TheChek News Flow

According to the January 2026 report from Obi, the primary takeaway is that the pricing gap between autonomous and human-driven rides is closing rapidly, while Tesla has entered the market as a massive price disruptor.

1. The Shrinking Price Gap

Waymo’s premium over traditional ride-hailing is diminishing. In June 2025, Waymo was 30-40% more expensive than Uber/Lyft. As of January 2026:

2. Tesla as the "Wildcard"

Tesla’s new ride-hailing offering in the Bay Area is significantly undercutting the entire market, though it comes with caveats:

3. Shifting Consumer Sentiment

4. Competitive Outlook

The report suggests a "new era" of competition. Waymo is preparing to launch its lower-cost "Ojai" vehicle (built with Zeekr), and new players like Zoox, Nuro, and Motional are expected to enter the commercial market by the end of 2026, likely triggering further price wars.

A trip in a Waymo robotaxi still costs more, on average, than a comparable ride in a human-driven Uber or a Lyft. But that gap is narrowing, according to new data published Tuesday by Obi, a company that aggregates real-time pricing and pick-up times across multiple ride-hailing services.

Two factors, working together, are behind the change. Waymo has lowered its pricing, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area where the data was pulled, while traditional ride-hailing rides on the Uber and Lyft networks have risen, according to Obi.

The new data was collected between November 27 and January 1, with Obi simulating more than 94,000 ride requests in the Bay Area. The company found that Waymo rides cost an average of $19.69, while Uber rides were slightly cheaper at $17.47. Lyft rides across the same period averaged $15.47.

In June, Obi released its first report analyzing robotaxi versus ride-hailing data. The data, which was taken from rides in April 2025, showed Waymo rides averaged $20.43, Uber landed at $15.58, and Lyft rides evened out at $14.44. Compared to these figures, Waymo’s average cost has dropped 3.62%, while Uber’s went up 12%, and Lyft’s climbed 7%.

Obi CEO Ashwini Anburajan told TechCrunch she believes this is a trend to watch because, while last April’s data implied customers were willing to pay a higher price to ride in a Waymo, the “novelty is wearing off for people in the Bay Area.” That means Waymo will likely keep having to price its offering more competitively, she said.

The wildcard: Tesla

The wildcard in Obi’s new report is that it collected data on Tesla’s burgeoning robotaxi service, which appears to be far cheaper than these other three offerings. But there are a number of important caveats.

For one, Tesla isn’t technically operating a robotaxi service in the San Francisco area, where the data was sampled. Tesla doesn’t have the permits required to operate a driverless commercial robotaxi service in the state. Nor does it have a transportation network company permit like Uber or Lyft. Instead, Tesla has a transportation charter permit from the California Public Utilities Commission, which means the company uses employees to drive the company’s vehicles equipped with its Full Self-Driving software.

Tesl a Bay Area fleet is also modest. Crowdsourced data from the website Robotaxi Tracker has helped log around 168 vehicles in Tesla’s ride-hail fleet, though not all of those cars are active all the time. (Obi notes in the report that only 156 were spotted by the crowdsourced website at the time the company ran its data sampling.)

That smaller fleet has driven by wait times. Of the four services surveyed, Tesla had the longest wait time with an average ETA of 15.32 minutes. Waymo’s average wait time was 5.74 minutes (up from 4.28 minutes last April), while Lyft and Uber came in at 5.14 minutes and 3.15 minutes, respectively.

These inputs — fleet size, human drivers, wait times — could have all affect how Tesla prices rides at true scale, and it’s hard to say when and how that might happen. Tesla only just recently pulled safety monitors out of a handful of cars in Austin, Texas.

If Tesla can scale its robotaxis — which rely on camera inputs alone — the company should theoretically be able to price rides lower than competitors like Waymo which, integrates its self-driving software into modified vehicles equipped with several different kinds of sensors.

Anburajan thinks there’s value in Tesla operating a ride-hailing service, ahead of any attempt at operating true robotaxis.

“It’s not really a autonomous vehicle at the moment. It has a safety driver in it. They’re building brand familiarity. They’re building brand preference for people that already like Teslas and people who are inclined to like Tesla,” she said.

There’s some evidence of this in the report Obi released Tuesday.

Along with the ride requests sampled in the Bay Area, Obi surveyed 2,000 people in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas on a number of issues related to robotaxis and ride-hailing. Over half of those respondents who had taken an autonomous vehicle ride said they’d ridden in a Tesla robotaxi. And when asked which autonomous brand they preferred the most, respondents chose Tesla 31% of the time.

Waymo was still the most preferred, with 39.8% of respondents choosing the Alphabet-owned brand. But this strong preference for Tesla, despite the company not operating a real robotaxi service at any scale yet, hints at future demand.

That strong preference for Tesla is also being driven in large part by a particular group: men. Women who were surveyed by Obi were essentially evenly split when it comes to choosing Waymo or Tesla, with Zoox a distant third at 8%. But 56% of men surveyed preferred Tesla to Waymo (25%) or Zoox (7%).

Obi’s report offers a good baseline ahead of a year that’s sure to see many developments in the world of autonomous vehicles. Waymo is rapidly expanding into new cities, even partnering with Uber and Lyft in some of them. Those ride-hail companies are bringing many other autonomous vehicle partners onto their platforms, too. And Tesla will likely look to prove its robotaxi approach works in order to expand its nascent offering.

Waymo is also about to start offering rides in a new van-like vehicle that it is building with Chinese company Zeekr. That vehicle, known as Ojai, is expected to have a lower up-front cost for Waymo and could allow the company to get more aggressive on pricing.

One thing is clear to Anburajan, though: real competition is coming. Other companies are preparing to launch their own robotaxi services. Nuro is supplying its self-driving system to modified Lucid Gravity vehicles as part of a premium robotaxi network that will be operated by Uber. Hyundai-backed Motional has rebooted its efforts and plans to launch a commercial robotaxi service in Las Vegas before the end of the year. And other companies like Avride have partnered with Uber to bring robotaxis to other U.S. cities.

“It’s still very early in the game, so no one’s a late entrant, right?” she said. “We’re in this new era, so who’s gonna capture market share and move fast to win consumers over?”

Amid Trump attacks and weaponized sanctions, Europeans look to rely less on US tech

Imagine a world where your credit card no longer works, your Amazon account is shut down, and using U.S. tech companies is no longer an option. It’s almost impossible to shop online, wire bank transfers to an overseas family member, or rely on anything that involves the United States, including the U.S. dollar.

For one Canadian, this is now her reality.

Last year, the Trump administration added Kimberly Prost, a judge on the International Criminal Court, to its economic sanctions list, after she served on an appeals chamber that in 2020 unanimously authorized the ICC’s prosecutor to investigate alleged war crimes in Afghanistan since 2003, including U.S. service personnel. The United States is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize its authority. Several other ICC judges and prosecutors have also been sanctioned by the Trump administration.

Prost, whose name now shares the same list as some of the world’s most dangerous people, from terrorists to North Korean hackers and Iranian spies, described the effect of sanctions on her life as “paralyzing” in an interview by The Irish Times.

This high-profile case provides a glimpse into the disruption that being cut off from the U.S. can have on a person’s everyday life; lawmakers and government leaders across Europe are growing more aware of the looming threat facing them at home, and their over-reliance on U.S. technology.

Trump’s diplomatic escalations and the upending of international norms, including the capture a foreign leader and threatening to invade a NATO and European ally, have caused some EU countries to consider moving away from U.S. tech and reclaim their digital sovereignty. This shift in thinking comes as the Trump administration has become increasingly unpredictable and vindictive.

In Belgium, the country’s cybersecurity chief Miguel De Bruycker conceded in a recent interview that Europe has “lost the internet” to the United States, which has hoarded much of the world’s tech and financial systems. De Bruycker said it is “currently impossible” to store data fully in Europe as a result of U.S. dominating digital infrastructure, and urged the European Union to strengthen its tech across the bloc.

The European Parliament voted January 22 to adopt a report directing the European Commission to identify areas where the EU can reduce its reliance on foreign providers. Parliamentarians said the European Union and its 27 member states rely on non-EU countries for more than 80% of its digital products, services, and infrastructure. The vote was non-binding, but comes at a time when the European Commission is moving to bring more of its technologies and dependencies onto its own turf.

he French government said Tuesday it would replace Zoom and Microsoft Teams with its own domestically made video conferencing software Visio, according to the French minister for civil service and state reform David Amiel.

Concerns about digital sovereignty are not new and date back decades to at least 2001 when the U.S. introduced the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Patriot Act allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to surveil the world in ways it had never been allowed to before, including spying on the communications of citizens of its closest allies in Europe, despite the bloc’s strict data protection and privacy rules.

Microsoft conceded years later in 2011 that as an American tech company it could be compelled to hand over Europeans’ data in response to a secret U.S. government order; it wasn’t until 2013 when much of this surveillance was revealed in practice through classified documents leaked by then-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

At the individual consumer level, there has also been a concerted push to urge users to switch away from U.S. tech providers and technologies, with tech workers calling on their chief executives to speak up against the rising brutality of U.S. federal immigration agents.

Independent journalist Paris Marx has a guide for getting off of U.S. tech services, while several other websites, such as Switch-to-EU and European Alternatives, encourage users to use alternatives to Big Tech products and services, such as open source tools.

Aylo, the parent company to some of the most popular tube sites like Pornhub, announced on Tuesday that it will restrict access to its platforms in the United Kingdom, effective February 2.

Since last year, Pornhub and other Aylo sites had complied with the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), which mandated — among other provisions — that websites with pornographic content verify the ages of visitors before showing them content that is inappropriate for minors.

Instead of verifying the ages of its users, Aylo will block access to platforms like Pornhub in the U.K. altogether; however, U.K. users who have already verified their identity will still be able to use their accounts.

“Despite the clear intent of the law to restrict minors’ access to adult content and commitment to enforcement, after 6 months of implementation, our experience strongly suggests that the OSA has failed to achieve that objective,” Aylo said in a statement. “We believe this framework in practice has diverted traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the internet, and has also jeopardized the privacy and personal data of U.K. citizens.”

Ofcom, the UK regulator that enforces OSA, disagrees with Aylo’s characterization of the legislation.

“Porn services have a choice between using age checks to protect users as required under the Act, or to block access to their sites in the U.K.,” Ofcom said in a statement to TechCrunch. “There’s nothing to stop technology providers from developing solutions which work at the device level, and we would urge the industry to get on with that if they can evidence it is highly effective.”

Age verification technology has proven controversial as it rolls out across the globe. While children’s online safety is a pressing concern, privacy advocates argue that the type of cloud-based age verification methods mandated by legislation like OSA harms adults by collecting swaths of highly sensitive data.

“In other jurisdictions, Aylo has often been one of the only major platforms to comply, only to see traffic diverted to even larger, non-compliant sites,” the company said. Sites that do not comply with OSA are supposed to get fined, but Aylo claims that so far, only the forum 4chan has been fined.

Ofcom also disagrees with Aylo’s claim that it is not punishing porn sites for non-compliance.

“We’ve taken strong and swift action against non-compliance, launching investigations into more than 80 porn sites and fining a porn provider £1 million, with more to come,” Ofcom said.

The decision to block access in the U.K. is consistent with Aylo’s decisions around navigating compliance with age verification laws in the United States. Aylo’s websites are blocked in a number of U.S. states where age verification is mandated for adult content, since the company believes that age verification software opens the door to the threat of data breaches.

These fears are not unfounded. Pornhub was, in fact, vulnerable to a data breach at the web and mobile analytics provider Mixpanel, which exposed data about some Pornhub Premium subscribers. This stolen data reportedly included information like users’ email addresses, location, videos watched, keywords associated with the video, and the dates and times that they used the site.

Anthropic doubles VC fundraising to $20bn on surging investor demand

AI start-up in talks to raise new funds from Coatue, GIC, Iconiq and Sequoia at $350bn valuation

Anthropic is set to raise about $20bn from venture capitalists and other investors, double the amount it had targeted in a sign of surging investor enthusiasm for the high-profile AI start-up.

The fundraising deal, which is close to being finalised, would value the company at $350bn, said people familiar with the matter. The upsized transaction underscores Anthropic’s growing momentum as chief rival to the ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Anthropic had been in talks to raise about $10bn from investors to finance its expansion plans; however, that amount has since doubled because of the high level of investor demand to back the company.

The start-up received interest totalling five to six times the original target, said one investor in the round. Anthropic will lock in an initial $10bn to $15bn from investors as early as Tuesday, before completing the raise in the coming weeks, the people said.

Investors view Anthropic as an attractive company to back given its focus on providing AI for businesses, the stability of its leadership and popularity of its coding tool Claude Code.

Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC and US investor Coatue are leading the deal. Sequoia Capital is also making a big investment in Anthropic as part of the round, the FT previously reported.

Existing backers including Iconiq Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, G Squared and Factorial Funds are also expected to participate in the round, said people with knowledge of the deal.

As part of the fundraising discussions, and in addition to the $20bn from financial groups, tech groups Microsoft and Nvidia have also committed to invest a total of up to $15bn into the company.

The fundraising talks come alongside Anthropic’s preparations for a potential initial public offering that could come this year.

The company has hired the law firm Wilson Sonsini to begin preparatory work and held preliminary conversations with banks about a public listing.

Anthropic has become a leading developer of AI systems, rivalling the likes of Google and OpenAI to create the most advanced models. Its valuation has skyrocketed in the past year to become one of the world’s most valuable private companies.

Chief executive Dario Amodei was an early employee at OpenAI but left in 2020 to co-found Anthropic after clashing with OpenAI’s boss Sam Altman over its direction and AI guardrails.

Amodei on Monday published a 20,000-word essay arguing humanity “needs to wake up” to the potentially catastrophic risks posed by powerful AI systems in the years to come.

“Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it,” he wrote, in a stark warning that safeguards around AI are inadequate.

Anthropic declined to comment.

Iran delegates emergency powers as threat of conflict with US looms

Authorities take steps to keep government running in case of attack as regional countries race to defuse tensions with US

Iran’s president has begun implementing emergency measures to shore up supplies of essential goods and keep government running in case of new attacks on the country by the US or Israel.

In a meeting on Tuesday with governors of border provinces, Masoud Pezeshkian issued orders designed to “eliminate redundant bureaucracy and accelerate the import of basic commodities”, according to state media.

“We are handing over authorities to provinces so that governors can contact the judiciary and officials in other organisations and make decisions themselves,” Pezeshkian said at the meeting.

The move, which came as fears grow of another conflict with the US or Israel, appeared designed to delegate powers to provinces if senior figures were assassinated.

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards force warned countries in the region that any new attacks could put at risk the passage of oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, which passes between Iran and the Gulf states.

“We do not want to jeopardise the global economy, but the Americans and their supporters cannot benefit from a war they initiate against Iran,” Mohammad Akbarzadeh, a political affairs deputy in the guards’ naval forces, said on Tuesday, according to state media.

He added that neighbouring countries considered “friendly” towards Iran had been warned that if their airspace, territory or waters were used in an attack against Iran, they would be regarded as “hostile”.

A diplomat said regional countries were talking to Iran and the US to de-escalate tensions and warning the Trump administration that if Tehran felt Washington was pushing for regime change and that the country faced an existential threat, it could target oil and gas facilities across the region.

Iranian state media said Pezeshkian spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday. The Saudi leader voiced his support for regional peace, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Akbarzadeh stressed that Iran does not seek war but is fully prepared if one is imposed on the Islamic republic. “Iran will not retreat by even one millimetre,” he said.

Israel killed dozens of senior military commanders in a devastating opening salvo when it launched its 12-day war against Iran in June, an operation that Tehran admitted left officials stunned. The US briefly joined the conflict to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites.

Washington has in recent weeks indicated it is considering striking Iran again, with speculation that it could target senior political and military figures such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to attack during deadly mass protests this month, and the US president said last week he had sent an “armada” of naval forces towards Iran “just in case” military action became necessary.

US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said on Monday the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier had been deployed to the region.

Following the war in June, Pezeshkian’s government announced it would hand over authority to all 31 provinces in order to allow the government to continue functioning.

Under the measures announced on Tuesday, governors are permitted to pursue “imports without foreign currency” through mechanisms such as barter with neighbouring countries bypassing previous bureaucratic procedures, domestic media reported.

Government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani acknowledged the tensions on Tuesday, saying there was a “heavy shadow of war hanging over the country, which has severely complicated” existing problems.

While stressing that Iran was “fully prepared” to defend itself against foreign aggression, Mohajerani said the government was still “trying to find a solution through diplomacy”.

Ali Gholhaki, a hardline journalist with close ties to security institutions, told the reformist outlet Ensafnews that Iran and the US were engaged in “direct or indirect” talks in a “third country”, though he doubted diplomacy could avert what he described as a “highly likely” war.

Iran’s senior political and military figures have said that any attempt on Khamenei’s life would be regarded as an act of all-out war.

Iran is still struggling with the aftermath of the protests, in which thousands of people were killed in the most violent episode since the 1979 revolution.

An internet blackout imposed on January 8 at the height of the unrest has largely remained in place. While some limited access has resumed through VPNs, connectivity is still unreliable.

Mohajerani, the government spokesperson, called for “national solidarity” in the face of the threats.

“We are hearing war drums beaten by hostile media [overseas] seeking to create fear and disruption in people’s lives,” she told local reporters. “We knew from the beginning that we are facing a multi-layered, hybrid war.”

Investor helped turn the Contrafund into one of the world’s biggest actively managed mutual funds

Fidelity star portfolio manager William Danoff plans to retire from the company at the end of the year, as one of the world’s best known stockpickers steps back from the market.

Danoff, who helped turn the Contrafund into one of the world’s largest actively managed stock mutual funds, has made bold bets over his career, helping the vehicle outperform the benchmark S&P 500 over the past 35 years.

“It has been the privilege of a lifetime to manage Contrafund for 35 years and help millions of Fidelity’s clients invest wisely and retire comfortably,” Danoff said in a statement. “I am grateful to the many real people out there who have entrusted their hard-earned savings with me over the decades.”

Danoff is among the last of a generation of famed stockpickers, which includes his mentor at Fidelity Peter Lynch, playing a pivotal role in how Americans invested in public markets.

He joined Fidelity in 1986 as an equity research analyst and in 1990 was named sole portfolio manager of the Contrafund. The fund has grown into a colossus for Fidelity, generating large management fees for the investment group.

The fund has invested heavily in US growth stocks, as well as businesses whose value Danoff believed were “not fully recognised by the public”. It invested in Facebook, now known as Meta, ahead of its initial public offering. The fund is often a critical player in IPOs, and has been a major backer of private companies before they float.

It counted the social media company as its largest holding at the end of 2025, with stakes in chipmaker Nvidia and investment-to-industrials giant Berkshire Hathaway as its biggest positions. It is also currently invested in AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Fidelity manages more than $360bn in Contrafund strategies, including the $176bn in its flagship retail fund. The main Contrafund has returned an average of 14.1 per cent a year under Danoff’s leadership, ahead of the 11.3 per cent a year gain generated by the S&P 500.

Management of the fund will be handed to Asher Anolic and Jason Weiner, who last year were added as co-portfolio managers of the business alongside Danoff.

Their appointments last year helped answer questions around succession planning at the fund, given Danoff’s long tenure running Contrafund by himself.

Weiner is a 35-year veteran of Fidelity, joining the business as an equity analyst focused on so-called growth stocks in 1991. Anolic was hired by Fidelity in 2008 to cover regional banks and pharmaceutical stocks as an analyst.

Bart Grenier, the head of Fidelity’s asset management business, said Danoff had “demonstrated resiliency in navigating some of the most complex and volatile market environments over four decades, delivering stability and value, while also mentoring generations of investment professionals”.

LVMH predicts ‘gradual’ luxury recovery as sales rise

Owner of Louis Vuitton and Dior reports another quarter of sales growth as luxury industry emerges from downturn

LVMH reported an increase in sales during the fourth quarter and signalled that its performance would ‘gradually improve’ in 2026, as the leading luxury group ended a tumultuous year for the industry on a positive note.

Organic sales at the group, which is controlled by billionaire Bernard Arnault and his family, grew by 1 per cent in the fourth quarter to €22.7bn, compared to the same period a year earlier.

The growth was slightly ahead of expectations and maintained momentum from the preceding quarter, which raised hopes that the luxury industry was beginning to emerge from a painful multiyear downturn.

LVMH chief financial officer Cécile Cabanis told the FT that the group’s “creative renewal” and other initiatives that had been put in place during a lean period gave it confidence that there “should be gradual improvement” in 2026.

However “the environment remains quite unsettled and uncertain, and personally, I can’t see it clearly. So we may have to react and things won’t go as planned,” she added. 

Operating profit at the owner of Louis Vuitton and Dior fell by 9 per cent in 2025 to €17.8bn, although the outcome was ahead of analyst expectations compiled by Visible Alpha, for a 12.4 per cent drop.

Cabanis said that around 5 percentage points of the hit to profits was down to negative currency effects and the other 4 percentage points due to weaker performance. 

The Paris-listed luxury group’s results come after a disruptive year in which trade tensions between the US and China — luxury’s two biggest markets — cast a shadow over the industry.

Sales at virtually all high-end brands have suffered during a period of suppressed consumer spending which came after several years of steep price rises.

Analysts are expecting that US consumers will drive a recovery in luxury sales in 2026.

A new wave of designer debuts, including Jonathan Anderson at Dior, is also expected to reinvigorate the product ranges of luxury’s big brands though Cabanis noted that the impact on performance would be “gradual”.

Operating income at LVMH’s struggling wine and spirits division took the biggest hit in 2025, falling by 25 per cent to €1bn, as health-conscious consumers across the world reduced their alcohol intake.

Meanwhile profits at the group’s crucial fashion and leather goods division fell by 13 per cent to €13.2bn. Sales of fashion and handbags fell by 3 per cent in the fourth quarter.

LVMH’s watch and jewellery brands, which include US jeweller Tiffany, were a bright spot. Sales grew by 8 per cent organically in the fourth quarter, though operating profit at the division declined by 2 per cent to €1.5bn in the year.

Investor helped turn the Contrafund into one of the world’s biggest actively managed mutual funds

Fidelity star portfolio manager William Danoff plans to retire from the company at the end of the year, as one of the world’s best known stockpickers steps back from the market.

Danoff, who helped turn the Contrafund into one of the world’s largest actively managed stock mutual funds, has made bold bets over his career, helping the vehicle outperform the benchmark S&P 500 over the past 35 years.

“It has been the privilege of a lifetime to manage Contrafund for 35 years and help millions of Fidelity’s clients invest wisely and retire comfortably,” Danoff said in a statement. “I am grateful to the many real people out there who have entrusted their hard-earned savings with me over the decades.”

Danoff is among the last of a generation of famed stockpickers, which includes his mentor at Fidelity Peter Lynch, playing a pivotal role in how Americans invested in public markets.

He joined Fidelity in 1986 as an equity research analyst and in 1990 was named sole portfolio manager of the Contrafund. The fund has grown into a colossus for Fidelity, generating large management fees for the investment group.

The fund has invested heavily in US growth stocks, as well as businesses whose value Danoff believed were “not fully recognised by the public”. It invested in Facebook, now known as Meta, ahead of its initial public offering. The fund is often a critical player in IPOs, and has been a major backer of private companies before they float.

It counted the social media company as its largest holding at the end of 2025, with stakes in chipmaker Nvidia and investment-to-industrials giant Berkshire Hathaway as its biggest positions. It is also currently invested in AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Fidelity manages more than $360bn in Contrafund strategies, including the $176bn in its flagship retail fund. The main Contrafund has returned an average of 14.1 per cent a year under Danoff’s leadership, ahead of the 11.3 per cent a year gain generated by the S&P 500.

Management of the fund will be handed to Asher Anolic and Jason Weiner, who last year were added as co-portfolio managers of the business alongside Danoff.

Their appointments last year helped answer questions around succession planning at the fund, given Danoff’s long tenure running Contrafund by himself.

Weiner is a 35-year veteran of Fidelity, joining the business as an equity analyst focused on so-called growth stocks in 1991. Anolic was hired by Fidelity in 2008 to cover regional banks and pharmaceutical stocks as an analyst.

Bart Grenier, the head of Fidelity’s asset management business, said Danoff had “demonstrated resiliency in navigating some of the most complex and volatile market environments over four decades, delivering stability and value, while also mentoring generations of investment professionals”.