FT : Trump administration reverses move to block Moderna flu vaccine trial

Trump administration reverses move to block Moderna flu vaccine trial
U-turn comes after backlash from the company and US biotech industry

The US drug regulator has allowed a crucial Moderna flu vaccine trial to proceed, reversing an earlier decision to halt the study that triggered a backlash from the company and wider biotech industry.

In a regulatory filing on Wednesday, Moderna said the Food and Drug Administration would review a late-stage trial for the company’s first-ever flu shot and set an August deadline to approve or deny the drug. Moderna said it held a meeting with FDA staff to revisit the trial application.

Moderna’s announcement ends a brief but intense spat between the Trump administration and the high-profile vaccine maker that was also one of the central companies in developing Covid-19 jabs during the pandemic.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) slammed Moderna last week, claiming its flu shot trial exposed older people “to increased risk of severe illness by giving them a substandard of care against the recommendation of FDA scientists”.

The remarks represented a rare public and pointed critique of a drugmaker by one of the world’s most prominent regulators. HHS, which oversees the FDA, is led by Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic. 

Moderna’s chief executive Stéphane Bancel said in a statement on Wednesday that “pending FDA approval, we look forward to making our flu vaccine available later this year so that America’s seniors have access to a new option to protect themselves against flu”.

Moderna’s shares rallied 6 per cent on Wednesday. If the shot is approved by the FDA, it will be available during the 2026-27 flu season.

The dispute over the Moderna jab, which unlike current flu vaccines available on the market is based on messenger RNA technology, has shocked the biotech sector and concerned many scientists.

Moderna uses a similar technology for its Covid vaccine, which is also the subject of controversy in President Donald Trump’s administration and Maga movement. Its mRNA technology transmits information to cells to produce immunities against diseases. Most other vaccines use virus parts to trigger an immune response.

HHS said last week that Moderna “refused to follow very clear FDA guidance from 2024 to test its product in a clinical trial”.

“This is exactly why companies discuss trial design before beginning large-scale trials, to avoid a situation like this,” Karen Andersen, director of healthcare research at Morningstar, said last week. “It sounds like [the FDA’s] view of the requirements for filing have changed, which seems consistent with the new, overarching scepticism of vaccines in this administration.”

Other observers said Moderna’s situation with the flu shot underscored the FDA’s continued scepticism towards vaccines.

The agency’s reversal “was a remarkably short turnaround” for a dispute that typically takes up to 60 days to resolve, TD Cowen said in a report on Wednesday morning.

Moderna said the flu shot had already been approved for review in the EU, Canada and Australia. Moderna currently sells Covid and RSV vaccines, but its flu shot would be the first from the company.

Separately on Wednesday, a Trump administration official said Jay Bhattacharya, head of the National Institutes of Health, would become the new acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which makes recommendations for vaccines.

Bhattacharya replaces Jim O’Neill, who stepped down on Friday. Trump is expected to nominate O’Neill to lead the National Science Foundation, according to an administration official.

The CDC has been operating without a Senate-confirmed leader since Susan Monarez was abruptly fired in August.

FT : Is an AI price war about to begin?

Is an AI price war about to begin?
Assumptions underpinning valuations of big US groups might be too optimistic

The price of using artificial intelligence is falling. In China, entry-level access to AI models has been marketed for about $3 a month by the country’s hottest AI group Zhipu. Widely seen as one of China’s closest local equivalents to OpenAI, it develops large language models to compete with US systems.

In a market where paid plans from US peers are closer to $20 a month depending on tier, and enterprise contracts run into the millions annually, this move by Zhipu amounts to a price war. 

That gap goes beyond product pricing. Since its Hong Kong debut in January, shares of Knowledge Atlas Technology Joint Stock, better known as Zhipu AI, have gained 300 per cent. Yet even after that rally, its market value of $29bn remains a fraction of top US AI groups. OpenAI’s private market valuation stands at $500bn and Anthropic was valued at about $350bn in its latest funding round.

Markets are pricing a world in which US AI groups maintain outsized control over global AI revenue and dominate the highest margin segments, while global users continue to accept higher price points. But how sustainable is that assumption? 

There are good reasons US AI developers attract higher valuations. They have larger existing revenue bases than Chinese peers and benefit from established enterprise relationships and easier access to capital. OpenAI and Anthropic are backed by US cloud providers, giving them scale. 


Geopolitics also matters. Data security concerns and regulatory scrutiny would probably limit the use of Chinese AI models in the US and parts of Europe, particularly for government workloads. That constraint should help preserve pricing power for US providers in some markets.

Yet the technological gap between US and Chinese AI models is narrowing. On standardised industry benchmarks, leading Chinese LLMs now operate close to their US counterparts across reasoning, coding and general knowledge tasks. In areas such as mathematical problem solving, the gap has narrowed to low single-digit percentage differences, according to Stanford’s 2025 AI Index. China also accounts for a large chunk of global AI research output and highly cited machine learning papers.

The biggest perceived constraint on China’s AI ambitions has been access to advanced AI chips and whether it could create a viable domestic workaround to US export controls. Zhipu has trained its models on Huawei’s Ascend AI chips. While Huawei chips do not match the cutting-edge performance of Nvidia’s latest chips, its use suggests that export restrictions have not eliminated China’s ability to build credible rivals to US models, especially if improvements in chip design and software help offset lower computing power.

If technology is no longer the binding constraint, competition then shifts to price. OpenAI’s pricing for developers of its flagship GPT-5.2 model is about $1.75 per million input tokens, units used to measure text processed and generated by AI models, and $14 per million output tokens. On Zhipu’s domestic developer platform, its latest flagship language model GLM-5 is priced at about $0.58 per million input tokens and $2.60 per million output tokens. The difference is most striking in output pricing, where it undercuts most US models.

Even in markets where US AI companies benefit from brand recognition and distribution advantages, a sustained price gap can shift behaviour over time. As AI becomes part of everyday work, this is particularly true for students, independent developers, small businesses and cost-sensitive start-ups.

That means Zhipu’s current valuation may reflect overly pessimistic expectations. Global consumer spending on generative AI alone is forecast to approach $700bn by 2030, according to Counterpoint Research, before accounting for enterprise and cloud infrastructure revenue. If markets more receptive to Chinese AI providers were to capture a third of that demand and Zhipu took just 10 per cent of that market, revenues would surpass $23bn by the end of the decade. Even using conservative revenue multiples and discount rates, that would support a valuation far above today’s level.

Much of the optimism behind US AI stocks rests on the assumption that users will keep paying for incremental performance gains. But as differences narrow, the price of AI may soon be set by the cheapest model that is good enough.

>>> US After Hours Summary: RELY +18.3%, FIG +15.3%, HLF +14.9%, DASH +14.3%, NP

After Hours Summary: RELY +18.3%, FIG +15.3%, HLF +14.9%, DASH +14.3%, NP +10.3%, EBAY +7.4% higher on earnings; DEI +5.1% on insider purchase; CVNA -15.3%, CAR -12.4%, TBI -7.1%, TAP -6.5%, BTG -6.5% lower on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: RELY +18.3% (also names new CEO), FIG +15.3%, HLF +14.9%, DASH +14.3%, NP +10.3%, EBAY +7.4% (also to acquire Depop; increases dividend; increases share repurchase program by $2 bln), TROX +6.8%, OBDC +5.2% (also certain BDCs to sell $1.4 bln of assets), FPI +4.3%, LILA +3.5%, ILPT +3.5%, OXY +3.2%, ECO +2.9% (also increases dividend), OMC +2.7% (also authorizes new $5 bln share repurchase program, including $2.5 bln accelerated share repurchase), SPNT +2.6%, EQX +2.6% (also initiates quarterly dividend; may repruchase up to 5% of shares), ADAM +2.3%, JXN +2.2% (also increases dividend), AMPL +2.2% (also authorizes new $100 mln share repurchase program), PAAS +2.1%, HST +1.7% (also announces sale of two Four Seasons resorts), EIX +1.3%, OR +1.2% (also acquires portfolio of royalty assets), AGI +1.2% (also increases dividend), CWAN +0.7%, TS +0.6%, BKNG +0.3% (also increases dividend; announces 25-for-1 stock split), ARR +0.3%, MAC +0.3%, AWR +0.1%, CF +0.1%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: DEI +5.1% (Chairman & Chief Executive Officer discloses the purchase of 98,000 shares at $9.96 - $10.25 worth approximately $998K), ATEX +2.7% (FCC approves rules to expand 900 MHz band to 10 mhz), DBRG +1.2% (DBRG investment fund and shareholders enter agreement to sell Substantial Group), TT +0.9% (completes acquisition of Stellar Energy Americas), GSK +0.5% (ViiV Healthcare's long-acting Cabenuva for HIV demonstrates superior efficacy), TEAM +0.5% (names new CFO), CORZ +0.4% (enters into a cooperation agreement with Two Seas Capital), JCI +0.3% (signs agreement to acquire Alloy Enterprises), CRM +0.2% (signs definitive agreement to acquire Momentum), AMRZ +0.1% (completes acquisition of PB Materials Holdings), LYV +0.1% (Judge rejects Live Nation's effort to dismiss antitrust lawsuit, according to Reuters)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: CVNA -15.3%, CAR -12.4%, TBI -7.1%, TAP -6.5%, BTG -6.5%, CVI -5.8%, BHC -4.7%, JACK -4.5%, CYH -4.2%, CAKE -3.9%, SB -3.7%, BKD -3.4%, WES -3.3%, KALU -2.9%, OII -2.6%, NTR -2.5% (also increases dividend; plans buyback program), WH -2.4%, RS -2.2% (also increases dividend), OTF -2.2%, TNK -2.1%, CRH -1.7% (also increases dividend; enters buyback program arrangement with Wells Fargo), COKE -1.6%, KGC -1.6%, NDSN -1.4%, CDE -1.2%, RGLD -0.6%, LOPE -0.3%, INVH -0.3%, TPL -0.2%, KAI -0.1%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: ESOA -10.6% (stock offering), EPRX -9.3% (proposed public offering), BNC -1.4% (advances plan to revise asset management deal), M -0.7% (updates disclosure metrics), RJF -0.4% (reports January operating data), WEN -0.4% (comments on Amended 13D filing from Trian Partners), EQIX -0.2% (Chief Sales Officer to retire)

The Infomation : Meta Revives Plan for Smart Watch, Targets 2026 Launch

Meta Revives Plan for Smart Watch, Targets 2026 Launch

The Takeaway
  • Meta revives smartwatch project, targeting 2026 launch with AI.
  • Smartwatch revival follows strategy meeting at Zuckerberg’s home.
  • Company streamlines AR/MR roadmap to avoid customer confusion.

Meta Platforms plans to release its first smartwatch in 2026, according to two people familiar with the matter. Meta’s plans come as other big tech companies, including Apple, OpenAI and Google, are stepping up their plans for new consumer devices.

The company has revived a previously shelved smartwatch project, now code-named Malibu 2, and intends to release it later this year with health-tracking features and a built-in Meta AI assistant. The watch will put Meta in direct competition with Apple, which has a popular line of smartwatches, as well as other companies such as Google.

Meta had ambitious plans for a smartwatch about five years ago, intending at one point to release three different camera-equipped versions, but it canceled the project in 2022 amid a broader pullback in spending at its hardware division, Reality Labs. The decision to revive the device followed a strategy meeting late last year at Zuckerberg’s home in Hawaii, where senior executives mapped out the company’s long-term product lineup, the people said.

Meta declined to comment.

The plans for its smartwatch release comes as Meta works to streamline its broader augmented reality and mixed reality road map. Meta currently has about four AR and MR glasses in development, and executives have grown concerned that launching too many devices in quick succession could confuse customers, one person said. As a result, leadership has been reassessing timelines.

In December, Reality Labs employees were told the company had delayed Phoenix, its MR glasses, until 2027.

This year, Meta is planning to release a new version of the Meta Ray-Ban Display, said one person. The new model is code-named Hypernova 2. The first version of these glasses, which have a miniature display built directly into one lens, went on sale in the U.S. last year priced at $799.

In January, the company announced it had paused international expansion to the U.K., France, Italy and Canada due to “unprecedented demand and limited inventory.”

Meanwhile, Meta is continuing to work on consumer-facing AR glasses code-named Artemis, long expected to be released in 2027, according to one person.

Artemis will represent a step up from Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses by adding the ability to display digital content on one lens. Wearers will be able to make phone calls using avatars, lifelike 3D digital representations of people that can mimic facial expressions and gestures in real time, the person said, adding that the glasses will have Meta’s voice-activated AI assistant baked in.

Zuckerberg has repeatedly expressed optimism that AI-powered glasses will define the next era of personal computing, calling them “the ideal form factor for AI” during his Connect keynote last year. He has argued that these devices—from today’s smart glasses to future AR models—will become the primary interface for personal AI.

Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have also found commercial success. The company’s partner, EssilorLuxottica, reported earlier this month that it had sold more than 7 million pairs in 2025, compared with 2 million from launch in 2023 through the end of 2024.

WSJ : Mistral AI to Buy Software Infrastructure Startup Koyeb

Mistral AI to Buy Software Infrastructure Startup Koyeb
Koyeb’s engineers, including the startup’s three cofounders, will join in Marchµ

Mistral AI clinched its first acquisition with the purchase of infrastructure startup Koyeb as the French artificial-intelligence major looks to iron out its processes and bolster computing capabilities.

Europe’s highest-profile AI platform said Koyeb’s cloud-computing platforms and team help developers run and scale AI without infrastructure snags so they can focus primarily on writing code.

Koyeb’s 16 engineers, including the startup’s three cofounders, will join in March, Mistral said Tuesday. Financial terms of the deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, weren’t disclosed.

Paris-based Koyeb said it was joining Mistral due to its AI infrastructure capabilities in Europe.

The platform will continue operating for now, and in coming months will become core to Mistral compute, Koyeb said. As the company makes the transition, it will hone in on customers on its pro plan and higher subscription tiers, as the free tier is operationally expensive, it said.

FT : KKR and backers lose more than €1bn in pandemic-era bet on Raleigh bikemake

KKR and backers lose more than €1bn in pandemic-era bet on Raleigh bikemaker
US private equity firm agrees to hand remaining stake in Accell to Dutch group’s lenders after latest debt restructuring

KKR and its backers have lost more than €1bn in a pandemic-era bet on bikemaker Accell Group, after the owner of brands including Raleigh and Babboe agreed a second debt restructuring in the space of a year.

The US private equity firm said on Wednesday it had agreed to hand its remaining equity stake to the Dutch group’s top-ranking lenders.

KKR and the backers of its funds will lose all of the €1.1bn equity cheque they wrote to acquire Accell in 2022, as well as hundreds of millions more that they pumped in after it started struggling.

The announcement caps four difficult years for KKR after it struck a €1.8bn deal to take Amsterdam-based Accell private in 2022, in a bet that sales of e-bikes in particular would continue to flourish after the pandemic.

But Accell’s e-bike sales growth was lower than expected, supply-chain disruptions led to shortages of some components, and KKR’s dealmakers had underestimated just how much the company had over-ordered other parts in response to heightened pandemic demand.

As inventories ballooned, Accell had to offer significant discounts to shift products and slash the value of its stock, hitting revenue and earnings.

By the middle of 2023, Accell had turned to its shareholders for more money, with KKR and another investor ultimately extending about €300mn in loans before the first restructuring completed last February.

That deal cut €600mn from Accell’s €1.4bn debt load and allowed KKR and the other shareholder, Teslin, to retain control. But the bikemaker continued to burn cash and face liquidity pressure, prompting fresh restructuring talks this year.

The majority of the company’s lenders had agreed to a new transaction that would “significantly reduce Accell’s total debt” and provide it with additional funding, the bike group said in a statement on Wednesday without providing further details.

The agreement avoids an insolvency or liquidation of Accell, which some lenders had feared if the bikemaker had been unable to raise fresh funding.

“The shareholding in Accell will be transferred for the benefit of existing super senior lenders,” the statement said. KKR would not retain any shareholding, a person close to the firm confirmed.

The private equity firm said: “During its ownership, KKR supported a wide-ranging programme of operational and organisational measures, consistent with KKR’s role as a long-term and responsible investor . . . These actions were taken to ensure continuity of operations, support Accell’s customers and partners, and position the business for a return to sustainable profitability.”

Jonas Nilsson, chief executive of Accell, thanked KKR for its “significant support” and said that “we are well advanced in our plans to fundamentally transform the business”.

>>> Summary of *La Lettre* – February 18, 2026

Summary of La Lettre – February 18, 2026

Auchan–Intermarché Deal: The Confidential Numbers The lead story reveals the detailed business plan behind Auchan's restructuring. 164 Auchan supermarkets will switch to Intermarché franchise, with 91 others potentially sold to the Mousquetaires group. Intermarché will pay €215 million as a franchise entry fee, and Auchan hopes to recover an additional €350 million from store sales. The Mulliez family group, burdened with ~€370 million in debt and a €1.3 billion net loss in 2024, desperately needs fresh cash. Under the business plan, the 164 stores should grow revenue from €1.9 billion to €2.2 billion by 2029, swinging EBITDA from -€14 million to +€27 million. Renovation costs are estimated at €240 million over four years, split between Auchan (€150 million) and Société Les Mousquetaires (€75 million).

Municipal Reform Report for Paris, Lyon, Marseille: Still Missing The government was due to deliver a report on redistributing powers between central and district city halls by February 11, but it still doesn't exist. The mission was just assigned to the IGA (Inspection Générale de l'Administration) on February 10, and no hearings have begun.

France's Contribution to Monaco's Budget Rising Again Monaco expects to receive ~€138 million from France in 2026 as TVA compensation, up 13% year-on-year. Deputies have questioned whether the calculation formula overvalues Monaco's share.

Campaign Sticker Ruling: Conseil d'État Overrules CNCCFP The Conseil d'État ruled on February 16 that window stickers on campaign offices do not constitute illegal campaign advertising, contradicting the CNCCFP's longstanding position — a significant decision ahead of municipal elections.

EU Critical Medicines Act: Brussels Adjusts Its Agenda Disagreements between the EU Council and Parliament have led to a restructured legislative timeline, with key articles on "Made in Europe" preferences and grouped procurement of critical medicines debated separately through March, targeting finalization by June 30.

Mediawan Under Labor Inspection Scrutiny Pierre-Antoine Capton's media group Mediawan was warned by labor inspectors over abusive use of dual short-term contracts at its subsidiary Maximal Productions (producing shows for France 5). Technicians were split across two employers for the same work, circumventing collective bargaining agreements. A previous attempt to restructure via subsidiary FCUBE was rejected by 90% of staff. Two technicians have taken the matter to labor court.

>>> Europe : Brokers Upgrades & Downgrades - 18th of February 2026 V2(+)

>>> Up
* BE Semiconductor PT Raised to 224 euros from 214 euros at BofA (+)
* Chesnara PT Raised to 370 pence from 335 pence at RBC (+)
* Demant Raised to Buy at Nordea; PT 230 kroner
* Molten Ventures Raised to Overweight at Barclays; PT 575 pence
* Porsche Raised to Neutral at Grupo Santander; PT 43.70 euros
* Stubhub Raised to Neutral at Citi; PT $9

>>> Down
* 4c Group Cut to Hold at ABG; PT 10 kronor
* Aedifica Cut to Accumulate at KBC Securities (+)
* BASF Cut to Neutral at Grupo Santander; PT 52.50 euros
* CNH Industrial Cut to Underperform at Mediobanca SpA; PT $10.50
* Legal & General Cut to Neutral at BNP Paribas; PT 280 pence
* Schindler Cut to Neutral at BofA
* Toro Cut to Market Perform at Raymond James
* Truecaller Cut to Hold at ABG; PT 15 kronor
* Truecaller Cut to Hold at Nordea
* Unilever Cut to Hold at Berenberg; PT 5,840 pence
* Unilever Cut to Hold at DZ Bank; PT 5,650 pence (+)

>>> Initiation
* ABN Amro GDRs Resumed Buy at Citi; PT 36.60 euros
* Costco Reinstated Buy at William O'Neil
* Prosus Rated New Overweight at ABSA Securities; PT 58.03 euros

>>> Call
* ABN Amro Resumed Buy at Citi on Re-Rating Potential, EPS Upside
* Goldman Analysts See Cement Stock Risk on EU Emissions Policy (+)
* Duerr Order Intake, Ebit Beats Expectations, Bernstein Says
* Schindler Cut to Neutral at BofA as Cost Savings Efforts Slow (+)
* Unilever Downgraded at Berenberg on Completion of Transformation

FT : The software sell-off, part II

The software sell-off, part II
Last Friday, we took an initial look at the sell-off in software stocks, laying out which companies had been hit, by how much and when. But we didn’t make any progress on the question that really matters: how much of a threat do AI machines pose to the long-term profit growth of software companies? I know hardly anything about AI (a situation I’m trying to correct), so in taking a first shot at this question I’m depending on the arguments of others, a little logic and my experience of corporate finance.

The basic intuition behind the sell-off is that AI machines will allow companies and individuals to perform tasks they previously completed with paid-for software, or allow them to build substitutes for that software — all at a lower cost. Is this realistic? The consensus on Wall Street is some software vendors will be much more vulnerable than others and the sell-off has not respected the distinction between the endangered and the resilient.

Goldman Sachs recently proposed a software “pair trade” for clients — two buckets of stocks, one to buy and the other to short. They describe the longs as software companies that will be hard to replace because of “regulatory entrenchment, integration complexity, or human accountability” and that support “data infra[structure], observability, security, hyperscale cloud, [and] AI development platforms”. On the short side are companies supporting “workflows that AI could increasingly automate or rebuild internally”.

According to a Bloomberg story about the Goldman pair, stocks on the long side include Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto Networks (all in cyber security), as well as Oracle and Microsoft. On the short side are Monday.com (application building, project management), Salesforce (customer relationship management), DocuSign (electronic signatures), Accenture (tech consulting) and Duolingo (language learning).

Software analysts, for their part, lean into the “integration complexity” argument for why software companies will continue to grow. The argument is based on high switching costs, the integration of different software systems and functions, and the ability of software companies to “plug” their own AI tools into the interconnected clusters of software their customers use. Here is HSBC’s Stephen Bersey:

The technology marketplace is an odd thing where the best or cheapest products don’t always win…

[O]nce a large platform application is installed and a customer’s business runs its critical operations on it, switching carries many risks . . . if there is a disruption during a platform replacement, normal operations can stall, loyal customers can leave forever, brands are tarnished and revenue can hard-stop until the issues are resolved . . . There are also many other unforeseen switching risks/costs that can fester, like lower productivity and numerous process errors as users retrain and get familiar with a new system. Or the sudden appearance of unwanted feature interactions that only manifest under long duration at-scale operations.

And here is Keith Weiss at Morgan Stanley:

[AI] risk should be considered within the framework of the end customer’s preference for ‘best of breed’ solutions versus more consolidated ‘suites’. In our [Chief Investment Officer] survey work . . . one of the driving factors of a rising preference for suites, in our view, [is] the ability of incumbent suite vendors to more effectively act as fast followers and minimise the functionality gap between their suite and best of breed solutions…

The direction of travel in software architectures over the past 50 years has been an increasing modularisation of the system into optimised components providing the best efficiency and efficiency for the type of work needing to be done. While the [AI can] effectively enable new functionalities around contextual understanding of unstructured data, coding, and content creation, [it is] unlikely to be the most effective and efficient component for every part of system

This argument makes sense as far as it goes: incumbent software systems are complex and hard to replace, and software companies will have been working hard on AI for some time. But how far does it go? The sell-off is not about damage to software companies’ profits in the next few years. Everyone acknowledges that industry fundamentals are fine and will continue to be fine for some years. This issue is how computing looks in a decade. In financial analysis terms, the question is about the “terminal valuation multiple” in the discounted cash flow model of your favourite software company. In a standard DCF model, you estimate profits for each of the next 10 years or so and then put a multiple — 20x, say — on the profits in year 10, resulting in a lump sum that accounts for all the future value. I think what is happening now is investors are taking that 20x and moving it to 15x or 10x because profits might not be growing very well at that point.

It’s not at all clear to me that this is a mistake. There are powerful network effects and high switching costs in the software business, which make it hard for new competitors to displace incumbents. But I’m not sure that AI machines are a new competitor in the standard sense. There may be no moment when customers take the old software system out and put the new AI system in. There may be no “switch”. Companies and individuals may just wake up one morning in five or 10 years and decide that, given the range of things their AI assistant can do for them, that they don’t need the old software any more. This is just a guess by a non-expert, but that’s what the threat look like to me.

A final point, one that several people have mentioned to be. The market currently acts as if the impact of AI will be sector specific, although which sector is expected to get hit changes from day to day. But if AI is revolutionary as many people think, won’t it be a huge, unpredictable “deflation bomb” that hits most sectors (I borrow the phrase from Paul Kedrosky)? That is to say, hasn’t the whole market gotten riskier, so the whole market needs to sell at a lower valuation? We may get there yet.