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- At this week’s GTC, the real story is unlikely to be a single hero chip; it should be a sharper roadmap from Blackwell into Rubin, Rubin Ultra and Feynman. Nvidia has already positioned the March 16 keynote as a full-stack AI event, and it formally launched Rubin in January as the post-Blackwell platform; public reporting from last year’s GTC placed Rubin Ultra in 2027 and Feynman in 2028. What matters now is whether Nvidia turns those names into a visible cadence of racks, fabrics and workload-specific products, rather than a sequence of distant chip labels.

- Expect the keynote to emphasize that Rubin is not one chip but a six-part system architecture: Vera CPU, Rubin GPU, NVLink 6, ConnectX-9, BlueField-4 and Spectrum-6. Nvidia says Rubin is designed to cut inference token cost by up to 10x versus Blackwell and that partner systems begin shipping in 2H26; its product materials also stress software continuity, so the migration path matters as much as raw performance. The deeper point is that GTC should focus on system-level continuity—how customers move from GB200/GB300 into Rubin, and then into Rubin Ultra / Kyber-scale deployments, without breaking the stack.

- From there, the likeliest expansion is a broader, disaggregated inference family. Nvidia has already introduced Rubin CPX, a new class of GPU for million-token coding and generative video, with dedicated compute trays and NVL144 CPX racks; Dynamo already supports disaggregated serving with vLLM and SGLang; and BlueField-4 now underpins the new Inference Context Memory Storage Platform for KV-cache and long-horizon agent memory. Put together, that points to a GTC message that inference is being broken into separate jobs—training, prefill, decode, context storage and orchestration—each with its own optimized silicon or software layer.

- The most important unannounced product to watch is a Groq-derived low-latency inference chip—effectively an Nvidia answer to the LPU idea. Groq and Nvidia disclosed a non-exclusive inference-technology licensing agreement in December, along with the move of founder Jonathan Ross and senior Groq engineers to Nvidia, and Reuters reported on February 28 that Nvidia plans to unveil a new AI inference system at GTC incorporating a chip designed by Groq. If it appears, expect it to be framed not as a GPU replacement but as a decode coprocessor: an SRAM-heavy, deterministic engine for fast response generation that sits beside Rubin or CPX inside larger racks.

- A second underappreciated thread is Intel. Nvidia and Intel have already announced a formal collaboration under which Intel will build Nvidia-custom x86 CPUs for AI infrastructure, and Nvidia says those processors will integrate into its platforms via NVLink / NVLink Fusion; the same agreement also covers x86 SoCs with Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets for PCs. That makes GTC a plausible venue for more detail on a co-designed enterprise CPU path, especially for customers that want Nvidia racks without abandoning the x86 universe. In practice, this would extend Nvidia’s role from accelerator supplier to defining the entire control plane of the rack, even when the host CPU bears someone else’s logo.

- Networking and optics may end up being the most consequential announcements after compute. Nvidia has already launched Spectrum-X Photonics and Quantum-X silicon-photonics switching, while recent March announcements with Coherent and Lumentum show the company is locking up laser, packaging and optical-component capacity well ahead of the next scaling wave. The key watchpoint is whether GTC treats co-packaged optics as a premium option or as a structural requirement for Rubin Ultra / Kyber-era clusters, where Nvidia’s own OCP materials point to 800 VDC infrastructure and megawatt-class racks. If that tone shifts from “better networking” to “necessary fabric for future scale,” it will be one of the conference’s most important signals.

- Finally, quantum looks set to graduate from curiosity to architecture. Nvidia’s inaugural Quantum Day at GTC 2025 has become a full Quantum Computing / Quantum Computing and HPC track for 2026, and the company has already launched NVQLink to connect GPUs with quantum systems across 17 quantum builders and nine scientific labs. That does not make quantum a near-term revenue event next week; it means Nvidia is likely to present CUDA-Q, NVQLink and hybrid quantum-classical infrastructure as the next adjacency to the AI factory. The cleanest reading of GTC, then, is that Nvidia will try to show one continuous machine: Rubin for 2026, Rubin Ultra/Kyber for 2027, Feynman beyond that, Groq-derived decode silicon, Intel-based host options, photonic switching, and quantum at the edge of the roadmap.

In 2010, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates launched a disarmingly simple campaign they called the Giving Pledge: a public commitment, open to the world’s wealthiest people, to give away more than half their fortune during their lifetime or upon their death. The moment seemed to call for it. Tech was minting billionaires faster than any industry in history, and the question of how those fortunes would impact society was just beginning to take shape. “We’re talking trillions over time,” Buffett told Charlie Rose that year. The trillions materialized. The giving, less so.

The numbers are no longer shocking to anyone paying attention. The top 1% of American households now hold roughly as much wealth as the bottom 90% combined — the highest concentration the Federal Reserve has recorded since it began tracking wealth distribution in 1989. Globally, billionaire wealth has grown 81% since 2020, reaching a whopping $18.3 trillion, while one in four people worldwide don’t regularly have enough to eat.

This is the world in which a small group of extraordinarily wealthy people are now debating whether to honor — or walk away from — a voluntary and unenforceable promise to give away half of what they have.

The Giving Pledge’s numbers, reported Sunday by the New York Times, trace a steady decline. In its first five years, 113 families signed the Pledge. Then 72 over the next five, 43 in the five after that, and just four in all of 2024. The roster includes Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Elon Musk — some of the most powerful people in the world, and yet, in Peter Thiel’s words to the Times, it is a club that’s “really run out of energy . . .I don’t know if the branding is outright negative,” Thiel told the outlet, “but it feels way less important for people to join.”

The language of doing good in Silicon Valley has been wearing thin for years. Back in 2016, the HBO series “Silicon Valley” was so relentless in mocking the industry — its characters forever insisting they were “making the world a better place” while chasing valuations — that it reportedly changed actual corporate behavior. One of the show’s writers, Clay Tarver, told The New Yorker that year: “I’ve been told that, at some of the big companies, the P.R. departments have ordered their employees to stop saying ‘We’re making the world a better place,’ specifically because we have made fun of that phrase so mercilessly.”

It was an hilarious joke. The trouble is the idealism being satirized was also, at least partly, real — and what replaced it isn’t so funny. Veteran tech investor Roger McNamee, in the same piece, recalled asking Silicon Valley creator Mike Judge what he was really going for. Judge’s answer: “I think Silicon Valley is immersed in a titanic battle between the hippie value system of the Steve Jobs generation and the Ayn Randian libertarian values of the Peter Thiel generation.”

McNamee’s own read on things was less diplomatic: “Some of us actually, as naïve as it sounds, came here to make the world a better place. And we did not succeed. We made some things better, we made some things worse, and in the meantime the libertarians took over, and they do not give a damn about right or wrong. They are here to make money.”

A decade later, the libertarians McNamee was describing have moved well beyond Silicon Valley. Some are now in the Cabinet.

Not everyone agrees on what “giving back” even means. To the libertarian wing of tech — and it’s an increasingly significant wing — the entire framework is wrong. Building companies, creating jobs, and driving innovation are the real contributions, and the pressure to layer philanthropy on top of them is, at best, a social convention and, at worst, a shakedown dressed up as virtue.

Few figures captures the current mood quite like Thiel, who, notably, never signed the Pledge himself and is no fan of Bill Gates (among other things, he has reportedly called Gates an “awful, awful person“). In fact, Thiel tells the Times he has privately encouraged around a dozen signers to undo their commitments and has even gently pushed those already wavering to make their exits official. “Most of the ones I’ve talked to have at least expressed regret about signing it,” Thiel said, calling the Giving Pledge an “Epstein-adjacent, fake Boomer club.”

He has urged Musk to unsign, for example, arguing his money would otherwise go “to left-wing nonprofits that will be chosen by” Gates. When Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong quietly let his letter disappear from the Pledge website in mid-2024 without a word of public explanation, Thiel sent him a congratulatory note.

But Thiel also told the Times something worth a harder look: that those who stay on the Pledge’s public roster feel “sort of blackmailed” — too exposed to public opinion to formally renounce a non-binding promise to give away vast sums of money.

It’s a claim that’s difficult to square with the public behavior of some of the people Thiel has in mind. Musk has shown little interest in managing public perception, and at this point, a majority of Americans already view him unfavorably. Zuckerberg spent nearly a decade facing some of the most sustained regulatory and public hostility any tech exec has endured and came out the other side more sure of himself, not less.

A different picture is meanwhile taking shape on the ground. GoFundMe reported that fundraisers for basic necessities — rent, groceries, housing, fuel — surged 17% last year. “Work,” “home,” “food,” “bill,” and “care” were among the top keywords in campaigns that year. When the 43-day federal shutdown halted food stamp distribution this past fall, related campaigns jumped sixfold. “Life is getting more expensive and folks are struggling,” the company’s CEO told CBS News, “so they are reaching out to friends and family to see if they can help them through.”

Whether these trends are connected to decisions made in philanthropy boardrooms is a matter of debate, but they’re happening at the same time, and the timing is hard to ignore.

It’s worth separating the fate of the Pledge from the fate of philanthropy more broadly. Some of the wealthiest people in tech are still giving; they’re just doing it on their own terms, through their own vehicles, toward their own chosen ends. At the start of 2026, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) cut about 70 jobs — 8% of its workforce — as part of a move away from education and social justice causes toward its Biohub network, a group of nonprofit, biology-focused research institutes operating across several cities. “Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward,” Zuckerberg said last November.

The CZI cuts look, at least on paper, less like the couple is retreating from philanthropy than recalibrating their approach. The Zuckerbergs have, after all, committed through the Pledge to give away 99% of their lifetime wealth.

Not everyone is redefining the terms, either. Gates announced last year that he’d give away virtually all his remaining wealth through the Gates Foundation over the next two decades — more than $200 billion — with the foundation closing permanently on December 31, 2045. Invoking Carnegie’s old line that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced,” he wrote that he was determined not to die rich.

It’s happened before, this standoff between concentrated wealth and everyone else. The last time wealth concentrated at anything like these levels — the original Gilded Age, the 1890s through the early 1900s — the correction didn’t come from philanthropists. It came from trust-busting, the federal income tax, the estate tax, and eventually the New Deal. It arrived as policy that was driven by political pressure too powerful to be ignored. The institutions that forced that correction — a functional Congress, a free press, an empowered regulatory state — look considerably different today.

What isn’t in dispute is the pace of change. These fortunes have been built in years, not generations, at the same moment the safety net is being cut. The wealth gained by the world’s billionaires in 2025 alone would have been enough to give every person on earth $250 and still leave billionaires more than $500 billion richer, according to Oxfam’s 2026 global inequality report.

The Giving Pledge was always, as Buffett said from the start, just a “moral pledge” — no enforcement, no consequences, no one to answer to but yourself. That it once carried weight says something about the era that produced it. That Thiel now frames staying on the list as a form of coercion — and that the Times found that argument worth reporting at length — says something about the one we’re in right now.

The collaboration marks one of the first projects under new creative director Abigail Smiley-Smith as she seeks to sharpen Maison Kitsuné’s fashion identity.

Maison Kitsuné and French children’s label Bonpoint have teamed on a preppy capsule collection for babies and children, marking the latest step in creative director Abigail Smiley-Smith’s efforts to sharpen and elevate the fashion positioning of the Kitsuné brand.

The collaboration, titled “Cherry Planning,” blends Bonpoint’s heritage in luxury childrenswear with Maison Kitsuné’s graphic and cultural references, offering a wardrobe of striped shirts, shirtdresses, workwear jackets, gabardine shorts and skirts alongside playful accessories.

“This collaboration brings together two French houses with distinct but complementary design codes. Bonpoint has a deep expertise in children’s construction and fabrics, and we approached the project by integrating Maison Kitsuné’s graphic language and tailoring references into that framework,” Smiley-Smith told WWD.

Smiley-Smith, who joined the French-Japanese house Maison Kitsuné last September after more than two decades at brands including Calvin Klein, Chloé and Stella McCartney, has been tasked with bringing greater cohesion and refinement to the brand while reinforcing its broader lifestyle universe, which spans fashion, cafés, music and a club in Bali.

“What interested me was the cultural dialogue. Bonpoint has an extraordinary legacy, and we approached it with respect bringing a contemporary lens without disrupting its elegance. It’s about evolution, not reinvention,” Smiley-Smith said.

Inspired by cherry blossom season and the symbolic ties between Paris and Tokyo — a longstanding theme for Maison Kitsuné — the collection features allover cherry and fox motifs, embroidered patches and striped poplin pieces, along with accessories including caps, belt bags and a plush Cherry Fox toy.

“Rather than designing ‘children’s fashion,’ we approached this as a real wardrobe. Structured shirting, workwear jackets, striped poplin…all reinterpreted with lightness and wit. It’s preppy, but with a twist,” she added.

For Bonpoint — and its famous cherry logo — the collaboration reflects an ongoing strategy of refreshing its heritage codes while appealing to new generations of customers.

“At Bonpoint, we are always looking for ways to reinterpret our heritage while remaining true to the spirit of childhood. Collaborating with Maison Kitsuné allowed us to explore that balance, creating a collection that feels both refined and full of the vitality and freedom that define children today,” said Bonpoint chief marketing and digital officer Gala Sarmini Kressmann.

The capsule marks one of the first collaborations under Smiley-Smith’s creative direction as she works to position Maison Kitsuné as a more refined and cohesive fashion house within its wider cultural ecosystem. Speaking to WWD, Smiley-Smith said she wants to continue the house’s successful collaboration strategy, while expanding into new categories.

The collection, priced between 45 and 245 euros, will launch March 31 in Bonpoint and Maison Kitsuné boutiques and online, and features pieces in size ranges for newborns, babies and children.

Maison Kitsuné returned to the official Paris Fashion Week calendar after a seven-year absence with a well-received presentation in January.

Oscars 2026: A Big Night for ‘One Battle After Another’

Paul Thomas Anderson triumphed as best director, Michael B. Jordan won best actor and one category ended in a tie. These are the highlights from the 98th Academy Awards.

It was one rivalry after another as “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” traded wins during Hollywood’s big night on Sunday.

“One Battle After Another” took home six trophies Sunday, including those for best picture and best director, “Sinners” nabbed four and “Frankenstein” picked up three wins for its otherworldly creation of a monster and his world.

“Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” were two tour-de-force works written for the screen by directors exploring the complexities of America’s past and present. “One Battle After Another” looked at the impact of militarized authority—and opened with an armed raid to free detainees at a government immigration center—while “Sinners” examined the complexities of Black American history and cultural erasure. “One Battle After Another” director Paul Thomas Anderson and “Sinners” director Ryan Coogler won trophies for adapted screenplay and original screenplay, respectively.

The Oscars offered an evening of quips from host Conan O’Brien and a muted Timothée Chalamet avoiding barbs from the stage. The show also marked the first-ever win for a female cinematographer (Autumn Durald Arkapaw for “Sinners”) and a rare tie for one category. There was also a tribute to the late Rob Reiner and some misty watercolor memories from Barbra Streisand for the late Robert Redford.

As always, it was a celebration of going to the movies. From the stage, O’Brien took a light jab at Netflix chief executive Ted Sarandos to that effect. “It’s his first time in a theater,” he said. “This is what they’re talking about.”

Michael B. Jordan won best actor in one of the most closely watched races of the night. He did so on the strength of a performance that required him to inhabit dual roles as twin brothers Smoke and Stack in Ryan Coogler’s vampires-in-the-Mississippi Delta smash.

This was his first-ever Oscar win and nomination, and came after his fifth feature collaboration with Coogler. Jordan thanked his director for giving him “an opportunity and space to be seen.” The crowd in Los Angeles loved it: His win was greeted with a standing ovation.

Jordan also praised trailblazing Black actors like Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington and Halle Berry.

Jordan was something of a come-from-behind victor. “Marty Supreme” star Chalamet seemed to be the strong favorite early on, but wins by other actors shook up the field.

Chalamet’s loss capped off a prickly night for the actor, who dodged a bit of mud slung in the direction of his gleaming white suit. In the opening monologue, O’Brien used a joke about faux safety concerns to single out Chalamet and one of the biggest controversies of award season: “I’m told there’s concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities,” O’Brien said with a look at Chalamet. “They’re just mad you left out jazz.”

“Marty Supreme,” which was nominated for nine awards, went home empty-handed.

In his second year as host, Conan O’Brien seemed at home as he launched into his monologue: “I’m honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards,” he said, “Next year it’s going to be a Waymo in a tux.”

The ceremony kicked off with a prerecorded romp through the nominated films. O’Brien, in fright makeup and wig, looked like Aunt Gladys, the orange-haired witch in the horror movie “Weapons.” The gang of marauding kids from that movie chased O’Brien through scenes of movies from “Marty Supreme” to an animated riff on “KPop Demon Hunters.”

The host noted that Amazon Studios wasn’t nominated for any trophies before asking, “Why isn’t the website I order toilet paper from winning more Oscars?”

There were no outright political moments in the speech, though O’Brien referenced the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Noting that this was the first time since 2012 that a British actor wasn’t nominated for best actor or actress, he quipped: “A British spokesperson said, ‘Yeah, but at least we arrest our pedophiles.’”

Rob Reiner, the legendary film director, received a special dedicated segment in his memory. Reiner and his wife, Michele Reiner, were murdered last December. He was 78, his wife 70.

The segment was led by Billy Crystal, a close friend of Reiner’s and the star of his 1989 classic romantic comedy, “When Harry Met Sally…” Crystal began the segment by highlighting his slam-dunk decade of movies that were both critically acclaimed and financially successful, such as “This is Spinal Tap,” “Stand By Me,” “The Princess Bride,” “A Few Good Men” and “Misery.”

“My friend Rob’s movies will last for lifetimes because they were about what makes us laugh and cry and what we aspire to be,” Crystal said.

When Michele Singer came into his life, Crystal said, they became an “unstoppable” couple.

“Their loss is immeasurable,” Crystal said. Reiner told him countless times over the years that it had meant everything to him that his work mattered to audiences.

“All we can say is, buddy, what fun we had storming the castle,” Crystal closed his tribute with, referencing a famous line from “The Princess Bride.”

Cast members from Reiner’s films over the years then took to the stage, including John Cusack, Cary Elwes, Meg Ryan, Demi Moore and Kathy Bates.

The Reiner remembrance was followed by a segment that included tributes to the late Diane Keaton by Rachel McAdams and the late Robert Redford by Barbra Streisand.

A tie at the Oscars? “I didn’t know that was a thing,” Sam A. Davis said while accepting one of a shock two Oscars awarded for best live action short film on behalf of his “The Singers.” A moment later, the filmmakers behind “Two People Exchanging Saliva” took the stage to accept their award. It turned out, as presenter Kumail Nanjiani explained, that the films had tied for the win. The occasion is as rare as you’d expect: this marks the seventh tie in Oscars history. (The last came in 2012, for sound editing.) “Ironic that the short film Oscar is going to take twice as long,” Nanjiani joked.

Another surprise of the night: Vogue legend Anna Wintour saw the light of day, at least for a moment. When presenting the Oscar for costume design, Wintour appeared without her signature sunglasses alongside Anne Hathaway in a tease for Hathaway’s upcoming “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” The actress asked Wintour what she thought of her dress, to which Wintour put on her shades—and her chilliest tone—and said, “And the nominees are.”

O’Brien spoofed the Hollywood studios pushing for filmmakers to reiterate plot points to make it easier for audiences watching two screens at home to keep up. Then he and Sterling K. Brown re-enacted the famous “of all the gin joints” piano scene between Rick and Sam from “Casablanca.” O’Brien and Brown kept reminding each other where they were and what was happening. “World War II,” Brown said as Sam, “that’s the Hitler one, right?”

UniCredit’s Andrea Orcel draws level with UBS chief Sergio Ermotti after record pay deal

Italian executive received €16.4mn pay package last year, a 24% rise from 2024

UniCredit’s Andrea Orcel was paid a record €16.4mn last year, drawing level with UBS’s Sergio Ermotti as the best-paid bank boss in continental Europe as the Swiss lender contends with a protracted regulatory battle over capital requirements.

Orcel received a 24 per cent pay rise from 2024, overtaking Santander’s Ana Botín — who earned €14.8mn last year — for the first time since he joined Milan-based UniCredit in 2021, according to company filings.

The Italian executive’s pay rise puts him almost on a par with Ermotti, whose remuneration remained flat last year at SFr14.9mn ($18.9mn, €16.5mn) after UBS’s shares were weighed down by Swiss government proposals to significantly increase its capital requirements.

The narrowing pay gap also underlines how Spanish and Italian lenders — regarded as among the problem children of Europe’s banking system in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis — have staged a turnaround in recent years.

Banks from the two southern European countries now account for three of the four largest continental European lenders by market capitalisation, with Santander the most valuable at €141bn.

The performance of European banks has been boosted across the board by a sharp rise in long-term interest rates.

UniCredit and Santander reported record profits last year on the back of higher net interest and fee income, with their share prices climbing about 85 per cent and 130 per cent respectively in 2025.

Both lenders also pursued M&A deals, with Santander buying UK high street lender TSB last year and offloading its Polish unit. Meanwhile Orcel has faced fierce political opposition to his moves to acquire Germany’s Commerzbank and domestic rival Banco BPM.

Ermotti’s stagnant pay underscores the difficult position in which UBS finds itself compared with global peers, and highlights how politically sensitive remuneration in the Swiss finance sector has become since its takeover of former rival Credit Suisse three years ago.

Orcel’s pay package for 2025, which was more than double his 2022 total, included €11.8mn in bonuses, which were all paid in shares and deferred for eight years. His maximum remuneration for 2026 will remain unchanged at €16.4mn, company filings show.

Orcel is still locked in a legal tussle with Santander after a Spanish court awarded him €43.5mn in compensation in 2023 for Santander’s aborted 2018 offer to make him its chief executive. Santander is appealing against the ruling to Spain’s Supreme Court, which is ongoing.

Barclays’ CS Venkatakrishnan was paid more than both Orcel and Ermotti last year, receiving a record £15mn (€17.4mn) pay package.

Unlike ECB-regulated banks, UK and Swiss lenders are not restricted by a cap on banker bonuses, with EU rules mandating that bonuses cannot be more than twice the size of fixed pay.

European bank bosses are still paid significantly less than their US counterparts, where top executives also received bigger payouts after a sector-wide share price rally.

JPMorgan Chase handed chief executive Jamie Dimon a record $43mn in 2025. David Solomon at Goldman Sachs earned $47mn, while Citigroup’s Jane Fraser received $42mn.