The Balance - February 17, 2026
What Shanu is writing about, reading, observing, and listening to...
This is a publication that focuses on what Shanu finds interesting that span markets, finance, investing, sustainability, politics, and more. This includes monthly newsletters or published pieces on sustainable investing! To follow along my writing, subscribe below:
✍🏽Author's Note...
Personal Updates: Happy New Year and welcome to the first Balance of 2026! Apologies for the radio silence — between the holidays and getting settled into my new home in London, it’s been a busy stretch. Lot of good content piled up though so let’s get into it.
I went back on Redefining Energy to discuss how clean energy stocks crushed the major indices in 2025, but the headline number hides a critical split. We broke down why equipment makers like GE Vernova and Bloom Energy have gone ballistic while utilities lag behind, and whether the hyperscaler power grab is rational or the latest verse of “as long as the music’s playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”
My good friend Samuel Merlin and the Hannam & Partners team hosted 200 power & energy investors, execs, and management teams last week for a discussion on data center infrastructure and power markets. The big takeaway: the demand debate is over — signed DC leases hit 16.4 GW in 2025 vs 3.3 GW y/y. The conversation has moved to “who can actually deliver.” Great event, engaged audience, and a topic that’s evolving fast.
Must Watch/Read Entertainment:
Breakneck by Dan Wang — Finished this and thought it was an excellent read. In short: China is an engineering state that builds at staggering scale; the US is a lawyerly society that blocks by default. Both approaches have massive costs. China’s engineering mindset built world-class infrastructure — bridges, highways, cleantech — but also produced the one-child policy and zero-COVID, which Wang goes into brutal detail on. The US protects individual rights and leads in science and digital innovation but can’t build physical things anymore. Wang’s argument is that pluralism is America’s real edge, but it means nothing if the country can’t manufacture, can’t build housing, and can’t produce enough ships and munitions to back up its commitments. A more balanced take on US vs. China than most — where there’s usually just bias from the POV of the author. Highly recommend!
The Pitt Season 2 (HBO Max): Off to a great start — picked up right where it left off. We also really loved His & Hers (Netflix) - a whodunnit murder mystery with a few twists. I’m warming up on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms after the last two episodes, but OFF on Season 4 of Industry (last ep slight redemption), which is a bummer because I thought seasons 2 and 3 of Industry were prestige TV-level.
The Traitors (Peacock — US / BBC — UK): My wife’s and my guilty pleasure right now. The premise is simple — a group of contestants live in a Scottish castle, but a few are secretly chosen as “Traitors” who eliminate players overnight. Everyone else (“Faithfuls”) has to figure out who the Traitors are through roundtable discussions and vote them out before they’re picked off. Both the US version (seasons 2, 3, and 4) and UK version (season 2) are worth watching.
📊 Pictures, Charts, & Graphs
Source. “Once the second-most common U.S. restaurant type, pizzerias are now outnumbered by coffee shops and Mexican food eateries. Fleets of delivery drivers helped make pizza a takeout staple, but today’s pizza shops are engaged in price wars — with one another and other kinds of fast food.”
Seen via tweet. “Disability reporting at elite universities has surged — Stanford now at 38% of undergraduates, up from single digits a decade ago. Brown (22%), Harvard (21%), and Dartmouth (16%) have seen similar climbs, while MIT sits at 8%.” Meanwhile, at public two-year colleges, just 3-4% of students receive accommodations.
Source. “According to US Census Bureau data, department store sales peaked around the turn of the century and have trended lower ever since, as retail supercenters, warehouse clubs, and e-commerce ate into their business.” Saks Global nearing bankruptcy as this chart was published feels like the last chapter of a 25-year story.
Source. “On aggregate, very recent survey data from Ipsos Mori show that people are more likely to say that last year was bad for their country than to say it was bad for them and their family. Every country, with the exception of Singapore, lies below the line where these responses would be even.” Hannah Ritchie calls this the “I’m okay, but you’re not okay” effect. The gap is enormous in some countries — 85% of French respondents said it was a bad year for France, but only 45% said it was bad for them personally. Her argument: we have complete knowledge of our own lives but rely on overwhelmingly negative news coverage for national/global perspectives. Worth sitting with.
Source. “On average, infrastructure-related jobs are projected to grow 5% in the next 10 years, a growth rate that outpaces the estimated 3% nationwide average over the same period.” Skilled trades (electricians +9.5%, HVAC technicians +8.1%) are projected to grow ~3x the national average. The AI boom is creating physical-world jobs faster than it’s automating knowledge work.
Seen via tweet. “A new analysis of 44,211 daily diaries from 479 adolescents over 100 days finds that the majority of adolescents (60%) experienced small but consistently negative effects of social media, suggesting that social media use is a notable contributor to mental health issues. However, a minority (13.6%) experienced simultaneously harms and benefits across different dimensions.” The “diverse platforms, diverse effects” framing is important here — TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and WhatsApp each showed different effect profiles. Not all social media is created equal but the net signal is clearly negative.
Source. “40 million Americans now live alone, ¬30% of households.“ Up from roughly 17% in 1970.
Source. “In only about 2.5 years, the percentage of US employees who use AI every day in their professional lives has tripled from 4% to 12%, while the share using it at least ‘a few times a week’ or ‘a few times a year’ have both more than doubled, per Gallup’s latest data.” The sector breakdown tells the real story: nearly one-third of tech workers report daily AI use versus just 8% in government.
Source. “Sports ticket prices skyrocketed over the last decade across the country’s hottest leagues.” NFL prices nearly tripled from $75 to $205.
Source. “Super Bowl commercials have become must-have cultural currency, evolving from modest 30-second spots in 1967 — priced around $37,500 — to explosive $7 million+ buys by 2023.”
Source. “Anthropic adoption grew from 16.7% to 19.5%, one of its largest monthly gains since we started tracking. One in five businesses on Ramp now pays for Anthropic (a year ago, it was one in 25). Meanwhile, OpenAI adoption slipped from 36.8% to 35.9%. Google held steady at 4.5%.”
Source. “Legalization has led to much more use. Surveys suggest that about 18 million people in the United States have used marijuana almost daily in recent years — up from around six million in 2012 and less than one million in 1992. More Americans now use marijuana daily than alcohol.“ Each year, nearly 2.8 million people suffer from cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. Hospital visits for marijuana-linked paranoia and chronic psychotic disorders have also increased.
📰 Headlines, Figures, Stats, and Quotes...
🔥 AI & Big Tech
OpenAI plans to test clearly labeled ads at the bottom of answers for logged-in adults in the U.S., initially limited to Free and ChatGPT Go users; Plus/Pro/Business/Enterprise/Edu will remain ad-free (OpenAI)
OpenAI’s enterprise customers now account for 40% of the business, up from 25% last year (OpenAI)
Musk merges SpaceX and xAI in a $1.25T tie-up ahead of a mega IPO — an all-stock deal valuing SpaceX at ~$1T and xAI at ~$250B, folding rockets, Starlink, X, and Grok under one roof (Reuters)
Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.6, designed for coding and higher-quality professional outputs; roughly 80% of Anthropic’s business comes from enterprise customers (1440)
💼 Business & Money
Stan Kroenke became the largest private landowner in America after purchasing 937,000 acres of ranchland in New Mexico, bringing his total holdings to 2.7 million acres across the West (The Land Report)
NBC says Super Bowl LX ads are averaging ~$8M, with some topping $10M (ABC News)
Amazon announced it will shutter all 72 Amazon Fresh supermarkets and Amazon Go convenience stores nationwide, shifting toward grocery delivery and Whole Foods expansion (1440)
US consumer confidence fell to its lowest level since 2014 — the gauge dropped to 84.5, below economists’ expectations (Conference Board)
🏥 Health
Screen-time damage: Children with heavy screen exposure before turning two showed slower decision-making at eight and higher anxiety symptoms at thirteen (The Lancet)
The five-year cancer survival rate in the US has reached 70% for the first time, up from 49% in the mid-1970s and 63% in the mid-1990s. The ACS attributes the rise to wider screening, lower smoking rates, and advances in targeted and immunotherapy treatments
Survival highest for thyroid (98%), prostate (98%), melanoma (95%), and breast (92%); lowest for lung (28%), liver (22%), esophagus (22%), and pancreas (13%)
While nearly 18% of U.S. adults have taken a GLP-1 for weight loss or to treat a chronic condition, about half will stop taking it within a year. Studies show people typically regain lost weight within about 1.5 years; improvements in blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol are reversed (WSJ)
🗳️ Politics & Society
Spain became the first European country to ban social media for teens — people under 16 will no longer be able to access many platforms, holding tech companies responsible for harm to users (BBC)
🎭 Culture, Sports & Entertainment
Mike Tomlin stepped down as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, ending a 19-year run in which he never had a losing season (ESPN)
Hans Zimmer will compose the music for HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter series (HBO)
Alex Honnold successfully scaled the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan, which he admitted he did for an “embarrassingly small amount” of money (Morning Brew)
Super Bowl LX averaged 124.9 million viewers, second-most watched ever; Bad Bunny’s halftime show drew 128.2 million viewers, fourth-most watched (1440)
📖 Articles...
Something Big Is Happening (Matt Shumer): Shumer argues we’re at a COVID-like inflection point where most people don’t yet grasp what’s coming. The specifics are what make this worth reading: models now complete tasks that take human experts 5+ hours, GPT-5.3 Codex contributed to its own development, and the task duration AI can handle is doubling every 4-7 months. He cites predictions of 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs being at risk within 1-5 years, and “nothing that can be done on a computer is safe in the medium term.” He also makes a practical point about the gap between free-tier and premium-tier AI capabilities explaining why public skepticism hasn’t caught up to reality.
Our AI Future Is Already Here, It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed (WSJ): The piece examines the growing divide between organizations and workers who have embedded AI into daily workflows and those still on the sidelines. Read alongside the Gallup data showing 49% of American workers have never used AI professionally and the picture becomes clear: the distribution gap is already creating a two-tier workforce.
6 Intentions For 2026 (Sahil Bloom): Instead of resolutions, Bloom makes a case for broad directional intentions. My favorites: “Fall in love with the final 5%” (the argument that extraordinary results emerge because few persist through the unsexy end stages) and “Embrace your most selfish pursuits” (the paradox that selfish work — building what you wish existed — often produces the greatest value for others).
🎙️ Podcasts & Videos…
Satya Nadella on AI’s Business Revolution: What Happens to SaaS, OpenAI, and Microsoft? (All-In Podcast, live from Davos): Nadella’s framing: Microsoft added ~$90 billion in revenue and doubled profits over four years with a roughly flat employee count is his proof case for AI-driven productivity. On SaaS: he doesn’t say it’s dead but describes the shift clearly and that value is migrating from seat-based licensing to orchestration layers and AI agents. Microsoft is building “Agent 365”: AI entities with digital identities that integrate into enterprise workflows.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis: AI’s Next Breakthroughs, AGI Timeline, Google’s AI Glasses Bet (Big Technology Podcast, live from Davos): Hassabis explicitly pushes back on Altman (OpenAI) and Amodei’s (Anthropic) timelines — he puts AGI at 5-10 years out and defines it rigorously as “a system that can exhibit all the cognitive capabilities humans can,” including Einstein-level scientific conjectures and creating entirely new artistic genres. He identifies three specific gaps in current systems: continual learning (models have a “goldfish brain” that can’t update from new information), better memory systems (mimicking how biological brains selectively store information), and long-term reasoning across extended timeframes. The AI glasses segment is interesting too — he argues Google Glass failed from lacking a killer app, not just hardware issues, and that a universal AI assistant provides that app now.
How to Reclaim Your Brain in 2026 — Dr. Andrew Huberman (Modern Wisdom): Huberman’s central argument: cortisol isn’t the enemy, it’s the timing that matters. A healthy curve shows high cortisol in the morning (energy, alertness) that declines throughout the day. The protocol: bright light within the first hour of waking boosts morning cortisol by up to 50%, then dim to candlelight-level (1-3 lux) in the final 2-4 hours before bed. Two things I didn’t know: (1) eating starchy carbs in the evening actually suppresses cortisol and helps sleep and (2) intense late-afternoon/evening workouts can triple or quadruple cortisol for hours, which won’t necessarily ruin that night’s sleep but will blunt the next morning’s cortisol peak, leaving you sluggish and gradually shifting your rhythm. Also endorses slow side-to-side eye movements for calming racing minds before bed.
Gokul Rajaram — Lessons from Investing in 700 Companies (Invest Like the Best): Rajaram is one of the most prolific angel investors in tech (DoorDash, Figma, Coinbase among hundreds) and this is pattern recognition at scale. Three standout arguments: (1) the PM job is narrowing to owning the “why” behind what gets built and judging whether AI output is good enough to ship. In an era of infinite productivity, that judgment is the only durable human skill. (2) Seat-based software companies like Zendesk are the most exposed to AI disruption because you can replace 30 of 50 seats with AI agents incrementally, no rip-and-replace needed. Many will need to go private to survive the pricing transition. (3) AI startups building on top of legacy systems of record are getting cut off. Slack blocked Glean’s API access, others are bundling agents for free. The only viable path for AI-native companies is to build the entire platform including the system of record.
Elon’s Entire Tech Tree Is Converging Right Now (Cheeky Pint): John Collison (Stripe co-founder) and Dwarkesh Patel sit down with Musk, and the thesis is in the title: SpaceX, xAI, Tesla, Starlink, and Optimus form a mutually reinforcing technology ecosystem. Elon’s boldest claim: “by far the cheapest place to put AI will be space in 36 months or less” — solar efficiency in orbit is dramatically superior with no weather, atmosphere, or night cycles, and energy is the binding constraint on AI scaling. The logic chain: space-based solar powers GPU clusters → superior AI improves robot (Optimus) control → robots build power plants and manufacturing infrastructure → manufacturing enables more satellite launches. Each system accelerates the others. Musk calls humanoid robots an “infinite money glitch” for solving Earth-based labor constraints and argues the US can’t compete with China’s population advantage using humans alone.
Ben Thompson on AI Ads, the End of SaaS, and the Future of Media (Cheeky Pint): Another Cheeky Pint episode and also excellent. Thompson’s take on AI ads is counterintuitive: showing context-relevant ads inside ChatGPT creates suspicion and conflicts of interest. The better model is Meta’s — use AI conversations to build rich user profiles, then serve ads on other surfaces (YouTube, Instagram). He calls Meta’s advertising engine “the most successful agent system in the world.” On SaaS: he nuances the “SaaS is dead” narrative — the growth story is over, not software itself. The distinction is between systems-of-record (safer) and seat-based models (vulnerable). His reasoning: if headcount stalls or shrinks, per-seat pricing collapses. AI means every company can write infinite software, which upends the siloed SaaS ecosystem.