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Eli Lilly accounted for 45% of biopharma buyouts announced so far in ’26 by the 15 largest pharma/biopharma companies. Will $LLY continue this pace through the rest of ’26 & throughout ’27? More data below:

It’s finally happening — this week, we are (probably) about to see Apple’s first foldable iPhone, more than five years after Samsung launched its first foldable phone.

Apple’s annual iPhone release events are always interesting in one way or another, but this year’s presentation is one of the most anticipated in a while. As Tim Cook hands off the CEO role to former Vice President of Hardware Engineering John Ternus, people have high expectations for Apple’s next devices, especially since the company is embracing an entirely new form factor.

While Apple is usually tight-lipped about its product launches, there are always inevitable leaks, giving us insight into what we might see during the September 9 Apple event. While the foldable iPhone is most exciting, we’re also anticipating news about AirPods, HomePods, and the non-foldable iPhone 18 line.

What we think we know so far about the foldable “iPhone Ultra”

If Apple has made its consumers wait over half a decade for it to enter the foldable market, its first attempt had better be good — especially since reports indicate that the phone will cost more than $2,000. At least it’s not as pricey as the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro headset, and unlike headsets, people actually buy smartphones.

The good news is that people who claim to be early testers of the device have reported back positive experiences. According to Bloomberg’s Apple insider Mark Gurman, the foldable iPhone has a premium feel, fits nicely into a pocket, and opens up into a wide, iPad-like display. The phone is expected to sport a 5.5″ cover display, which expands to 7.8″ when the screen is unfolded. When folded in, the device will look shorter and wider than a typical iPhone.

To make hardware that’s still sleek enough to pocket when folded, Apple has had to make some concessions. The device reportedly skips the telephoto camera, which could be disappointing to the kind of consumers who are willing to open their pockets for a phone that’s expensive enough to feed a family for months. However, the phone is expected to have a dual-lens rear camera system with a main and an ultra-wide lens, similar to what’s on Apple’s more basic iPhones.

Rumor has it that Apple will include MagSafe, the magnetic wireless charging and accessory system, but that it will forego Face ID to save space, relying instead on a Touch ID fingerprint button on the phone’s side. This shouldn’t be a huge concession — touching a button is about as easy as looking at a screen — but it might take some getting used to if you’ve become accustomed to Face ID.

Like other foldable phones, the iPhone Ultra is expected to support side-by-side multitasking, letting you run two apps at once, one on each half of the unfolded screen. Even though it’ll resemble a small iPad when opened up, it will still run iOS rather than iPadOS, though shouldn’t be cause for concern, since Apple’s newest chips are powerful enough to handle it. In fact, the same chip reportedly powers Apple’s budget MacBook Neo laptop.

A pain point for foldable phone users thus far has been the dreaded “crease.” With other companies’ foldable phones, you can see the evidence when you open the phone that this isn’t your standard display. It’s a hard problem to solve and one that maybe isn’t worth the technical effort, though Apple has supposedly created a display where the crease isn’t as visible.

Don’t worry, you can still get a new iPhone that doesn’t fold

If foldables aren’t your thing — or if you don’t want to spend double the price on your next phone — don’t worry. Apple is also expected to release some new devices in the iPhone 18 line. We’ve heard leaks about the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, but not much yet about the standard iPhone 18, which is predicted to arrive six months after the September event. That would be a first for Apple — releasing the premium models before the standard one.

Siri HomePods? AirPods with cameras?

Now that Apple is finally moving forward with its Gemini-powered Siri AI update, the company is also expected to refresh the HomePod, a smart speaker and Apple’s answer to devices like the Amazon Echo line.

References to unreleased products, including new HomePods, were recently spotted by users digging through a macOS preview build.

The most surprising find, however, is that Apple appears to be working on AirPods with built-in cameras. In that same macOS preview, researcher Aaron Perris found a video showing someone wearing the AirPods and picking up a book.

“With Visual Intelligence, your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later,” a voiceover in the video says.

While some users may be skittish about using a device that can see what they see — comparisons to Meta’s maligned “pervert glasses” are inevitable — we have some degree of hope that a company like Apple, which has built its brand on privacy, will do better.

Gurman has reported that “the cameras essentially act as eyes for the Siri digital assistant and aren’t designed to take photos or video.” Instead, the earbuds’ components allow it to “capture visual information in low resolution.”

After a decade of building its business through Japanese wholesale partners, the brand made its debut in Tokyo this summer and is eyeing further retail growth in Asia and the U.S.

French ready-to-wear eyewear brand Izipizi is taking its next step in Asia with a stand-alone store on Tokyo’s Cat Street, its first retail location in the region, as well as part of a bigger bet on the continued globalization of its accessible, fashion-oriented glasses.

The store, which opened last July in the neighborhood between Shibuya and Harajuku, marks a new phase for the company, which has sold in Japan through local wholesale partner Ideaport for the past decade.

The brand’s Japanese business has been built through retailers including Beams and Isetan, but now it has its own address in one of Tokyo’s busiest fashion and shopping districts.

“We have always been willing to develop worldwide for Izipizi — meaning not only focused on Europe or France but selling our products all over the world,” said cofounder Charles Brun. The former investment banker studied Japanese in junior high, and has always had an affinity for the culture. “I fell in love with Japan pretty young, and it was my personal dream to open a store there,” Brun said. “But also Tokyo is such an important city in the worldwide fashion aspect, alongside London, Paris, New York.”

The timing also gives the company a way to test how its retail model will translate to Asia.

So far, Brun said, the customer mix has been evenly divided between Japanese shoppers and tourists from Europe, the U.S. and Australia.

That international audience is particularly relevant to a company whose growth strategy has increasingly been built around becoming a fashion accessories brand rather than simply an eyewear firm.

Izipizi sells nonprescription “ready-to-wear” glasses, with prices topping out at around 90 euros, putting it at a lower price point than many of the indie, fashion-oriented eyewear brands that have exploded in popularity over the past decade.

The company was founded in 2010 as See Concept, and spent its first six years under that name before changing it to the much catchier — and searchable — Izipizi in January 2017. The rebrand was an important pivot in helping the founders define what they wanted the company to be.

“What we noticed with See Concept is that nobody could remember it,” Brun said. “We wanted a different name that people could remember, and which was more, I would say, a philosophy of life.”

It was meant to communicate a brand that was uncomplicated and accessible, both at a product and retail level. “We want to make sure everything is easy,” Brun said. “It explains who we are and how we work. We are not snobs. We are not posh. And, in one sense, we are a bit anti-fashion because we want to be simple and easy to work with for our team, our partners and our customers.”

Plus, it’s fun. “It’s an expression we know from childhood — easy, peasy, lemon squeezy,” he said.

The idea of simplicity is part of the overall business strategy. Rather than competing directly with opticians, Izipizi has positioned its glasses as fashion accessories that can be found everywhere from fashion and design stores to museums, resorts, sports stores and children’s stores, as well as independent opticians. In the U.S., New York’s MoMa museum was one of its first customers; now the brand can be found everywhere from Bloomingdale’s to Barnes & Noble’s most upscale locations, such as the Hamptons.

The brand’s relationship with optical retailers has also evolved. Brun said opticians initially viewed the low-priced, ready-to-wear product skeptically, but collaborations and growing consumer recognition as a fashion proposition have helped boost customer requests for the line.

Today, the company is selective about where it sells. In France, it works with roughly 1,200 independent high-end optical stores out of around 12,000 nationwide — just about one-tenth of the market.

“We only work with independent high-end optic stores,” Brun said.

The Tokyo opening is also offering Izipizi a chance to develop market-specific products for the region, including lighter-tinted sunglasses for Japan. Brun said that darker lenses have a cultural association in the country, making lighter lenses necessary to appeal to local consumers.

As a result, the company has developed Japan-specific colors and transparent frames, as well as collaborated with Japanese fashion label Engineered Garments. That collaboration, Brun said, sold out in Japan within two days.

Thus the first step in Japan is giving the company a larger foothold for its wider Asia ambitions.

Izipizi already works with partners in South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Indonesia, where they have tested the waters with pop-ups or kiosks.

The company is currently in discussions with its Korean partner to open a mono-brand store in Seoul sometime next year, likely in a high-end mall. They are also in discussions with potential partners in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam and considering retail rollouts in those countries between 2027 and 2028.

“It’s really a trendy region, and it’s a growing region,” Brun said. “There are more tourists going to Asia from all over the world and, of course, the local population is also growing. So I think tomorrow the spending power will be in these countries, with all the trendiness coming from South Korea and Japan.

“So, if you’re able to be strong in Japan and [South] Korea, it helps you for Asia, but it also helps you for the rest of the world,” he said.

China, where Izipizi previously operated with a partner it ultimately dropped, could return to the mix with a new wholesale partner around 2028.

“I think you really have to adapt your brand for these markets,” Brun said of the company’s earlier experience in China. “And I think this is something we didn’t do enough at that time.”

The company is also looking beyond Asia. The U.S. is already its second-largest market after France, where Izipizi has a 10-person U.S. subsidiary, a local warehouse and around 600 wholesale customers.

Brun is now looking for its first U.S. stand-alone store, most likely in New York City. He’s currently scouting locations, and is eyeing a late 2027 or early 2028 opening.

Miami, Los Angeles, Austin and Chicago are also on the longer-term list, with the potential for as many as 50 stores across the country, he said.

But the company is wary of expanding too quickly, particularly in the U.S., where rents and operating costs can make physical retail a significant risk for an independent European brand.

“We will take our time because rents in the U.S. are huge,” Brun said. “We want the first store to be a success.”

While the company has big brand ambitions, Brun emphasizes that “easy peasy” is the core philosophy, and that the brand has grown by staying consistently product-focused rather than trying to expand rapidly.

They are also a certified B-Corp, and have made gains to switch to recycled or bio-based plastics, and are pursuing the renewed B-Corp status under the newer, more rigorous rules that were launched last year.

The company has been asked repeatedly whether it might expand into ready-to-wear clothing, but aside from caps and T-shirts for its staff, has no plans to do so.

“We’ve been thinking about [developing clothing], but there’s a brand we always loved,” he said.

Brun pointed to the Swatch on his wrist as testimonial.

“Swatch for us is a huge model. Swatch has always been doing watches, and I believe this is also why they are successful,” he said. “We had a mentor who was always telling us, ‘Stay focused, stay focused, and this is how you will succeed.'”

Tens of millions of foreigners visit each year and domestic travel is rising, but some visitors are tightfisted

GUILIN, China—More than a millennium ago, the Tang dynasty writer Han Yu said of Guilin’s landscape, “The river forms a blue-green silk ribbon, the mountains are like jade hairpins.”

Today, the scene in China’s rugged south is inspiring more than just poets.

Economic planners see the potential for Guilin and other destinations to drive growth. China’s latest five-year plan, released this year, calls for making the nation a “tourism powerhouse.”

Tourism checks a lot of boxes for Beijing’s planners. It is a way of encouraging Chinese people to spend when many are holding back amid slowing economic momentum. When foreign tourists visit, their spending is considered an export—and it is less politically sensitive than the export of manufactured goods that is brewing tensions with China’s trade partners.

Guo Jiehui, a 35-year-old teacher from Shenzhen, recently brought her 9-year-old son to the scenic heart of Guilin for three days. She said she has cut back on buying clothing and the like in recent years but takes a few trips a year to give her son new experiences.

“We are willing to invest in travel,” she said.

Morgan Stanley expects China’s tourism and travel revenue—a figure that covers domestic and foreign visitors as well as business travelers—to make up 6.7% of the country’s gross domestic product by 2030, compared with 4.8% in 2024. If so, China’s tourism revenue would rise to about $1.8 trillion in 2030 from roughly $1 trillion last year.

In recent years, China has expanded visa-free entry, although Americans generally still need a visa to visit. Nearly 23 million foreigners entered China in the first half of 2026, up 20% from the same period a year prior, and more than three-quarters of them entered visa-free, according to China’s immigration agency. Beijing hopes they will bring home favorable impressions, spreading China’s soft power abroad.

Still, a few million additional foreign tourists add relatively little to a huge economy such as China’s. Other countries in the region such as Japan and Thailand are competing aggressively for foreign travelers’ dollars.

As for domestic travel, it is growing too—but many Chinese are stingy spenders on the road. Although Chinese residents made nearly 3.5 billion trips domestically in the first half of 2026, up 5.4% from the same period last year, their spending was up only 2% to around $478 billion, according to China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

At a coffee shop nestled in the rice paddies of Guilin’s Yangshuo county, flocks of visitors from different parts of the country engaged in one of Chinese tourists’ favorite low-cost activities: taking lots of pictures. They posed in front of props such as a hot-air balloon, an upright piano or a staircase going to nowhere.

It is called “da ka,” or punching a card, like workers do to prove they showed up—except here the evidence is needed for tourists’ social-media posts.

Further up the Yulong River, the Fuli Bridge, an old stone arch nicknamed “Moon Bridge” for its round reflection in the water, is another popular spot to pose for pictures or drone videos. But many Chinese tourists nowadays skip the bamboo-raft river cruise, which costs about $30 for two people, according to Wu Fandong, a 45-year-old raftsman.

“They travel more, but they spend less money,” said Wu.

International visitors also tend to spend less in China. China received 35 million foreign visitors last year, roughly half as many as the U.S., and international tourists to China spent about $2,200 each, less than two-thirds of what foreign tourists spent in the U.S., according to an analysis by Trip.com, a Chinese online travel platform.

Trip.com says there is plenty of room to court foreigners and turn tourism into a bigger growth driver.

At Yangshuo Sugar House, a luxury resort housed in a former sugar mill, rooms start at around $300 a night. Guests can lounge at a swimming pool nestled amid the poet’s “jade hairpin” mountains or try a $300-a-person meal. Foreign visitors made up 37% of guests at the hotel this year through July, compared with 21% in the same period last year. International guests tend to stay longer and immerse themselves more than domestic visitors, said the resort’s general manager, Ken Luo.

Isabelle Heizmann, a 36-year-old from Germany, visited China for the first time as part of a tour group making stops in Beijing, Shanghai, Guilin and Hong Kong. She enjoyed the food in China, especially Peking roast duck, and the diversity of scenery, from the skyscrapers of Shanghai to the natural landscape of Yangshuo. A big draw for her was visa-free travel, which China granted to German passport holders at the end of 2023.

“That’s why I didn’t come earlier,” she said.

The U.S. blockade and dwindling supplies already on the water are squeezing Tehran’s most important export earner

DUBAI—Iran’s oil export revenue is drying up as a U.S. naval blockade strangles shipments from the Persian Gulf and offshore stockpiles feeding China dwindle, putting more pressure on Tehran’s battered economy.

No Iranian crude has crossed the blockade since it was reinstated by the U.S. Navy in mid-July, according to ship tracker Kpler. Iran is still loading small amounts of oil onto tankers, but those barrels remain trapped inside the Gulf.

Meanwhile, the volume of Iranian crude already on vessels outside the blockade—a trove that is still generating revenue for Tehran—has fallen to around 29 million barrels from around 90 million barrels in mid-July and could run out next month, according to Kpler. Gulf oil officials, who run checks to see what their customers are buying before setting the monthly price for their oil, said they have found few Iranian cargoes changing hands.

Six months into the war, the oil squeeze is depriving Tehran of its main source of foreign currency as the value of the Iranian rial plunges, inflation soars and the economy slides deeper into crisis.

It is also testing Washington’s bet that greater economic pain will force concessions. Gulf officials and analysts warn the tightening vise could instead provoke more Iranian retaliation. On Saturday, the U.S. struck three Iranian oil tankers after Iran launched ballistic missiles toward two Navy warships, including an aircraft carrier.

“Now, much will depend on the degree of economic pain that the Iranian regime is willing to bear to achieve its military and geopolitical objectives,” said Hamad Hussain, an economist at Capital Economics.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent touted the squeeze Friday with a post on X accompanied by a “Jaws”-style graphic of a shark tearing into a chart of Iran’s falling oil exports and currency.

Roughly a third of Iran’s state budget is typically funded by oil revenue. Oil sales also directly help finance the regime’s military. The U.S. Treasury says the armed forces, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, use dedicated companies and shadow-fleet networks to sell crude and supplement their budgets.

Iran loaded 255,000 barrels a day on vessels inside the Gulf in August, 85% below the February-April average, Kpler data shows. Those newly loaded barrels remain trapped behind the blockade line and haven’t made their way toward buyers.

The diplomatic effort to end the war that led to a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran in mid-June, including a weekslong pause in the blockade, allowed Tehran to move substantial volumes of oil overseas for later delivery. The country is still living off the profit from those barrels.

“The process of selling oil and delivering it to customers was carried out thousands of kilometers away from the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman,” Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said Friday.

But now that lifeline is disappearing. Kpler estimates that current deliveries of around a million barrels a day—which mostly go to China—could exhaust the store of Iranian oil on the water by mid-October. Payments for previously delivered cargoes would likely dry up by mid-December.

Even those payments could become harder to collect. Sanctions under Washington’s new economic pressure campaign are targeting banks and other financial channels that facilitate Iranian transactions.

Some Chinese buyers are turning to Saudi, Iraqi and United Arab Emirates crude, Gulf energy officials said. In some cases, Iranian oil now costs refiners more than competing supplies due to its relative scarcity, they said. Iraq has offered discounts of nearly $30 a barrel on some grades. Brent crude was trading at around $97 a barrel Monday.

The blockade is also forcing Iran to cut some production. Oil stockpiles haven’t risen much, suggesting Iran has brought its output down closer to what it needs at home, said Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude-oil analysis at Kpler. That suggests the scenario analysts predicted during the initial blockade this spring—that Iran would have to pare back output to keep its backed-up oil from hitting the “tank tops” of available storage—is playing out.

Overland routes offer little relief. It is only possible to move small amounts of oil by truck or rail compared with seaborne exports and Iran mostly lacks wagons designed for crude or refined products. Iran could move no more than 40,000 barrels a day via trucks, a sliver of its prewar exports of close to 2 million barrels a day, Falakshahi said.

The pressure extends to petrochemicals. The sector, Iran’s second-largest source of foreign-currency earnings after oil, also depends heavily on seaborne exports. By August, loadings had fallen by about two-thirds from early 2026, Kpler estimates.

By contrast, other Gulf producers have kept significant volumes flowing despite the conflict, with the U.S. guiding convoys through the Strait of Hormuz, and Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. routing more crude through pipelines that bypass the waterway.

The Iranian export squeeze is deepening the economic crisis in a country where official inflation is running at more than 80% year-over-year. The International Monetary Fund forecasts a 5.4% economic contraction this year, the country’s worst since the 1980s.

Falling exports deprive Tehran of the hard currency it needs to support the rial and pay for imports, including raw materials for factories. That makes imports more expensive and fuels inflation. The rial has lost almost 15% of its value against the dollar since President Trump announced his economic squeeze campaign in August, Hussain said.

Iran’s overall trade hasn’t stopped entirely. The regime exported nearly $15 billion of non-oil goods between mid-March and mid-August, according to Iranian media, though that value is down from last year.

But a major commercial gateway has recently narrowed. Official trade through the U.A.E. has largely stopped after the country said last month it would suspend financial and economic transactions with Iran, officials familiar with the matter said, although some trade continues through shadow companies. Trade is also shifting through Turkey, Iraq, Oman and Pakistan, but that adds time and expense.

Gulf officials and analysts see little sign that the mounting economic pressure will force Tehran to relent. Saudi officials say Iran is also providing more weapons, personnel and intelligence support to its Houthi allies in Yemen, increasing the threat to Saudi shipping and infrastructure, and threatening another shipping chokepoint.

“The U.S. campaign will have a significant effect on the average Iranian household. But in terms of Iran capitulating at the negotiating table? I have a lot of doubts,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The evidence we have suggests the Iranian regime is likely to resist.”