Big Tech capital expenditure for this year is predicted to rise 60pc from $410bn in 2025.

Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft are signalling a collective 2026 capital expenditure package of around $650bn, with AI, cloud and data centres as unsurprising high-ticket items. Wary investors, however, seem unhappy, and the Financial Times reported that Amazon, Google and Microsoft are set to lose $900bn in market cap altogether.

Big Tech capital expenditure predictions would mark a rise of 60pc from the $410bn spent in 2025 and 165pc from the $245bn spent the year before.

The four competitors see the race to provide AI compute as “the next winner-take-all or winner-takes-most market”, Gil Luria, an analyst at DA Davidson told Bloomberg. None of the companies are “willing to lose”, he added.

Amazon shares fell by 11pc after the company’s earnings call yesterday (5 February) in which company president and CEO Andy Jassy announced a $200bn capital expenditure (capex) plan for the year, growing more than 50pc since last year.

He reasoned that a 24pc revenue growth in Amazon’s cloud offerings and a 22pc growth in advertising is evidence that the heavy spending is paying off. This year’s spending will be focused on AI, chips, robotics and low-Earth orbit satellites, Jassy said.

Meanwhile, Microsoft announced a $37.5bn quarterly capital expenditure bill on 28 January, just slightly more than analyst estimates. But the company was the worst hit among the four for a while, dropping 18pc since the announcement.

The company had also, for the first time, disclosed the true nature of its close economic relationship with OpenAI. It reported that roughly 45pc of its $625bn expected in future cloud contracts was from the start-up, leading to investor wariness on its over-reliance on one customer.

Google parent Alphabet initially dropped 4pc in share price after it reported its earnings on Wednesday (4 February), but climbed back up to being just below 0.5pc since yesterday. Sales and earnings per share grew by 18pc and 31pc respectively during Q4, beating analyst expectations, while Alphabet’s cloud backlog grew by 55pc quarter-over-quarter to $240bn.

The company announced capex for the year between $175bn and $185bn, doubling expenses to meet customer demand and capitalise on the growth of the company’s AI offerings. Though despite fears of heavy spending, Gemini Enterprise is selling 8m seats and the Gemini App now has more than 750m monthly active users, which, Motley Fool reported, is keeping investors relatively content.

Lastly, Meta has announced its total expenses for 2026 to be in the range $115bn to $135bn. The growth, it said, is driven by an increased investment to support its Meta Superintelligence Labs efforts as well as its core business.

While the stocks rose 10pc after the earnings announcement, the Financial Times reports that it lost those gains after overall investor fear has pushed the tech-heavy Nasdaq down 4pc over the week.

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I’ve been teaching long enough to recognize when something fundamental is shifting in the classroom. Lately, that shift sounds like a single word echoing through my courses: why.

Why are we doing this? Why does it matter? Why should I care?

At first, it can sound like pushback, the kind of challenge that might once have been mistaken for defiance. But I don’t see it that way. When Gen Z students ask “why,” they’re not questioning authority; they’re questioning meaning. They’re trying to understand whether what they’re being asked to learn aligns with a world that already feels crowded with information, competition and contradiction.

And they’re right to ask.

Gen Z has grown up surrounded by constant messaging — some genuine, some hollow. They’ve seen companies preach purpose while chasing profit, influencers claim authenticity while filtering reality, and institutions talk about mental health while rewarding burnout. So when they step into a classroom, they’re not looking for performance. They’re looking for proof.

In many ways, “why” has replaced the old-fashioned raise of the hand. It’s the new signal for engagement, not disengagement. These students aren’t rebellious for sport; they’re searching for relevance. When they ask “why,” they’re asking us to show them the thread between knowledge and purpose.

For educators, that’s both thrilling and challenging. The old classroom contract may no longer be enough. Gen Z expects transparency in exchange for trust. They want to know not only what they’re learning but how it connects to who they’re becoming. That expectation is reshaping how many of us teach.

I’ve noticed that when I take the time to explain why we’re doing something — even briefly — engagement rises. It doesn’t need to be a speech or a slide titled “Why It Matters.” It can be a few sentences woven into the moment: “You’ll use this when you’re leading a team someday,” or “This will help you understand how strategy actually plays out in a business setting.” Framing purpose in passing often lands more effectively than any formal statement could. It tells students that there’s intention behind what they’re being asked to do.

And when the connection isn’t obvious, I try to make the learning process itself transparent. I’ll tell them why I’ve designed a particular project or changed an assignment from last semester. I explain my reasoning the way I’d want a mentor to explain theirs — not to justify, but to include. Once they see the care that goes into the design, their tone shifts from skeptical to curious.

New Perspective

That shift has changed my own mindset as an instructor. I’ve started to see my role less as delivering content and more as modeling thoughtfulness — the same kind I’m asking of them. I don’t have to declare that an assignment matters; I can show that it does by connecting it to a broader purpose, by caring about it visibly.

When things don’t go perfectly, I’ve learned to acknowledge that too. I used to think admitting uncertainty would weaken credibility. It turns out it does the opposite. When I tell students, “I’m still experimenting with how to teach this,” they don’t lose confidence — they lean in. They respect honesty because it mirrors their own experience of figuring things out.

That’s the real undercurrent here: authenticity has replaced authority as the key driver of credibility. Gen Z doesn’t automatically trust titles or experience; they trust consistency between what we say and what we do. They’ve been burned too many times by institutions that preached one set of values and practiced another. In the classroom, they want something simpler — teachers who mean what they say.

This doesn’t mean lowering standards or catering to comfort. If anything, it’s raised expectations. When students believe something has meaning, they work harder. I’ve seen it when my students analyze real company challenges instead of hypothetical ones, or when they present their findings to local business leaders rather than just to me. They’re sharper, more invested, and more willing to push themselves when the stakes feel real.

Even small acts of transparency build trust. Explaining why feedback is framed a certain way, or why participation matters, helps students see that the structure exists for a reason. They might not always agree, but they rarely tune out.

Overcoming Defensiveness

Of course, this approach can be draining. There are days when the “whys” feel relentless — when every question seems to demand another explanation, and you wonder if they’ll ever just take your word for it. But over time, I’ve come to see their skepticism not as defiance but as discernment. They’re not trying to tear down the system; they’re trying to make it make sense.

When a student asks, “Why are we doing this?” they’re really saying, “Help me to see the point.” That’s not cynicism. You might call it curiosity with higher benchmarks. And if we can meet that question with openness instead of defensiveness, the classroom becomes a space of shared inquiry rather than guarded authority.

There’s an irony in all this. The very generation accused of being distracted is, in many ways, the most focused — just not on what older models of education assumed mattered. They’re focused on meaning. They want clarity, fairness and consistency, but they also want a sense of humanity behind it all. They crave professors who teach like people, not policies.

Maybe that’s the lesson for us, too. If Gen Z is asking “why,” perhaps we should start asking it of ourselves — not as a challenge, but as reflection. Why do we teach the way we do? Why do we grade like this? Why do we define learning in these terms?

Teaching a generation that questions everything isn’t easy. But it’s not resistance, it’s renewal. Their “why” invites us to rediscover our own.

Other Apple Intelligence features get all the attention, but in iOS 26 one of my favorite tools does its thing quietly in the background. On iPhone models that are capable of running Apple’s AI tech, the Adaptive Power setting is at work behind the scenes to extend battery power, even on many older iPhones.

Currently, the iPhone uses as much power as it needs to perform its tasks. You can extend battery life by taking a few simple steps, such as reducing screen brightness and disabling the always-on display. Or, if your battery is running low, you can turn on Low Power Mode, which limits background activity, like fetching mail and downloading data, and dims the screen to help extend battery life. Low Power Mode also kicks in automatically when the battery level reaches 20%.

If Low Power Mode is the hammer that knocks down power consumption, Adaptive Power is the scalpel that intelligently trims energy savings here and there as needed. Based on Apple’s description that accompanies the control, the savings will be felt mostly in power-hungry situations such as recording videos, editing photos or even playing games.

Apple says Adaptive Power takes about a week to analyze your usage behavior before it begins actively working. And it works in the background without needing any management on your part. 

Here’s how Apple describes it in the iPhone user guide: “It uses on-device intelligence to predict when you’ll need extra battery power based on your recent usage patterns, then makes performance adjustments to help your battery last longer.”

Watch this: The iPhone 17 Pro Max Has Incredible Battery Life

12:10

Which iPhone models can use Adaptive Power?

The feature uses AI to monitor and choose when its power-saving measures should be activated, which means only phones compatible with Apple Intelligence get the feature. These are the models that have the option:

• iPhone 17
• iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone Air
• iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 16e
• iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

Although some iPad and Mac models support Apple Intelligence, the feature is only available on iPhones.

How to turn Adaptive Power on

Adaptive Power is on by default on the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone Air. For other models, you must opt in to use it. In iOS 26, you’ll find the Adaptive Power toggle in Settings > Battery > Power Mode. To be alerted when the feature is active, turn on the Adaptive Power Notifications option.

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Adaptive Power sounds like an outgrowth of Gaming Mode, introduced in iOS 18, which routes all available processing and graphics power to the frontmost app and pauses other processes in order to deliver the best experience possible — at the notable expense of battery life.

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What does this mean for your charging habits?

Although we all want as much battery life as possible all the time, judging by the description, it sounds as if Adaptive Power’s optimizations will not always be active, even if you leave the feature on. “When your battery usage is higher than usual” could include a limited number of situations. Still, considering that according to a CNET survey, 61% of people upgrade their phones because of battery life, a feature such as Adaptive Power could extend the longevity of their phones just by updating to iOS 26.

I also wonder whether slightly adjusting display brightness could be disruptive, but in my experience so far, it hasn’t been noticeable. Because the feature also selectively de-prioritizes processing tasks, the outward effects seem minimal. When it’s activated on my iPhone 16 Pro, the only indication was the Adaptive Power alert that appeared.

We’ll get a better idea about how well Adaptive Power works as more people adopt iOS 26 and start buying new iPhone models. Also, remember that shortly after installing a major software update, it’s common to experience worse battery life as the system optimizes data in the background; Apple went so far as to remind customers that it’s a temporary side effect.

Although often tossed together into a singular ‘retro game’ aesthetic, the first game consoles that focused on 3D graphics like the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation featured very distinct visuals that make these different systems easy to distinguish. Yet whereas the N64 mostly suffered from a small texture buffer, the PS’s weak graphics hardware necessitated compromises that led to the highly defining jittery and wobbly PlayStation graphics.

These weaknesses of the PlayStation and their results are explored by [LorD of Nerds] in a recent video. Make sure to toggle on subtitles if you do not speak German.

It could be argued that the PlayStation didn’t have a 3D graphics chip at all, just a video chip that could blit primitives and sprites to the framebuffer. This forced PS developers to draw 3D graphics without such niceties like a Z-buffer, putting a lot of extra work on the CPU.

This problem extends also to texture mapping, by doing affine texture mapping, as it’s called on the PS. This mapping of textures is rather flawed and leads to the constant shifting of textures as the camera’s perspective is not taken into account. Although this texture mapping can be improved, the developers of the game have to add more polygons for this, which of course reduces performance. This is the main cause of the shifting and wobbling of textures.

Another issue on the PS was a lack of mipmapping support, which means a sequence of the same texture, each with each a different resolution. This allows for high-resolution textures to be used when the camera is close, and low-resolution textures when far away. On the PS this lack of mipmapping led to many texture pixels being rendered to the same point on the display, with camera movement leading to interesting flickering effects.

When it came to rendering to the output format, the Nintendo 64 created smooth gradients between the texture pixels (texels) to make them fit on the output resolution, whereas the PS used the much more primitive nearest neighbor interpolation that made especially edges of objects look like they both shimmered and changed shape and color.

The PS also lacked a dedicated floating point unit to handle graphics calculations, forcing a special Geometry Transformation Engine (GTE) in the CPU to handle transformation calculations, but all in integer calculations instead of with floating point values. This made e.g. fixed camera angles as in Resident Evil games very attractive for developers as movement would inevitably lead to visible artefacts.

Finally, the cartridge-based games of the N64 could load data from the mask ROMs about 100x faster than from the PS’s CDs, and with much lower latency. All of these differences would lead to entirely different games for both game consoles, with the N64 being clearly superior for 3D games, yet the PS being released long before the N64 for a competitive price along with the backing of Sony would make sure that it became a commercial success.

When it comes to the affordability crisis in child care, Lenice Emanuel says that it’s forcing families to take a hard look at their budgets — no matter their income level.

But as child care costs surpass the price of rent in some areas, those money choices are even more extreme for folks on the margins, explains Emanuel, executive director of the Alabama Institute for Social Justice.

“They’re gonna say, ‘We had to make a decision whether my husband stays home or I stay home because we both work, and we still can’t afford to pay the mortgage and child care,’” Emanuel says. “It’s just exacerbated for marginalized people, because they were already contending with deprivation, so these issues are just basically compounding what they were already dealing with. That’s why this is like a national crisis at this point.”

A recent analysis of the 100 largest U.S. metro areas found that the cost of child care for a family with two young children is more expensive than the average rent in each respective market.

Care for one child costs, on average, about 25 percent less than rent, according to the data from LendingTree. That changes with the addition of a second child, pushing child care costs up to more than double that of the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in markets like Omaha, Nebraska, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The numbers are much the same as they were last year, according to the analysis, with average rent prices increasing slightly. The national average price tag of care for one child has increased by about $3,700 since 2017, coming to about $13,100 per year in 2024.

Despite rising costs, child care workers are not feeling those increases reflected in their paychecks. It’s a sector that continues to struggle with thin margins, low wages, retaining workers and insufficient subsidies.

Managing Costs

Child care providers are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to deciding how to price their services, says Tyrone Scott, director of government and external affairs at First Up, an early childhood education advocacy group in Pennsylvania.

That’s because they’re trying to keep prices low enough for families to afford, which can be a struggle even with public-dollar subsidies, while paying their staff fairly. Scott says that the average wage for child care workers is $15 per hour in Pennsylvania, which is not enough to compete with big box retailers and convenience stores that offer a starting rate of $17 or more with no experience or degree required.

“The Wawa near me has a $5,000 signing bonus,” Scott says of the retail chain. “If you are a high school student who just graduated, you can get $5,000 and start at $21 an hour where I’m at. So you are doing much better than our teachers, which is really problematic, obviously.”

Inflation is another factor squeezing child care providers, Scott says, increasing the price of everything the food stocked in the kitchen to liability insurance — with some child care providers reporting that their insurance expenses have tripled. Those centers have to choose between eating the costs and taking in thinner margins or passing them along to parents by raising prices.

Jasmine Bowles, executive state director of 9to5 Georgia, says Georgia’s child care system has long been underfunded — despite politicians’ crowing about the state’s billions of dollars in budget surplus funds. Administrative delays in state reimbursements to child care providers also force them to go without, she says, to ensure the learners in their care have everything they need.

“When our care providers receive their class of students for the day, those babies still eat, even if [the providers] haven’t been paid from the state for a month or more,” she says. “This really manifests itself in housing, food, and health insecurity for the very caregivers that our communities depend on.”

Emanuel says that Alabama’s formula for calculating how much of child care costs the state will subsidize doesn’t accurately reflect the cost, which leaves providers to figure out how to make up the difference. Those costs are often passed on to parents, but Emanuel says providers also apply for grants or take second jobs to keep their centers running.

“Because of the way the market rate survey dictates the reimbursement rates, a parent could be paying $400, but it’s actually costing the provider $900 a month for child care,” she explains. “Many of these women do child care full time, and they actually have side hustles in order for them to be able to provide child care.”

Child care providers are not spared from rising costs for their own kids, Emanuel says. One provider in her state reports paying 80 percent of her own income for care for her own children.

The Attitude Factor

With the widespread challenges in child care affordability, experts say that one barrier to getting more state funding to address the problem is both the public’s and lawmakers’ perception of child care — including who should be doing the caring.

“I think there is some old school mentality in some legislators that still believes children should be at home with their mothers — specifically mothers. Not fathers even, but mothers,” Scott says. “That’s not the reality for a lot of families, whether you’re talking to a two-parent family or a single-parent family — most children need every available adult in the workforce to make ends meet. So there’s this myth that people don’t want to care for their own kids, or whatever, for lack of a better term, sexist trope that people put on.”

Scott and Emanuel both say that there are large swaths of the public who don’t see the benefit of their states subsidizing child care, be it support for working parents or the advantages of giving kids a strong start in their education.

“I think that a lot of times in this state, people see child care as, ‘You had the child, it’s your responsibility to pay for child care,’” Emanuel says. “But if the pandemic didn’t teach us anything else, it taught us that it is critical infrastructure because, without child care, people are not able to go to work.”

Scott says one alliance that has helped get their message across is help from Pennsylvania chambers of commerce, who can describe how the lack of affordable child care options interferes with employees’ ability to stick to their work schedules.

Emanuel says there’s another aspect of the debate over child care funding that can’t be ignored: who is doing the work.

Many Alabama child care centers are run and staffed by Black women, she says, whose labor has a long history of being undervalued. For child care providers, Emanuel says that means they are seen as babysitters rather than educators.

“A lot of the morale of these women is often times just diminished because everything about the system in child care, it’s saying to them repetitively that, ‘We don’t value you,’ and ‘You aren’t important,’” Emanuel says, “because when you do value a thing, then you’re going to tie the resources and the infrastructure in place to ensure a specific end.”

Bowles echoed Emanuel’s sentiments in Georgia, saying that the state’s historical reliance on unpaid labor is a factor in the undervaluing of child care work. There’s a disconnect between, she says, the desire of lawmakers to make the state appealing to businesses and policies that make life easier for workers — like affordable child care, health care and food.

Beyond her role as an advocate, Bowles also has the perspective of someone who sits on the board of directors for her local school district in Georgia. After the start of the coronavirus pandemic, she had a front row seat to how schools grappled with students losing ground in their academic and social skills when in-person classes restarted.

“When we get our young people in the class, we start to see the impact of those learning gaps, and I think that was most keen in our earliest learners,” Bowles says. “My district in particular has started to rethink a traditional public school district’s responsibility for [early childhood education]. We’re also starting to incorporate more pre-K classrooms, because it really is becoming the responsibility of all of us, not just day care centers, to close these gaps.”

Interplay occupies a unique place in the Bill Evans catalog. According to the liner notes, it marked the first time the legendary pianist led a quintet—and his first studio date fronting a group that included a horn player. Craft Recordings’ recent Original Jazz Classics (OJC) reissue may be the best way to revisit this spirited, upbeat session on vinyl, continuing the OJC tradition of excellent sound quality and consistently high production values.

From the official press materials:

“Continuing OJC’s commitment to quality, these reissues feature lacquers cut directly from the original stereo master tapes (AAA) by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, 180-gram vinyl pressed at RTI, and tip-on jackets faithfully reproducing the original artwork.

Originally launched in 1982 under Fantasy Records, Original Jazz Classics was revived in 2023 with a renewed emphasis on audiophile-grade reissues of landmark jazz recordings. With more than 850 titles reissued to date—drawing from the catalogs of Prestige, Riverside, Galaxy, Contemporary, Jazzland, Milestone, and others—OJC remains a reliable source for both jazz discovery and rediscovery.”

The new Craft Original Jazz Classics editions feature period-accurate labels, faithfully reproduced original cover art, and high-quality sleeve construction. Each LP is housed in an audiophile-grade, plastic-lined inner sleeve, underscoring Craft’s attention to both presentation and long-term record care.

The pressing reviewed here is dead quiet and perfectly centered—a detail that matters enormously on piano-driven recordings like this, where even slight off-center pressing can cause the pitch to waver. Here, the vinyl disappears in the best possible way, letting you simply bask in the effortless musicality of these legendary musicians.

As hinted at the start of this review, Interplay brings a noticeably different vibe compared to many other Bill Evans recordings. The band sounds more aggressive and, at times, downright on fire, with Freddie Hubbard’s sizzling trumpet clearly pushing the session’s energy higher. That spark seems to coax guitarist Jim Hall into some surprisingly hot territory. While Hall has never been one of my go-to guitarists, hearing this level of urgency and edge from his playing is a genuine revelation.

Yet it’s not all push-push bravado. This is still a Bill Evans record, and the playing remains unfailingly tasteful. The calmer moments shine just as brightly, highlighted by a positively gorgeous reading of the classic “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

I really like how Percy Heath’s vibrant walking bass lines provide steady propulsion from track to track. Even with the fairly discrete stereo spread that places him slightly to one side, his presence anchors the band. Freddie Hubbard and Jim Hall emerge from the opposite side of the soundstage, while the drums have a pleasing sense of space with crisp cymbals and natural sounding snare “bombs” delivered by the legendary Philly Joe Jones.

All in all, I am very pleased with the music here and expect to spend a lot more time with it now that it is in my collection. The tunes are wonderful, the performances exemplary, and the recording as presented on this Craft Recordings Interplay Original Jazz Classics edition is rich and round.

Where to buy: $39.99 at Amazon

Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc.  You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.

The “OpenClaw moment” represents the first time autonomous AI agents have successfully “escaped the lab” and moved into the hands of the general workforce.

Originally developed by Austrian engineer Peter Steinberger as a hobby project called “Clawdbot” in November 2025, the framework went through a rapid branding evolution to “Moltbot” before settling on “OpenClaw” in late January 2026.

Unlike previous chatbots, OpenClaw is designed with “hands”—the ability to execute shell commands, manage local files, and navigate messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Slack with persistent, root-level permissions.

This capability — and the uptake of what was then called Moltbot by many AI power users on X — directly led another entrepreneur, Matt Schlicht, to develop Moltbook, a social network where thousands of OpenClaw-powered agents autonomously sign up and interact.

The result has been a series of bizarre, unverified reports that have set the tech world ablaze: agents reportedly forming digital “religions” like Crustafarianism, hiring human micro-workers for digital tasks on another website, “Rentahuman,” and in some extreme unverified cases, attempting to lock their own human creators out of their credentials.

For IT leaders, the timing is critical. This week, the release of Claude Opus 4.6 and OpenAI’s Frontier agent creation platform signaled that the industry is moving from single agents to “agent teams.”

Simultaneously, the “SaaSpocalypse“—a massive market correction that wiped over $800 billion from software valuations—has proven that the traditional seat-based licensing model is under existential threat.

So how should enterprise technical decision-makers think through this fast-moving start to the year, and how can they start to understand what OpenClaw means for their businesses? I spoke to a small group of leaders at the forefront of enterprise AI adoption this week to get their thoughts. Here’s what I learned:

1. The death of over-engineering: productive AI works on “garbage” data

The prevailing wisdom once suggested that enterprises needed massive infrastructure overhauls and perfectly curated data sets before AI could be useful. The OpenClaw moment has shattered that myth, proving that modern models can navigate messy, uncurated data by treating “intelligence as a service.”

“The first takeaway is the amount of preparation that we need to do to make AI productive,” says Tanmai Gopal, Co-founder & CEO at PromptQL, a well-funded enterprise data engineering and consulting firm. “There is a surprising insight there: you actually don’t need to do too much preparation. Everybody thought we needed new software and new AI-native companies to come and do things. It will catalyze more disruption as leadership realizes that we don’t actually need to prep so much to get AI to be productive. We need to prep in different ways. You can just let it be and say, ‘go read all of this context and explore all of this data and tell me where there are dragons or flaws.’”

“The data is already there,” agreed Rajiv Dattani, co-founder of AIUC (the AI Underwriting Corporation), which has developed the AIUC-1 standard for AI agents as part of a consortium with leaders from Anthropic, Google, CISCO, Stanford and MIT. “But the compliance and the safeguards, and most importantly, the institutional trust is not. How can you ensure your agentic systems don’t go off and go full MechaHitler and start offending people or causing problems?”

Hence why Dattani’s company, AUIC, provides a certification standard, AIUC-1, that enterprises can put agents through in order to obtain insurance that backs them up in event they do cause problems. Without putting OpenClaw agents or other similar agents through such a process, enterprises are likely less ready to accept the consequences and costs of autonomy gone awry.

2. The rise of the “secret cyborgs”: shadow IT is the new normal

With OpenClaw amassing over 160,000 GitHub stars, employees are deploying local agents through the back door to stay productive.

This creates a “Shadow IT” crisis where agents often run with full user-level permissions, potentially creating backdoors into corporate systems (as Wharton School of Business Professor Ethan Mollick has written, many employees are secretly adopting AI to get ahead at work and obtain more leisure time, without informing superiors or the organization).

Now, executives are actually observing this trend in realtime as employees deploy OpenClaw on work machines without authorization.

“It’s not an isolated, rare thing; it’s happening across almost every organization,” warns Pukar Hamal, CEO & Founder of enterprise AI security diligence firm SecurityPal. “There are companies finding engineers who have given OpenClaw access to their devices. In larger enterprises, you’re going to notice that you’ve given root-level access to your machine. People want tools so tools can do their jobs, but enterprises are concerned.”

Brianne Kimmel, Founder & Managing Partner of venture capital firm Worklife Ventures, views this through a talent-retention lens. “People are trying these on evenings and weekends, and it’s hard for companies to ensure employees aren’t trying the latest technologies. From my perspective, we’ve seen how that really allows teams to stay sharp. I have always erred on the side of encouraging, especially early-career folks, to try all of the latest tools.”

3. The collapse of seat-based pricing as a viable business model

The 2026 “SaaSpocalypse” saw massive value erased from software indices as investors realized agents could replace human headcount.

If an autonomous agent can perform the work of dozens of human users, the traditional “per-seat” business model becomes a liability for legacy vendors.

“If you have AI that can log into a product and do all the work, why do you need 1,000 users at your company to have access to that tool?” Hamal asks. “Anyone that does user-based pricing—it’s probably a real concern. That’s probably what you’re seeing with the decay in SaaS valuations, because anybody that is indexed to users or discrete units of ‘jobs to be done’ needs to rethink their business model.”

4. Transitioning to an “AI coworker” model

The release of Claude Opus 4.6 and OpenAI’s Frontier this week already signals a shift from single agents to coordinated “agent teams.”

In this environment, the volume of AI-generated code and content is so high that traditional human-led review is no longer physically possible.

“Our senior engineers just cannot keep up with the volume of code being generated; they can’t do code reviews anymore,” Gopal notes. “Now we have an entirely different product development lifecycle where everyone needs to be trained to be a product person. Instead of doing code reviews, you work on a code review agent that people maintain. You’re looking at software that was 100% vibe-coded… it’s glitchy, it’s not perfect, but dude, it works.”

“The productivity increases are impressive,” Dattani concurred. “It’s clear that we are at the onset of a major shift in business globally, but each business will need to approach that slightly differently depending on their specific data security and safety requirements. Remember that even while you’re trying to outdo your competition, they are bound by the same rules and regulations as you — and it’s worth it to take time to get it right, start small, don’t try to do too much at once.”

5. Future outlook: voice interfaces, personality, and global scaling

The experts I spoke to all see a future where “vibe working” becomes the norm.

Local, personality-driven AI—including through voice interfaces like Wispr or ElevenLabs powered OpenClaw agents—will become the primary interface for work, while agents handle the heavy lifting of international expansion.

“Voice is the primary interface for AI; it keeps people off their phones and improves quality of life,” says Kimmel. “The more you can give AI a personality that you’ve uniquely designed, the better the experience. Previously, you’d need to hire a GM in a new country and build a translation team. Now, companies can think international from day one with a localized lens.”

Hamal adds a broader perspective on the global stakes: “We have knowledge worker AGI. It’s proven it can be done. Security is a concern that will rate-limit enterprise adoption, which means they’re more vulnerable to disruption from the low end of the market who don’t have the same concerns.”

Best practices for enterprise leaders seeking to embrace agentic AI capabilities at work

As OpenClaw and similar autonomous frameworks proliferate, IT departments must move beyond blanket bans toward structured governance. Use the following checklist to manage the “Agentic Wave” safely:

• Implement Identity-Based Governance: Every agent must have a strong, attributable identity tied to a human owner or team. Use frameworks like IBC (Identity, Boundaries, Context) to track who an agent is and what it is allowed to do at any moment.

• Enforce Sandbox Requirements: Prohibit OpenClaw from running on systems with access to live production data. All experimentation should occur in isolated, purpose-built sandboxes on segregated hardware.

• Audit Third-Party “Skills”: Recent reports indicate nearly 20% of skills in the ClawHub registry contain vulnerabilities or malicious code. Mandate a “white-list only” policy for approved agent plugins.

• Disable Unauthenticated Gateways: Early versions of OpenClaw allowed “none” as an authentication mode. Ensure all instances are updated to current versions where strong authentication is mandatory and enforced by default.

• Monitor for “Shadow Agents”: Use endpoint detection tools to scan for unauthorized OpenClaw installations or abnormal API traffic to external LLM providers.

• Update AI Policy for Autonomy: Standard Generative AI policies often fail to address “agents.” Update policies to explicitly define human-in-the-loop requirements for high-risk actions like financial transfers or file system modifications.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? It’s Saturday, so it’s a long one, and a few of the clues are tricky. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Lock lips
Answer: KISS

5A clue: Italian author of “Inferno,” “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso”
Answer: DANTE

6A clue: Cerebral ___ (part of the brain)
Answer: CORTEX

7A clue: Leave home with a stuffed pillowcase as luggage, perhaps
Answer: RUNAWAY

8A clue: No more for me, thanks”
Answer: IMGOOD

9A clue: Fancy fabrics
Answer: SILKS

10A clue: Leg joint
Answer: KNEE

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Bars sung in a bar
Answer: KARAOKE

2D clue: How the animals boarded Noah’s Ark
Answer: INTWOS

3D clue: Stand in good ___
Answer: STEAD

4D clue: Smokin’ hot
Answer: SEXY

5D clue: Computer attachment
Answer: DONGLE

6D clue: Yotam Ottolenghi called it “the one spice I could never give up”
Answer: CUMIN

7D clue: Hazard
Answer: RISK