The Nifty IT index dropped over 2% to trade at 30,082 on Monday, leading losses among all the major sectoral indices on the stock market. Infosys, LTI Mindtree and Mphasis shares dropped around 3% each, while those of Tech Mahindra, OFSS, Coforge, HCL Technologies, Wipro, Persistent Systems and TCS fell 1-2%.

US job growth accelerated sharply in August while the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.1%, implying an improvement in the labour market after recent struggles, data released on Friday showed. US nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.62 lakh in August, well above economists’ expectations of a gain of 56,000.

The sharp growth boosted hopes for a rate hike by the Federal Reserve in September, with traders now pricing in approximately 57% chance of a rate increase this month. Higher US rates could curb client spending, weighing on Indian IT firms that generate a significant share of their revenue ⁠from the ‌United States.

Also read | Is AI boom hiding growing US risks? Nomura warns dollar asset concentration leaves global markets vulnerable to AI shocks

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What lies ahead for IT stocks?

IT stocks on Dalal Street have seen sharp upswings and downswings recently. Earlier this year, the sector witnessed a sharp selloff after breakthroughs by AI startups fuelled concerns about potential disruption to the traditional IT services business model. Later, a sharp selloff in global tech leaders proved to be a blessing in disguise for Indian IT stocks, which emerged resilient amid the global tech rout.
HSBC said India can serve as an “anti-AI” diversifier as sharp swings in technology-exposed markets encourage foreign investors to broaden their portfolios. HSBC strategists Prerna Garg, Herald van der Linde and Yogesh Aggarwal said in a report that AI-rotation outflows from India have “largely played out.”While AI jitters continue to keep IT investors on the edge, CLSA downgraded several heavyweight stocks and revised their target prices, although it remains bullish on several mid-tier IT vendors.

Indian IT has gone through a near three-year spending recession, on the back of weak discretionary budgets, elongated deal cycles, H-1B headwinds, AI driven revenue deflation and a selloff triggered by fears that agentic tooling (Claude Cowork, COBOL modernisation) would automate the legacy stack directly, Anand Rathi said in August. However, it thinks that fear inverts the actual set-up.

“Our core thesis is that the AI cycle is pivoting from “building capacity” to “proving payback“ — a transition that is inherently services-heavy and plays squarely to Indian IT’s strengths in deployment, integration, governance and legacy modernisation. Value is migrating from the layer that funds the AI build to the layer that deploys it: first to the enterprise software platforms — Systems of Record and Systems of Action that hold the data, permissions and approvals — then to the services firms that integrate and run them. This is the cloud playbook rerun: capex builds first and the returns arrive later, to different players, as railways, fibre and the 2015-19 cloud J-curve all showed,” it added.

The brokerage feels near-term weakness is real, due to AI-led pricing deflation compounded by geopolitics. But AI is expanding the TAM, not compressing it, opening deployment, AI FinOps, governance, managed agent operations, legacy modernisation, sovereign AI and SLM pools, it said. “Indian IT offers this without the balance-sheet and funding-duration risk the infra layer carries — the “safe AI” trade,” it added.

Also read | Bigger market crash ahead? Analysts weigh how Sensex, Nifty may react if US 10-year bond yield touches 5%

(With inputs from agencies)

Disclosure: This article has been written by Debaroti Adhikary, who is not a SEBI-registered Research Analyst or an investment advisor. Debaroti Adhikary does not hold any financial interest in the company named in the article as of the date of publication. The views/recommendations mentioned in this article, wherever applicable, are those of the respective SEBI-registered Research Analyst/brokerage and have been reproduced/reported with due attribution. They should not be construed as the views or recommendations of the EconomicTimes Digital or the journalist. Readers are advised to consider the original research report and make their investment decisions based on their own assessment.

SAN FRANCISCO — Top Uber executives are predicting that private car ownership and driver’s licenses will become largely obsolete within the next 15 to 20 years, as autonomous vehicles, bikes, scooters and public transit reshape how Americans get around, a vision that echoes similar long-term predictions from Tesla CEO Elon Musk about the future of driving.

Uber President and Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macdonald outlined the prediction during a recent appearance on entrepreneur Harry Stebbings’ 20VC podcast, describing a future in which car ownership becomes an increasingly rare choice rather than a default necessity.

“In some future world, maybe not five years, but 15 or 20 years, everyone’s going to be like Harry — nobody’s going to own a car,” Macdonald said, referring to podcast host Stebbings. “Nobody’s going to have their driver’s license because you’ll be able to get around. And I think bikes and scooters will be part of that. I think autonomous vehicles will be part of that. I think public transportation will be a big part of that, but I don’t think you need to own a car.”

Macdonald was particularly critical of the economics behind personal vehicle ownership, describing the private automobile in stark terms.

“The most inefficient asset that anyone owns,” Macdonald said of the personal car, noting that a typical vehicle sits idle roughly 98% of the day while continuing to depreciate and generate ongoing insurance costs even when parked in a driveway. He pointed to rising vehicle costs as compounding the inefficiency, noting that new vehicle prices have climbed roughly 30% over the past six years, with the average transaction price now hovering near $50,000.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has offered a similarly ambitious timeline for the shift toward autonomous, shared transportation. Speaking on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast earlier this year, Khosrowshahi described a future increasingly dominated by robot-driven rides.

“You can imagine the majority of our trips being fulfilled by robots of some kind,” Khosrowshahi said. “Probably not 10 years from now, but you go 15 to 20 years from now, you’re going to start getting there.”

Khosrowshahi has separately detailed how he expects vehicle ownership structures to shift during that transition, describing a future in which large institutional investors, rather than individual drivers, own the underlying autonomous vehicle fleets. He suggested major financial firms could eventually own large fleets of self-driving cars generating steady investment yields, comparing the model to how firms such as Blackstone currently manage other large asset portfolios. Khosrowshahi has acknowledged, however, that the transition raises difficult unresolved questions, including how displaced human drivers will be affected.

“I think 10-15 years from now this is going to be a real issue and I don’t have a neat answer for it,” Khosrowshahi has said regarding the broader disruption autonomous vehicles could bring to the ride-hailing workforce.

Speaking separately at the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington, D.C., Khosrowshahi framed the eventual dominance of autonomous vehicles as effectively inevitable given the safety case for removing human error from driving.

“If you fast-forward 15, 20 years, I think eventually the cars are going to be autonomous,” Khosrowshahi said. “There’s very strong evidence to believe that robot drivers are going to be safer than human drivers.” He identified California and Texas as currently the most open regulatory markets for expanding autonomous ride-hailing services.

Elon Musk has voiced comparable predictions about the long-term trajectory of autonomous driving technology, dating back several years. Speaking during a Tesla earnings call, Musk said he expects “all cars will go fully autonomous in the long-term,” predicting it would eventually become “quite unusual to see cars that don’t have full autonomy” within a similar 15-to-20-year window, with Tesla vehicles specifically reaching that point even sooner than the broader industry.

Musk has also offered a broader, more sweeping vision of how automation and artificial intelligence could reshape the economics of daily life more generally, extending well beyond transportation. Speaking earlier this year at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, Musk suggested that traditional employment could eventually become optional for most people as AI-driven productivity gains generate what he described as unprecedented material abundance.

“My prediction is that work will be optional,” Musk said. “It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that. If you want to work, it’s the same way you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you can grow vegetables in your backyard. It’s much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, and some people still do it because they like growing vegetables.”

The convergence of predictions from Uber’s leadership and Musk reflects a broader alignment among major technology executives around the eventual dominance of autonomous vehicle technology, even as the specific business models and ownership structures each company envisions differ somewhat in their details. Uber has continued expanding its own autonomous vehicle partnerships in the meantime, reportedly working with roughly 20 different autonomous vehicle partners and aiming to operate driverless vehicles across 15 cities by the end of the year. Khosrowshahi has said Uber aims to facilitate more autonomous and robotaxi rides than any other company in the world by 2029.

In the near term, Uber has taken incremental steps toward that longer-term vision, including compensating some human drivers to help train the artificial intelligence systems expected to eventually power its autonomous fleets. Rival ride-hailing company Lyft has adopted a similar approach, paying some former drivers to maintain and clean self-driving vehicles as those vehicles gradually take on a larger share of rides previously handled by human drivers.

Despite the confident long-term predictions from Uber’s leadership and Musk alike, both companies have acknowledged that significant technical, regulatory and workforce-related challenges remain before autonomous vehicles can realistically displace private car ownership and human-driven ride-hailing at the scale envisioned. Whether the 15-to-20-year timeline offered by Macdonald, Khosrowshahi and Musk ultimately proves accurate remains to be seen, though the shared conviction among leaders at two of the industry’s most influential companies suggests the broader shift toward autonomous, shared mobility is likely to remain a defining storyline across the transportation and technology sectors in the years ahead.

LONDON — Prince William and Princess Kate are entering a pivotal new season determined not to let Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s return to Britain distract them from their own path forward, according to royal insiders, even as the Sussexes’ presence in the country promises to complicate the family’s public calendar in the months ahead.

The comments come as William and Kate say a poignant farewell to Prince George this week, marking his first day at Eton College, the prestigious Berkshire boarding school William himself attended as a teenager. The milestone arrives alongside what royal sources describe as a broader shift for the couple, who appear more united than ever as they resume official duties following their summer break, and just weeks after Harry and Meghan’s unexpected return to the U.K.

Robert Jobson, author of “The Windsor Legacy,” told Hello! that William and Kate remain firmly focused on their long-term trajectory rather than reacting to developments involving the Sussexes.

“They are on a clear path and they’re thinking about what their future is going to be,” Jobson said. “They’re focused on the kids and their projects. They are on a steady path which leads to the ultimate job, the top job. Now they’re next in line, they’re facing what their position will be, and that will be essentially to prepare the reign that they want and how they want to do it. William will take the lead, but it’s going to be a team effort.”

Jobson pointed to the couple’s public unity as evidence of their strengthened partnership.

“I think they’re certainly stronger as a couple, but also as a family unit,” Jobson said. “You only have to look at them in public; they are very much a united couple and they’re very much doing their job. They really haven’t put a foot wrong. The way that Catherine has come back into the public eye was perfectly handled. They’ve got their image right, they’ve got their engagement at the level they want and they’re spending enough time with their kids.”

Addressing the Sussexes’ return directly, Jobson said he does not expect it to change William and Kate’s approach.

“I don’t think that, because Harry and Meghan are here making a bit of noise, that’s going to necessarily make them do anything,” Jobson said. “They’ll probably think, well, we’ve been down this road before; it creates a circus and we’re not going to get involved.”

Still, Harry and Meghan’s presence will be difficult to entirely avoid. The couple, believed to be living in the Cotswolds, flew into Birmingham last month in time for their children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, to begin school. William and Kate have their own busy autumn schedule of engagements planned, including William’s continued work on homelessness and mental health and Kate’s focus on young children and families, while Harry is expected to appear in London later this month at the WellChild Awards, an annual charity event for seriously ill children of which he remains patron.

Hello! royal editor Emily Nash said Meghan’s specific plans remain the more uncertain variable in the equation.

“What really fascinates me is what Meghan is going to do,” Nash said. “She’s essentially a private citizen here in the UK. Will she pop up with or for Harry? If she does, does that make it look more like they’re sort of imitating royal engagements? I think this could become a bit of a problem for them.”

Nash also flagged conflicting reports about Meghan’s potential return to acting, after British actor Theo James dismissed rumors that Meghan would join the third season of the Netflix series “The Gentlemen,” in which he stars, calling the speculation “hot air.”

“The other thing that I found fascinating was Theo James saying that all the rumours around her starring in The Gentlemen are hot air,” Nash said. “That whole sort of PR bombshell about her returning to acting very specifically linked her to that production in particular, and now, people at the heart of it are saying it’s not right. What is going on there?”

Based on her own sourcing, Nash said she expects Meghan to largely continue her existing pattern of activity.

“From the people I’ve been speaking to, I think Meghan’s plan is to carry on doing what she’s been doing,” Nash said. “I’m sure they’re working on some of the things they were doing with Archewell Philanthropies — the work she was doing around online harm, for example, I’m sure we’ll see more of that kind of thing. But do they really want to return to the kind of engagements that they turned their back on? And if they do, how are people going to react to it?”

Meghan is also continuing to build her lifestyle brand, As Ever, and remains patron of Smart Works, a U.K.-wide charity offering coaching and clothing to unemployed women and those on zero-hours contracts. Smart Works told Hello! it is “very excited to welcome the Duchess and her family back to the UK.”

One date likely to underscore the ongoing divisions within the family is the National Service of Remembrance on Nov. 8, when senior royals traditionally gather at the Cenotaph in central London. Having stepped down as working royals in 2020, Harry and Meghan will not be invited to join King Charles and other relatives at the official service, though Harry may choose to mark the occasion elsewhere, as he has done in Los Angeles in past years.

Jobson said any separate observance by Harry would risk highlighting the rift rather than easing it.

“That’s a problem, because if Harry goes somewhere in Oxford and does it, it’s going to look very odd, because it’s going to be an alternative moment,” Jobson said. “As a veteran, he will probably want to do that, so unless they invite them into the fold, which I don’t think they will at this moment in time, it creates an alternative which makes them look divided. You’ve got two conflicting households on the same patch, and that can’t possibly work. I think something has to give along the way. It’s whether they invite Harry back inside, and if that’s the case, then a lot of people won’t be very happy.”

Questions also remain over whether Harry and Meghan will be invited to Kate’s annual Together at Christmas carol concert at Westminster Abbey, or to join the wider family for festive celebrations at Sandringham.

For William and Kate, Jobson said the pair are more likely to stay focused on their own upcoming milestones, including a potential state dinner next month for the Sultan of Oman’s visit to the U.K., hosted by the King and Queen. There is also renewed talk of Kate rejoining William for international travel, with speculation she could accompany him to Mumbai in November for the Earthshot Prize Summit and Awards, which would mark their first major joint overseas trip since visiting the Caribbean in 2022, and Kate’s first appearance at one of William’s environmental events since Boston that same year.

“I think if she’s well enough to go, she will go,” Jobson said. “All the indications are that she probably will. It’s about time that she did.”

Jobson said he ultimately expects William and Kate to rise above any distraction posed by the Sussexes’ return.

“I think they’re going to rise above all this,” Jobson said. “I don’t think they’re going to be involved in a tit for tat. Harry has turned up and put the ball back in their court, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to play.”

TUCSON, Ariz. — A retired FBI agent has laid out a new theory about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, suggesting the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie was taken in a kidnapping-for-ransom plot that unraveled within days, possibly ending in her death from natural causes.

Frank Storey outlined the theory during an appearance on “True Crime With Jen Coffindaffer,” a podcast hosted by fellow retired FBI special agent Jennifer Coffindaffer, on Sept. 2, seven months after Guthrie vanished from her Catalina Foothills home near Tucson. Storey suggested Guthrie may have suffered a fatal heart attack a day or two after being seized, though he stressed his account remains speculation rather than a confirmed finding, and investigators have not endorsed it. No suspects have been named, and authorities have not said whether Guthrie is alive or dead.

Storey pushed back against suggestions that the case has gone cold, arguing that senior bureau agents remain actively assigned to it and that a resolution is likely given his belief that more than one person was involved in the abduction. He said he expects the case to eventually break through the plea-bargaining system, predicting that if one of the participants is later arrested on an unrelated charge carrying a lengthy sentence, that person could offer investigators information about Guthrie in exchange for leniency.

“Somebody always talks,” Storey told Coffindaffer.

Storey is one of several former agents who have offered public theories about the case in recent months, though none of them is directly involved in the active investigation.

The known timeline of Guthrie’s disappearance remains short and largely unresolved. She was last seen alive on the evening of Jan. 31, 2026, at her Catalina Foothills home, after relatives dropped her off. The following morning, a friend contacted Guthrie’s family when she failed to arrive at church; relatives reached the property before noon and called the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff Chris Nanos moved quickly to treat the case as a crime, saying publicly that he believed Guthrie had been abducted and later telling NBC News she was taken from the home against her will. Investigators found drops of blood outside the front door that were subsequently confirmed to be hers.

Footage from a home security system initially yielded nothing, with Nanos saying the system may have been set to automatically delete recordings, leaving detectives to attempt a forensic recovery. Forensic evidence has since become both the center of the investigation and a source of friction among those involved. A mixed DNA sample recovered from the house has not been matched to anyone, and hair analysis failed to identify a suspect, with the sheriff saying several laboratories are working to separate the material found at the scene. FBI Director Kash Patel publicly criticized Nanos for sending samples to a private laboratory rather than the bureau’s own facility, a decision the sheriff has defended as an operational choice. Two men have been detained and questioned at separate points in the investigation, and both were released without charge.

Two ransom notes purporting to come from Guthrie’s kidnappers have also shaped the investigation. The sheriff’s department released both publicly on July 31 to mark six months since the disappearance. The first note was sent to Tucson CBS affiliate KOLD-TV on Feb. 2, one day after Guthrie was reported missing, and was addressed directly to her daughter. It described Guthrie as “safe but scared” and demanded $4 million in bitcoin, a figure that rose to $6 million depending on the timing of payment. The writer set a deadline, stated Guthrie would be held no longer than seven days, warned she would be killed if the ransom did not arrive, and said there would be no negotiation. Nanos said the note contained specific details about the house and about what Guthrie had been wearing at the time of her disappearance.

The second note struck a markedly different tone, claiming Guthrie had died shortly after being taken. The FBI has said some of the numerous messages received throughout the investigation were unserious extortion attempts, while others remain under active review, and the bureau has not specified which category either published note falls into.

Nanos said the department chose to release the notes publicly in hopes that their specific wording or phrasing might jog someone’s memory. Anyone who recognizes distinctive language from the notes has been asked to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or the sheriff’s department’s tip line at 520-351-4900. A reward of $1.2 million remains available for information leading to Guthrie’s recovery, and Nanos has said he continues to expect an eventual arrest.

Seven months into the investigation, theories continue to outnumber confirmed facts, and the people who know what actually happened to Nancy Guthrie have yet to come forward.