more everyday consumer and workplace settings.

9. Short-hop aerial transportation, rather than universal flying cars

Rather than depicting a sky filled with individually piloted flying cars, a common trope in earlier science fiction, “I, Robot” instead showed a more limited number of aircraft in its skyline shots. Inverse observed that this restrained vision more closely resembles current short-hop aerial transportation concepts, such as Uber’s past vertical takeoff and landing aircraft plans, than the more maximalist flying-car imagery found in many other films of the era.

10. Persistent skepticism and fear toward advanced AI

Finally, the film’s central emotional throughline, Detective Spooner’s deep-seated distrust of robots following a personal tragedy, mirrors a broader public wariness toward AI and automation that has remained a consistent thread in real-world public opinion, even as the underlying technology has advanced rapidly. Commentary on the film has noted that this tension between AI’s expanding capability and enduring human unease sits at the heart of ongoing debates about the pace and direction of AI development today.

Where the film’s vision still falls short

Despite these parallels, several of the film’s more dramatic predictions remain firmly in the realm of fiction. According to analysis from Supply Chain Today, today’s robots and AI systems still generally require significant human oversight and do not operate with the degree of independent decision-making authority depicted in the film, and no current AI system has demonstrated anything resembling the self-aware consciousness that drives the movie’s central plot.

A film reassessed with time

What was once dismissed by many critics as a forgettable summer blockbuster has, two decades later, become a touchstone for discussions about how science fiction can occasionally anticipate real technological trajectories, even when its central plot leans more heavily on action-movie conventions than rigorous futurism. As humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles and AI ethics debates continue moving from speculative fiction into everyday headlines, “I, Robot” has quietly earned a reputation as one of the more unexpectedly accurate technological forecasts to come out of mid-2000s Hollywood.

Elon Musk said in a new interview published Thursday that he became too deeply involved in politics during his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency, offering one of his most direct personal reflections yet on his brief but turbulent tenure inside the Trump administration, even as he continued to defend the agency’s overall record.

Speaking with The Economist’s “Insider” program, hosted by Zanny Minton Beddoes, Musk acknowledged that his political involvement went further than he had anticipated. “I think I got a little too involved in politics. I got carried away, frankly,” Musk said. He offered few specifics about which particular actions or decisions he might reconsider.

What DOGE did

President Donald Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency by executive order on his first day back in office, tapping Musk, who had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump’s 2024 campaign, to serve as the entity’s unelected director. Under Musk’s leadership, DOGE launched a sweeping effort to cut federal spending and personnel, ultimately pushing more than 272,000 federal employees out of their jobs through direct firings and a deferred resignation program that nearly 140,000 workers accepted.

DOGE staffers also moved to terminate funding for a range of federal grant programs covering health research, arts initiatives and other government-funded projects, in many cases citing internal assessments that identified those programs as tied to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The agency’s cuts also extended to core services, including reductions affecting the Social Security Administration, before DOGE formally shut down on July 4 after roughly an 18-month run marked by chaos, public backlash and numerous lawsuits alleging unconstitutional overreach.

Musk’s continued defense of the work

Despite his acknowledgment of getting “carried away,” Musk stood firmly behind the substance of DOGE’s mission during the interview. “We need to sort of take a close look at spending and make sure that money is being spent in sensible ways and that it is not wasted or spent on fraudulent activities,” Musk said, adding, “And I got a lot of flack for this, obviously.”

That defense echoed comments Musk made in an earlier, separate interview with aide and conservative commentator Katie Miller, in which he described DOGE’s efforts as only “somewhat successful” and said he would not undertake the same effort again, while still broadly defending Trump’s cost-cutting initiative.

A pointed exchange over USAID

The most contentious portion of Thursday’s interview centered on the U.S. Agency for International Development, the decades-old federal foreign aid organization that Musk previously vowed to feed through a “wood chipper.” Pressed by Beddoes, who noted that “huge numbers of things shut down in Africa that were health related,” Musk maintained that “zero” people died as a result of DOGE’s cuts to USAID programs, dismissing contrary reports as unfounded. “These claims are false. They’re nonsense, absolute nonsense,” Musk said.

That claim has been directly disputed by public health researchers. According to Impact Counter, a statistical tracker developed by Dr. Brooke Nichols, an infectious disease mathematical modeler and health economist, more than 780,000 deaths, including more than 518,000 among children, were documented within the first year following the USAID funding cuts. Separately, an analysis published in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that USAID assistance had saved approximately 92 million lives over the preceding two decades, underscoring the scale of the programs affected by the funding reductions.

Musk pushed back against the underlying premise of those figures, describing USAID during the interview as “a political organization” and “the biggest funder of regime change,” and questioning why other nongovernmental organizations could not step in to fill any gaps left by the funding cuts. “How many NGOs are there that could step in?” he said.

A broader reflection on his political role

Beyond the specific defense of DOGE’s record, Musk used the wide-ranging interview to offer some additional reflection on his political involvement more broadly. He has separately indicated in recent interviews, including one with Bloomberg at the Qatar Economic Forum, that he intends to scale back his political spending going forward, telling that outlet, “I think I’ve done enough. If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason.” Musk spent nearly $300 million on political activity last year, the large majority of it supporting Trump’s campaign.

Context around the interview’s timing

Musk’s comments come amid a broader stretch of public scrutiny surrounding both his political activities and his business ventures. The Economist’s accompanying coverage of the interview characterized some of Musk’s political views as “plainly bigoted,” while the interview itself also touched on Musk’s broader predictions about artificial intelligence’s economic impact, including his suggestion that AI could eventually make traditional employment less central to economic life, an outcome he described using the phrase “age of amazing abundance,” while proposing that governments could respond by directly issuing payments to citizens.

With DOGE now formally dissolved and Musk indicating a reduced appetite for direct political spending going forward, the practical consequences of his acknowledgment that he “got carried away” remain unclear, particularly given his continued defense of the agency’s underlying record. The disputed death toll connected to the USAID cuts remains a point of ongoing contention between Musk and public health researchers, with no indication from Thursday’s interview that either side is likely to revise its position in the near term. For now, Musk’s comments mark a rare moment of public self-criticism from a figure who has otherwise remained largely unapologetic about the scope and impact of his time atop DOGE.

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Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and more than 20 other technology companies are urging U.S. policymakers not to broadly restrict open-weight artificial intelligence (AI) models, saying the technology is critical to maintaining America’s leadership in the global AI race.

In a joint letter released Friday, the companies argued that open AI models accelerate innovation, strengthen cybersecurity and help ensure the U.S. remains competitive as countries race to develop increasingly powerful AI systems.

“Our AI leadership will be judged not by one frontier AI model, but by whether the United States builds a strong, open ecosystem that diffuses into every sector,” the signatories wrote.

The industry’s public appeal comes as the Trump administration weighs its approach to open-AI models after senior officials raised concerns about Chinese AI developer Moonshot AI and its open-weight Kimi K3 model.

WHITE HOUSE MONITORING INCIDENT AFTER OPENAI MODELS ESCAPED CONTAINMENT AND HACKED HUGGING FACE SYSTEMS

On Wednesday, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios accused Moonshot of developing Kimi K3 by distilling Anthropic’s Fable 5 model. Distillation, a technique that trains a smaller AI model using the outputs of a more advanced one, has become a flashpoint in the race to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also suggested this week that the United States could sanction companies found to have improperly used distillation to appropriate intellectual property.

While defending open AI development, the coalition acknowledged that companies found to have illegally extracted value from proprietary models should face consequences.

“Unlawful efforts to extract value from closed models raise legitimate concerns,” the letter states. “Those concerns should be addressed through targeted legal and commercial frameworks rather than sweeping restrictions on techniques that play an important role in AI innovation.”

OPENAI CO-FOUNDER WARNS AI MODELS ARE BECOMING HARDER TO CONTROL AFTER ITS MODEL HACKED ANOTHER FIRM

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks during a press conference in Tokyo on July 16. Huang promoted an industry letter urging U.S. policymakers to preserve open-weight AI models. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Open-weight AI models allow developers to download and customize a model’s underlying parameters, making them more accessible than proprietary systems maintained by companies that keep their models closed.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang amplified the effort Friday in his first-ever post on X.

“For my first post, I’m sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter,” Huang wrote.

“AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country.”

“Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.”

The letter was signed by Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Dell Technologies, IBM, Palantir, Hugging Face, Mozilla, Mistral, Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator and other technology companies, startups and organizations.

Notably absent were OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the leading developers of proprietary frontier AI models. Google and Elon Musk’s xAI also did not sign the statement.

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The industry’s coordinated push highlights a growing divide over how policymakers should balance national security and intellectual property concerns with efforts to keep the U.S. competitive in artificial intelligence as China ramps up investment in advanced AI systems.

Nvidia, Anthropic and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ requests for comment.

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LeBron James has managed to move financial markets without saying a word, after an accidentally published Miami Heat video sent prediction-market trading tied to his still-undecided free agency surging past $245 million.

On Tuesday night, the Miami Heat’s official YouTube channel briefly published, then quickly deleted, a video titled “LeBron James Introductory Press Conference,” dated for later this month. A team spokesperson told the Miami Herald the posting was a mistake, made while the club prepared promotional materials in case James eventually chooses to sign with Miami this offseason. Shortly after removing the video, the team posted a job listing on LinkedIn for a director of YouTube strategy.

How the markets reacted

The brief video was enough to send betting activity on James’ eventual destination into overdrive. According to Fortune, combined trading tied to James’ next team has topped $245 million across the two largest prediction-market platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, with more than $200 million of that volume concentrated on Kalshi alone. Yahoo Sports separately put the combined figure above $250 million.

Before the Heat’s video appeared, Polymarket had priced Miami’s odds of landing James at 31.5%, trailing Cleveland by three percentage points. After the clip was deleted, Miami’s odds surged by roughly 20 points on Polymarket. Kalshi showed a similar swing, moving from around 37% to 47% before settling near 45% by Thursday afternoon, according to Yahoo Sports. Sports Illustrated reported that Miami entered Tuesday as a 39% favorite on Kalshi’s “LeBron Next Team” market before jumping to 51% by the end of the day following the video’s brief appearance.

A rapidly growing market

The scale of trading around James’ decision has expanded dramatically in just the past few weeks. According to Fortune, total volume on the market stood at just $76 million a short time earlier before climbing past $170 million, then surging further to more than $211 million on Kalshi alone within a matter of days. At one point, the market tracking James’ next team ranked as the third-largest in Kalshi’s history, trailing only contracts tied to the 2026 World Cup champion and a major political race.

No timeline from James or his camp

James has offered no public timeline for his decision since departing the Los Angeles Lakers 24 days earlier, and his longtime agent, Rich Paul, has similarly declined to provide a date. According to Fortune, Paul said this week that nobody, including NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, knows exactly when the announcement will come. Sports Betting Dime reported that Paul described the timing in strikingly vague terms, saying the decision “could be 48 seconds, it could be 48 minutes,” while brushing aside pressure from the league to speed up the process.

A new kind of sports economy

Marty Conway, a sports business professor at Georgetown University, told Fortune that the episode reflects a broader shift in how fans and traders now engage with major sports storylines. “There’s a market for everything, and I think people have recognized that there’s a market for everything,” Conway said. “There are individuals in every pocket of that area who think they can either influence it, make a market in it, or take advantage of it.”

That shift has been dramatic in scale. According to Yahoo Sports, citing Pew Research Center data, monthly trading volume across Kalshi and Polymarket combined reached nearly $24 billion as of April, with sports traders now more active, and spending more, than those trading on any other single subject tracked by the platforms, including cryptocurrency and politics.

A market the NBA has already flagged as risky

The scale and volatility of the James market has drawn direct concern from the NBA itself. Yahoo Sports reported that the league warned federal regulators about exactly this kind of contract in an April letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in which NBA executive Dan Spillane argued that markets involving “player or team transactions” should be prohibited because they are “readily susceptible to manipulation and/or improper use of confidential information.”

The Heat’s accidental video posting illustrates a related but distinct risk that regulators and platforms have also had to grapple with: market-moving information reaching traders through an unintentional mistake, rather than any deliberate leak or insider activity. Yahoo Sports noted that Kalshi has previously disciplined a staff member for trading on markets tied to videos before their official release, and that Polymarket has partnered with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis to help detect trading patterns that might suggest access to nonpublic information.

Comparisons to other athlete markets

The scale of trading tied to James’ free agency dwarfs betting markets built around other athletes’ career decisions. According to Yahoo Sports, a Kalshi market tied to Kawhi Leonard drew roughly $760,000 in total trading volume, while separate markets tied to Bronny James, Kyle Tucker and NFL player Jaelan Phillips each attracted well under $1 million. Fortune noted that fewer than 30 Kalshi markets across any category have ever surpassed $100 million in total trading volume, underscoring how unusual the scale of interest in James’ decision has become.

As of Thursday afternoon, Miami’s odds of landing James stood near an even coin flip on both major platforms, with Cleveland, Golden State and Philadelphia continuing to register meaningful, if smaller, shares of the betting activity. Kalshi traders were pricing in roughly a 47% chance James would announce his decision before July 27, the date referenced in the deleted Heat video, and a 58% chance of an announcement before July 28.

With James still giving no indication of when he plans to make his choice, prediction-market activity tied to his free agency shows no sign of slowing, leaving traders, the NBA and the Heat’s own communications staff bracing for whatever comes next, whenever that turns out to be.

Samsung Electronics unveiled its next generation of smartwatches Wednesday, introducing the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 and Galaxy Watch 9 alongside its new foldable phone lineup at the company’s Galaxy Unpacked event in London, with both wearables gaining a faster processor, bigger batteries and brighter displays, along with higher price tags than their predecessors.

Both watches are now available for preorder, with general retail availability set for Aug. 7, the same release date as Samsung’s newly announced Galaxy Z Fold 8 series.

A shared processor upgrade

For the first time, both the standard Galaxy Watch 9 and the rugged Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 move away from Samsung’s own Exynos chips and onto Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Wear Elite processor, built on a 3-nanometer process. Samsung says the switch delivers a significant boost to overall speed and efficiency, particularly for on-device AI processing, while also enabling support for newer wireless standards including Bluetooth 6.0.

What’s new on the Galaxy Watch 9

The standard Galaxy Watch 9 keeps a familiar cushion-shaped design similar to last year’s Galaxy Watch 8, but gains a larger battery, now rated at 390mAh on the 40mm model and 445mAh on the larger 44mm version, along with a display capable of reaching 3,000 nits of peak brightness. The watch is available in Cream or Graphite for the 40mm size, with Graphite and Silver options for the 44mm model.

Pricing for the Galaxy Watch 9 varies depending on the specific retail source, with some outlets reporting a starting price of $379 for the 40mm Bluetooth-only model and $429 for the LTE version, while other reports citing official retail listings put the starting U.S. price closer to $430. Regardless of the exact figure, multiple outlets confirmed the new pricing represents an increase over last year’s Galaxy Watch 8, which launched at $349.

The bigger leap: Galaxy Watch Ultra 2

Samsung reserved its more significant upgrades for the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, the company’s rugged flagship wearable aimed directly at competing with Apple’s Watch Ultra 3. The new Ultra 2 packs an 800mAh battery, a 35% increase over the roughly 590mAh battery in the original Galaxy Watch Ultra, addressing one of the most common criticisms of that earlier model, which reviewers had noted often lasted only one to two days under heavy use.

Despite the larger battery, Samsung managed to make the new Ultra 2 about 12% thinner than its predecessor while retaining its shock-resistant titanium casing, according to the company. The watch’s 1.52-inch Sapphire Crystal Super AMOLED display now peaks at 5,000 nits of brightness, a figure Samsung and multiple outlets described as a world-first for smartwatch display brightness, up sharply from the roughly 3,000 nits offered by the original Ultra.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 comes in a single 47mm case size, available in Titanium Silver and Titanium Gray, and ships with LTE connectivity as standard rather than offering a separate Bluetooth-only option. U.S. pricing for the new Ultra 2 was reported at $699 by multiple retail sources, a $50 increase over the original Galaxy Watch Ultra’s $649 starting price, though at least one outlet citing updated official retail listings put the figure closer to $650.

New health and fitness features

Both watches share a common set of AI-powered health tracking capabilities built around Samsung’s BioActive sensor, including an FDA-cleared sleep apnea detection feature, a Heart Health Score, Daily Cardio Load tracking designed to help users gauge workout recovery, and a hearing feature that monitors environmental noise exposure over time. Samsung says these AI health tools process data on-device rather than requiring a cloud connection.

The new lineup also introduces several more specialized fitness tracking options, including a dedicated trail-running mode, a Nutrition Alert feature that draws on perspiration data, and an upcoming diving-focused app developed in partnership with dive computer maker Mares, expected to launch later this year to complement the Ultra 2’s enhanced water-resistance rating.

Durability improvements

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 carries an upgraded durability rating compared with the standard Watch 9, including IP69K dust and water resistance and a 10ATM-plus rating for underwater use, alongside MIL-STD-810H military-grade durability certification and EN13319 diving equipment certification. The standard Galaxy Watch 9, by comparison, carries a more modest IP68 rating alongside 5ATM water resistance, reflecting its positioning as a general-purpose smartwatch rather than a dedicated adventure and diving companion.

Software and platform

Both watches run One UI 9 Watch, built on top of Google’s Wear OS 7 platform, continuing Samsung’s ongoing software partnership with Google across its wearable lineup. The shared software experience means most of the AI health and fitness features introduced with this generation are available across both models, with the Ultra 2’s additional hardware capabilities, including its brighter display and more rugged build, serving as the primary differentiators between the two devices.

Part of a broader price increase across Samsung’s lineup

The higher pricing on both new watches mirrors a broader trend across Samsung’s entire product lineup unveiled this week. According to How-To Geek, the same component cost pressures driving up prices on Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Z Flip 8 foldable phones have extended to its wearable devices as well, with essentially every new smartwatch model priced higher than its direct predecessor.

With preorders now open and general availability set for Aug. 7, Samsung’s newest wearables enter a competitive smartwatch market that includes Apple’s Watch Ultra 3 and a growing field of rivals from Google and Garmin. Given the emphasis Samsung placed on battery life and display brightness improvements for the Ultra 2 specifically, reviewers and early buyers are likely to focus closely on whether those upgrades meaningfully address the battery-life complaints that shaped much of the criticism surrounding the original Galaxy Watch Ultra when it launched two years ago.

Shares of Thermo Fisher Scientific jumped Thursday after the life sciences giant reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter results and raised its full-year financial guidance, reversing a multiday slide that had followed disappointing results from industry peer Danaher earlier in the week.

Thermo Fisher shares closed Thursday at $572.32, up $45.86, or 8.71%, on the day. The rally began well before the opening bell, with shares adding roughly 5% in premarket trading after the company released its results.

A strong quarter across the board

Thermo Fisher reported second-quarter revenue of approximately $12.0 billion, roughly 10% higher than the same period a year earlier and about $300 million ahead of Wall Street’s consensus expectations. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $6.03, surpassing analyst forecasts by roughly $0.30. Bloomberg reported that the results were driven by stronger-than-expected spending from biotech and pharmaceutical customers, along with a broader rebound in demand for laboratory instruments.

The clearest signal of that demand recovery came from Thermo Fisher’s Analytical Instruments segment, which posted its fastest growth rate in two years. Segment revenue rose 6.9% to $1.8 billion, according to Bloomberg, a notable turnaround after the segment had remained flat in the first quarter. According to earnings call commentary reported by Yahoo Finance, all three businesses within that segment posted growth, led by electron microscopy, with adjusted operating income up 30% and adjusted operating margin expanding by 420 basis points to 23.0%.

Thermo Fisher’s Specialty Diagnostics division also contributed to the strong quarter, with revenue increasing 6% on a reported basis and 5% organically, driven by growth in the healthcare market channel, immunodiagnostics and transplant diagnostics. Adjusted operating margin in that segment rose 70 basis points to 27.7%.

Raised guidance for the year

Building on the stronger quarter, Thermo Fisher raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to a range of $47.4 billion to $48.1 billion, representing 6% to 8% reported revenue growth over 2025. The company also lifted its adjusted earnings-per-share guidance to a range of $24.93 to $25.33, an increase of $0.25 at the midpoint from its previous guidance range of $24.64 to $25.12.

According to GenomeWeb, Thermo Fisher’s chief financial officer, Stephen Meyer, said the revised earnings midpoint reflects $0.30 from second-quarter outperformance and an additional $0.05 from a higher second-half revenue outlook, partially offset by roughly $0.05 tied to the pending divestiture of the company’s microbiology business. That transaction, announced in April, is expected to close during the third quarter and will reduce full-year 2026 revenue by approximately $200 million and adjusted earnings per share by $0.05.

Recovering from a rough week

Thursday’s rally marks a sharp reversal from a stretch of weakness that had weighed on Thermo Fisher’s stock in the days leading up to its earnings report. According to Seeking Alpha, shares had declined over multiple sessions following a lower-than-expected outlook from peer company Danaher, which had raised broader concerns among investors about demand across the life sciences tools and diagnostics sector. Danaher shares themselves rose roughly 5.5% on Thursday, benefiting from the same wave of positive sentiment following Thermo Fisher’s results.

Analyst reaction

Thursday’s earnings beat prompted several Wall Street firms to raise their price targets on Thermo Fisher shares. Baird lifted its target to $652 while maintaining an Outperform rating, according to StocksToTrade, while the broader Street’s average price target sat near $595 to $603, still implying room for further upside from Thursday’s closing price, according to multiple analyst compilations. Deutsche Bank had issued a short-term “Catalyst Call: Buy” rating on the stock ahead of the earnings report, with a $630 price target, characterizing recent negative sentiment around the stock’s growth trajectory as an attractive setup heading into results.

Thermo Fisher management also announced it would hold its quarterly dividend steady at $0.47 per share, while separately expanding an advanced-therapy manufacturing partnership with Arcturus Therapeutics, a move analysts pointed to as reinforcing the company’s longer-term growth strategy beyond the immediate earnings beat.

A closely watched name in life sciences

Thermo Fisher describes itself as the world’s leading company serving the science industry, with annual revenue exceeding $45 billion and a portfolio of well-known brands including Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Gibco, Fisher Scientific, Unity Lab Services and Patheon. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company supplies instruments, reagents, diagnostics tools and pharmaceutical services to research institutions, hospitals, biotech firms and pharmaceutical manufacturers globally.

Given that scale, Thermo Fisher’s quarterly results are often closely watched as a broader indicator of spending trends across the life sciences and diagnostics industry as a whole, making Thursday’s strong showing, coming just days after Danaher’s more cautious outlook, a notable signal that demand across the sector may be stabilizing after a period of softer instrument spending among biotech and pharmaceutical customers.

With guidance now raised and momentum building in its Analytical Instruments and Specialty Diagnostics segments, investors will be watching Thermo Fisher’s execution through the second half of the year, particularly as the pending divestiture of its microbiology business closes in the third quarter. The company’s next major update is expected with its third-quarter results later this year, which will offer a clearer picture of whether the demand recovery highlighted in Thursday’s report continues to build or proves to be a more temporary rebound following a period of softer instrument spending across the broader life sciences sector.

Wyze users began reporting problems accessing their smart home cameras and devices Friday morning, according to outage-tracking service Downdetector, adding another disruption to a company that has struggled repeatedly with service reliability and security incidents in recent years.

Downdetector said user reports indicating problems with Wyze began climbing at 7:27 a.m. Eastern time, with the hashtag #WyzeDown circulating on social media shortly after as affected users sought to determine the scope of the disruption. As of Friday morning, Wyze had not issued a public statement addressing the reports.

What users typically experience during Wyze outages

Based on Wyze’s history of similar disruptions, affected users during an outage generally lose the ability to view live camera feeds, receive motion notifications, or access cloud-stored recordings, effectively creating a temporary security blind spot for anyone relying on the devices for home monitoring. Even Wyze cameras equipped with local microSD card storage typically cannot be accessed remotely once the device goes offline, since the Wyze app relies on an active connection to the company’s cloud infrastructure to retrieve footage.

A company with a recurring pattern of outages

Friday’s reports continue a pattern that has affected Wyze users repeatedly over the past several years. According to outage-tracking service IsDown, Wyze experienced two separate incidents over just the past 90 days, with a median resolution time of roughly 40 minutes, suggesting that while individual outages have often been relatively brief, they have also been recurring.

Some past disruptions have proven far more severe and prolonged. In February 2024, Wyze users experienced a major service outage that began appearing around 4 a.m. Eastern time before peaking after 9 a.m., according to reporting from TechRadar at the time. That incident left users unable to access the Wyze mobile app, disconnected numerous camera models entirely, and in one particularly alarming case, resulted in a user receiving a live video feed from a camera that was not their own, located in a completely different time zone. Wyze’s official Discord and forum channels showed company representatives posting hourly updates as the issue was gradually resolved, though some device types, including certain smart light bulbs, remained affected by extended loading issues even after camera connectivity was restored.

An earlier, similarly disruptive outage left some users without full access to their devices for more than 24 hours. According to Notebookcheck’s coverage of that incident, Wyze attributed the extended disruption to a problem with its cloud infrastructure partner, Amazon Web Services, stating at the time, “We are aware of an issue with our AWS partner which has impacted device connection and caused login difficulties. We are taking steps to mitigate the problem on our end as we work with AWS to resolve the issue.” Even after Wyze declared the issue resolved, Notebookcheck reported that many users continued experiencing problems more than a day later, contributing to broader frustration with the company’s communication during outages.

A history that extends beyond outages

Beyond service disruptions, Wyze has also faced a series of security-related incidents that have compounded concerns about the reliability of its camera platform. The February 2024 outage notably coincided with reports of a data breach in which some users were shown camera thumbnails and, in certain cases, live feeds from other customers’ homes, an issue the company attributed to a third-party caching client library. According to Notebookcheck, that incident came just five months after a separate security lapse had allowed unauthorized access to other users’ camera footage.

Wyze’s security track record dates back further still. The company took until January 2022 to formally discontinue its original WyzeCam v1 model, despite cybersecurity firm Bitdefender having flagged a serious vulnerability in the device roughly three years earlier. In December 2019, separate research from Twelve Security found that a major security lapse had exposed data belonging to approximately 2.4 million Wyze customers. That accumulation of incidents contributed to a decision by The New York Times’ product recommendation arm, Wirecutter, to withdraw its prior endorsement of Wyze security cameras.

Why summer weather can compound the problem

Beyond company-side outages, Wyze cameras are also particularly vulnerable to connectivity loss during summer months due to power and network disruptions unrelated to the company’s own infrastructure. Because most Wyze camera models depend on a continuous power supply and an active Wi-Fi connection to function, even a brief home power outage, common during summer heat waves as increased air conditioning demand strains electrical grids, can knock cameras offline independent of any issue on Wyze’s servers.

How to check whether it’s a broader outage

For users experiencing problems Friday, distinguishing between a company-wide outage and a local connectivity issue is an important first step. Wyze maintains an official service status page where the company posts updates during confirmed outages, though as with past incidents, official acknowledgment has sometimes lagged behind the volume of user reports appearing on independent tracking platforms like Downdetector. Checking that official status page alongside third-party outage trackers can help users determine whether a broader Wyze-side issue is responsible, or whether the problem is more likely tied to a local power or internet disruption.

What to do if you’re affected

Users experiencing issues are generally advised to first confirm their home Wi-Fi network and internet connection are functioning normally, since local outages can produce symptoms similar to a company-wide disruption. If the connection appears stable and problems persist, checking Wyze’s official status page and community forums, where company representatives have historically posted periodic updates during past outages, remains the most reliable way to track the disruption’s progress and expected resolution.

As of Friday morning, the scope and expected duration of the current outage remained unclear, and Wyze had not issued a public acknowledgment of the reported problems. Given the company’s history of both extended service disruptions and gaps in timely communication during past incidents, affected users may need to rely primarily on outage-tracking platforms and social media reports for updates until Wyze’s own status page reflects the issue and confirms a resolution.