WWD : Style Icon and Philanthropist Countess Jacqueline de Ribes Dies at 96

Style Icon and Philanthropist Countess Jacqueline de Ribes Dies at 96
Considered by many to be the epitome of Parisian elegance, de Ribes was among the Swans written about by Truman Capote.

ByJoelle DiderichPlus Icon
December 31, 2025, 8:59am
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Updated 1:40 p.m. ET on Dec. 31
PARIS — Countess Jacqueline de Ribes, the socialite once dubbed “The Last Queen of Paris” by Valentino Garavani, has died at the age of 96.

She passed away in Switzerland on Tuesday, according to event organizer Françoise Dumas, who had known her since the late 1960s and worked with her on numerous soirées, most recently the annual fundraising gala for the Société des Amis des Musée d’Orsay.

“The last grande dame of Paris is gone,” Dumas told WWD. “She carried the art of living and savoir-vivre to new heights. With her, a bit of that Proustian Paris is disappearing too.”

Jacqueline de Ribes in Christian Dior, 1959.
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photography by David Lees, David Lees /The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

Considered by many to be the epitome of Parisian elegance, de Ribes was among the Swans written about by Truman Capote and was photographed by Richard Avedon.

De Ribes was closely covered by WWD, which tracked her wardrobe choices and was present at the launch of her fashion collection in 1983.
“After years of whipping up dresses for herself and her friends, Jacqueline de Ribes has decided to take the plunge,” WWD wrote alongside photographs of the aristocrat modeling the looks herself in her sprawling 19th-century town house.

The line, described as “a couture collection of after-five clothes for the American market,” made its debut six days later at New York’s Regency Hotel — although close friend Yves Saint Laurent was given an earlier, private preview. “I wanted to show the secret to him,” de Ribes explained. “We share the same intellectual rigor about aesthetics.”
Jacqueline de Ribes and Gloria Guinness at Maxim’s during the Battle of Versailles events in 1973.
WWD

As for why she opted to debut the collection in America, the Frenchwoman noted, “Every designer offers a personality and a style. Mine is simplicity and sophistication and I think Americans will appreciate that. They’ve always been very nice to me.”

Garavani was among the designers who paid tribute to her.

“I mourn the passing of Jacqueline de Ribes, a dear friend whose presence accompanied me throughout my life. As a young designer at Jean Dessès, I would visit her with drawings for a newspaper, and she welcomed me into the magnificence of her hôtel particulier with superb elegance and grace,” he recalled.

“I have carried those memories with me ever since. She will be deeply missed, and it pains me to know that I will never again have the thought that I might see her alive,” he added.

The countess was the subject of an exhibition, “Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in 2015, drawing close to 195,000 visitors.

“In talking with her, she didn’t want a show about herself. She wanted it to be more about a way of life that is disappearing,” Harold Koda, curator in charge of The Costume Institute, said at the time.

“If you were in her family’s hôtel particulier you were just kind of immersed in this grandeur — there are these pieces of furniture, these 18th-century prints, there are paintings. But then as we started to work, I thought, even though you see her in all of these situations, she has a very private family life; her children, her husband, the dinner parties with heads of state — none of that is documented. It’s just because they were private. What you see is the public life, which led her very seamlessly to becoming a designer,” he added.


Jacqueline de Ribes fall 1985 (Photo by Guy Marineau/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images)
Penske Media via Getty Images

The couple’s collection, comprising paintings and drawings from the 17th to the 19th centuries, sculpture, furniture and works of art, was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in 2019. The collection was distinguished by its quality, state of preservation and provenance, with some pieces directly handed down from Queen Marie Antoinette.

Decorator Jacques Grange, a close friend, mourned the loss of a way of life. “She belonged to a high society that has vanished with her. Elegance, style, culture, beauty — the last of the Swans,” he told WWD.

Fearless about fashion and color, de Ribes also amassed a couture collection that included pieces from Saint Laurent, Pierre Balmain, Bill Blass, Marc Bohan for Dior, Madame Grès, Valentino and Jean Paul Gaultier, whose spring 1999 haute couture collection was inspired by her.
A view of “Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style” at The Met.
Thomas Iannaccone

“Comtesse de Ribes is for me the incarnation of Parisian chic. She was an icon and the Avedon portraits of her made me love fashion,” Gaultier told WWD.
“It was only natural that I dedicated a couture collection to her, ‘Divine Jacqueline.’ It was the least I could do to pay homage to her elegance and style. She was an inspiration to all of us,” he added.

In a 1959 profile, WWD described her as an “individualist” fond of tweaking designer looks to her liking. “She will not wear whatever is seen everywhere and on everybody,” it said, noting her penchant for masculine-cut jackets, and aversion to anything considered “glamorous” or “sexy.”

“The word that applies best to Mme. De Ribes’ taste for clothes is ‘dramatic.’ She loves the theater and thinks that ‘women should dress as if they were putting on a show,’” it added.
De Ribes donated the contents of her wardrobe to Palais Galliera, the fashion museum backed by Paris City Hall, Dumas said. “She was so proud to see her name on the facade of the Met. I hope we will be able to pay tribute to her in Paris also,” she said.

After the death of her husband, banker Vicomte Édouard de Ribes, in 2013, she succeeded him as honorary president of the friends of the Musée d’Orsay. She was also active in theater and film production, and supported causes including UNICEF and the League Against Cancer.

De Ribes is survived by a daughter, Elisabeth, and a son, Jean, as well as her granddaughter Alix. Details of funeral services were not immediately available.

The Information : OpenAI Ramps Up Audio AI Efforts Ahead of Device

OpenAI Ramps Up Audio AI Efforts Ahead of Device

The Takeaway
  • OpenAI unifies teams to enhance audio AI models for an upcoming device.
  • New audio model architecture offers more natural, accurate, and emotive responses.
  • OpenAI’s device will act as a companion, proactively giving suggestions to help its user achieve their goals.

OpenAI is taking steps to improve its audio AI models, in preparation for its eventual release of an AI-powered personal device, said a person with knowledge of the effort. The device is expected to be largely audio-based, said three people with knowledge of it.

When people speak to ChatGPT, the chatbot can talk back but the large language model that powers the audio version is a different one to the model that powers ChatGPT’s text-based responses. Researchers within the company believe the current audio models lag behind the text-based models in the accuracy of their responses and how quickly they answer questions, according to a former employee and a current employee.

As a result, over the last two months, OpenAI has unified several engineering, product and research teams around the goal of improving audio models for its future devices, said one of the people with knowledge of the effort.

Improving the accuracy of audio models is important for OpenAI’s goals of launching a device that consumers can give spoken commands to. The first of those devices isn’t expected for about another year, The Information has previously reported.

OpenAI’s efforts to improve its audio models are beginning to pay off. A new audio-model architecture produces responses that sound more natural and emotive and provide more accurate, in-depth answers, said the person with knowledge of the effort. The new audio model will also be able to speak at the same time as a human user, which today’s models can’t do, and will handle interruptions better, this person said.

The company is aiming to release the new audio model in the first quarter of 2026, the person with knowledge of the effort said. A spokesperson from OpenAI declined to comment.

Like Google, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Apple, OpenAI is looking to develop new kinds of personal AI devices, including wearables. Some of these companies believe that today’s most popular devices, like the iPhone, aren’t optimized for future AI technology.

OpenAI researchers working on the device want users to interact with it through speech, rather than by looking at a screen. Many AI researchers—including some at Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup cofounded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati—believe that speaking out loud is a more natural way to interact with AI because people primarily interact with each other through speech.

Some also believe that a design without a screen would reduce the chances that people will become addicted to a device. Former Apple design chief Jony Ive, who is working with OpenAI on its hardware efforts, has said that this is a priority for him, as he sees potential new devices as a way to right the wrongs of past consumer gadgets.

“Even if you’re innocent in your intention, I think if you’re involved in something that has poor consequences, you need to own it,” Ive said in a May interview with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. “That ownership, personally, has driven a lot of what I’ve been working on.”

One obstacle that OpenAI faces today, however, is that many ChatGPT users don’t interact with the chatbot by speaking to it out loud, either due to the low quality of its audio models or because they aren’t aware of it as a feature, the former employee said. In order to build an audio-first AI device, OpenAI has to first get consumers used to speaking out loud with AI products like ChatGPT, they said.

A key figure behind OpenAI’s audio AI push is Kundan Kumar, a voice AI researcher the company hired from Character.AI this summer to lead the effort, the person with knowledge of the audio AI effort said. Other leaders include Ben Newhouse, a product research lead who has helped rewrite OpenAI’s infrastructure—largely been built for text-focused AI—for audio AI, and Jackie Shannon, a product manager for multimodal ChatGPT, the person said.

OpenAI is developing a family of devices it plans to release over time, rather than a single device, according to multiple people with knowledge of the effort. Among the ideas the company has discussed are glasses and a smart speaker without a display, they said.

Researchers working on the device told OpenAI staff in a presentation this summer that the device will act like a companion that works alongside its user, proactively giving suggestions to help the user achieve their goals, rather than as a simple conduit to apps and other software, according to the person with knowledge of the audio AI efforts. The device will be able to take in information about its surroundings and its user through audio and video when the user allows it, the person said.

A number of staffers across OpenAI work on efforts related to the device, such as its supply chain, industrial design and model research. Earlier in 2025, OpenAI acquired io, a company cofounded by Ive, for nearly $6.5 billion to design the hardware devices.

WSJ : How Meta’s Reels Became a $50 Billion Business

How Meta’s Reels Became a $50 Billion Business
Once a TikTok wannabe, Instagram’s video feature is now a hit with users and advertisers. Can it make the leap to television?

  • Meta’s Reels has achieved an annual run rate exceeding $50 billion.
  • Instagram users spend more time with Reels than YouTube Shorts viewers spend watching on that platform, according to a market intelligence firm.
  • Meta plans to expand Reels to more screens in 2026, and began with a rollout on Amazon Fire TV devices in the U.S.

Five years ago, Meta’s META -0.88%decrease; red down pointing triangle Reels was a TikTok copycat with no revenue. Now, it is set to bring in as much as Coca-Cola and Nike—and the company plans to expand to more screens in 2026.

Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced on an October earnings call that Instagram and Facebook Reels had surpassed a $50 billion annual run rate, which means that the company is on track to make that amount of revenue in the next 12 months. By comparison, analysts expect YouTube to bring in $46 billion in advertising revenue this year, and the research firm eMarketer estimates TikTok will bring in $17 billion.

Zuckerberg credited the company’s AI recommendation systems which, he said, have been delivering higher quality and more relevant content on its platforms.

“Video is a particular bright spot,” he said, noting that people were spending 30% more time watching videos on Instagram than they did the previous year.

It is a far cry from just a few years ago, when internal Meta research showed that Instagram was stumbling in its attempt to mimic TikTok. Caught flat-footed by the success of that video app, then owned by ByteDance, Instagram launched Reels in August 2020.

By 2022, Instagram users were spending one-tenth the time watching Reels as they did on TikTok, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. One document said Reels engagement had been falling over the previous four weeks and that “most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever.”

Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s vice president of product, said the first challenge was figuring out how to introduce short-form video into an app that had primarily been known as a place for people to post photos and connect with their friends and the creators they follow.

Then they had to help people find Reels from accounts they don’t even follow. “That’s an entirely different ranking challenge from the way that we originally had to think about ranking content,” she said in an interview.

Instagram’s algorithm previously had been built on a following graph, meaning it primarily showed users posts from people they followed—either friends, celebrities or creators. TikTok upended the idea of the following graph, instead showing users videos from accounts they didn’t follow and figuring out what they liked based on how long they lingered on each video.

Instagram had to figure out how to do that much harder task, too.

It focused on promoting original content and paying creators to post on the platform. As people spent more time scrolling Reels, the algorithm got better at predicting what users wanted to see.

Five years on, something has started to click.

The average Instagram user is now spending 27 minutes a day watching Reels, versus YouTube Shorts users’ watching for 21 minutes on that platform, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. (TikTok is still king with the average user spending 44 minutes a day scrolling its main feed.)

Brock Johnson, a 28-year-old content creator in Park City, Utah, has posted regularly on Instagram since 2017. He said he has noticed a change on the platform recently.

“A lot of my friends are now sending me Reels every day and we’re talking about things that we saw on Reels, whereas even just like two years ago, that wasn’t really the case,” he said.

The company says it has “turned a corner” and now plans to build on that momentum by launching Instagram for TV. A few weeks ago, Meta announced the first step toward that goal, rolling it out on Amazon Fire TV devices in the U.S. as a test.

Lyons said Instagram knew from research that a lot of people already were watching Reels with their friends by mirroring their devices on a TV.

YouTube has seen success in the TV market, and last year, it became the most-watched video provider on TVs in the U.S. People also now watch more YouTube on TV sets than on phones or any other devices.

Instagram wants a slice of that pie.

In April, it launched a feature called Blend that lets people create custom feeds of videos based on the algorithms of a user and his or her friends. Lyons said it makes for a more social viewing experience.

Last month, Instagram launched another new feature that lets users more directly control the videos their algorithm shows them by telling it what they do and don’t want to see. (More puppies, fewer gender reveal parties gone wrong.)

Lyons thinks that will help with the push into TV. “When you’re on TV, you want to be able to just tap in to the right type of content, whoever you’re sitting with,” she said.

WSJ : As Signs of Aging Emerge, Trump Responds With Defiance

As Signs of Aging Emerge, Trump Responds With Defiance
In an interview, the president says he has eschewed some advice from his doctors and regrets getting advanced imaging

  • President Trump, 79, is showing signs of aging, according to people close to him.
  • Trump underwent a CT scan in October to rule out cardiovascular issues, despite his prior assertion that he got an MRI.
  • The president has eschewed some advice from his doctors, and he avoids regular exercise beyond golf.

WASHINGTON—President Trump is taking more aspirin than his doctors recommend. He briefly tried wearing compression socks for his swelling ankles, but stopped because he didn’t like them. And he regrets undergoing advanced imaging because it generated scrutiny of his health.

“In retrospect, it’s too bad I took it because it gave them a little ammunition,” Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on his decision to get a cardiovascular and abdominal scan in October. “I would have been a lot better off if they didn’t, because the fact that I took it said, ‘Oh gee, is something wrong?’ Well, nothing’s wrong.”

Trump, 79, the oldest man to assume the presidency, is showing signs of aging in public and private, according to people close to him. Yet he has at times eschewed the advice of his doctors and scoffed at the medical community’s widely accepted health recommendations, relying instead on what he calls his “good genetics.” Trump and his doctor say he is in excellent health, and aides say he maintains a vigorous schedule.

Trump gets little sleep and has recently struggled to keep his eyes open during several televised events in the West Wing. Aides, donors and friends say they often have to speak loudly in meetings with the president because he strains to hear. Aside from golf, Trump doesn’t get regular exercise, and he is known to consume a diet heavy on salty and fatty foods, such as hamburgers and french fries.

The large dose of aspirin he chooses to take daily has caused him to bruise easily, he said, and he has been encouraged by his doctors to take a lower dose. But Trump has declined to switch because he has been taking it for 25 years. “I’m a little superstitious,” he said in the interview.

“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump said. “I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?”

Trump denied that he struggles to hear. He also denied falling asleep at recent White House events and said he has always gotten by on little sleep.

The president has sometimes described his medical care inaccurately. He has for weeks said that he underwent an MRI at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in October. When asked about the procedure by the Journal, Trump and his doctor said he got a different form of imaging: a CT scan.

A CT scan is a faster and more common way to capture detailed images of the body. The MRI is a slower test that is superior for soft tissues.

“It wasn’t an MRI,” Trump told the Journal. “It was less than that. It was a scan.”

Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, Trump’s doctor, confirmed in a statement to the Journal that Trump had received a CT scan. Barbabella said Trump’s doctors initially told him they would perform either an MRI or a CT scan, and they ultimately decided to do the latter. Barbabella said the CT scan was done “to definitively rule out any cardiovascular issues” and revealed no abnormalities. The White House declined to make Barbabella available for an interview.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House had often referred to the procedure as “advanced imaging” and didn’t address why the president hadn’t corrected the record sooner.

Delicate skin
The president has sought to conceal ailments that have led to speculation about his health, covering bruising on his hand with makeup. In his first term, he played down the severity of his Covid-19 symptoms and declined to disclose that he got a colonoscopy.

His physical signs of aging are becoming more evident to some of his closest advisers. His skin is so delicate that Pam Bondi, now his attorney general, caused his hand to bleed when she nicked him with her ring while giving him a high-five at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

The president has often accused his predecessor, President Joe Biden, who was five months younger than Trump was when he took office, of hiding the extent of his health issues. Biden decided not to seek re-election following a damaging debate in which he stumbled over words and appeared to lose his train of thought. Biden reinforced doubts about his fitness by avoiding unscripted exchanges and relying heavily on a few trusted aides who stage-managed his schedule.

Trump has been almost omnipresent in his second term, fielding questions from journalists sometimes several times a day, delivering impromptu remarks and regularly hosting dinners at the White House. Trump veers from topic to topic in his lengthy public statements, and sometimes makes factual errors.

Barbabella said in the statement to the Journal that Trump is in “exceptional health and perfectly suited to execute his duties as Commander in Chief.” The White House provided the Journal with a summary of a Mayo Clinic AI-assisted analysis of Trump’s electrocardiogram that estimated the president’s cardiac age to be that of a 65-year-old.

“As a clinician, you look for clues in people, even if they’re not your patient, and he is just with it on some fairly complex topics,” Mehmet Oz, a physician who serves as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in an interview with the Journal. Oz hasn’t provided medical care to Trump.

“I can’t even think of a single time where he said something where I don’t think he understands the issue here,” said Oz, who has frequently attended events with Trump. “He may want you to do something that is, you know, is arguable whether it’s the right path to go, but it’s a very rational approach to it.”

An impromptu interview
In an impromptu phone interview that came after the Journal shared details about its reporting with the White House, the president expressed irritation about the public debate over his health. He has grown upset with his own White House staff for not promoting him as more vigorous. “Let’s talk about health again for the 25th time,” he said at the start of the interview. “My health is perfect,” he added.

Trump said he often begins his day early at an office in the White House residence before coming downstairs around 10 a.m. and working in the Oval Office until 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. The White House provided a private calendar for the first 19 days in December, which included hundreds of meetings and phone calls with staff, CEOs, lawmakers and cabinet secretaries.

He said he had asked his staff to modify his schedule so that he can have fewer, more important meetings that he can devote more attention to—a change he doesn’t attribute to age, but to using his time more efficiently. Administration officials said they haven’t yet pared down his meeting schedule.

Trump’s staff have encouraged him to slow his pace. They urged him to spend roughly two weeks in South Florida around Christmas and New Year’s Eve, according to aides, a recommendation he acted on.

Trump’s staff have also counseled him to try to keep his eyes open during public events, fearing the optics of his appearing to fall asleep, a person familiar with the matter said. Cameras caught him appearing to doze in December at a cabinet meeting and during a November announcement about reducing the cost of weight-loss medication.

In mid-July, Trump went to see his doctors at Walter Reed owing to what his physician described as “mild swelling in his lower legs.” Ultrasounds of his veins showed that the president has “chronic venous insufficiency,” according to a memo. It is a common condition among older people in which one-way valves inside the veins don’t work properly, which makes it harder for blood to travel up the legs to the heart.

In the statement to the Journal, Barbabella said the president’s condition is “superficial chronic venous insufficiency,” which involves the smaller veins in the body and doctors say is treatable.

To help treat it, the president briefly wore compression socks. But the socks didn’t stay on for long. “I didn’t like them,” Trump said during the interview.

Trump and his aides said the swelling in his legs has improved. The president said he is getting up from his desk and walking around a bit more, another common way to improve lower-leg swelling.

Exercise is ‘boring’
But he isn’t interested in an exercise routine other than golf. “I just don’t like it. It’s boring,” Trump said. “To walk on a treadmill or run on a treadmill for hours and hours like some people do, that’s not for me.”

Trump takes rosuvastatin and ezetimibe to control his cholesterol and uses mometasone cream to treat a skin condition, his doctor reported in April.

Barbabella, Trump’s physician, said the president uses aspirin for “cardiac prevention.” He said Trump takes 325 milligrams of aspirin a day. A low dose of aspirin is most commonly 81 milligrams, according to the Mayo Clinic.

“They’d rather have me take the smaller one,” Trump said. “I take the larger one, but I’ve done it for years, and what it does do is it causes bruising.”

Of the incident in which Bondi caused his hand to bleed, Trump said, “The ring hit the back of my hand, and, yes, there was a slight little cut,” Trump said. The cut alarmed some who witnessed the exchange, according to a person with knowledge of the episode. It is one of several instances in which his hand has been cut, aides said.

Trump said he applies makeup to his hands after he gets “whacked again by someone.” He added: “I have makeup that’s, you know, easy to put on, takes about 10 seconds.”

The president has difficulty sleeping well at night, and by his own account is often texting and calling aides at 2 a.m. or later. Several allies described getting text messages from him after he catches up on their Fox News appearances in the wee hours of the morning.

“I’ve never been a big sleeper,” Trump said.

Sleeping is a particular issue aboard Air Force One, where Trump keeps his advisers awake, according to aides. Top staff take turns sitting with him on long trips, rotating so that others can sleep while one person remains by his side, according to White House officials. The president is known to poke fun at aides for falling asleep.

Trump said he didn’t fall asleep during recent events at the White House. “I’ll just close. It’s very relaxing to me,” he said in describing shutting his eyes. “Sometimes they’ll take a picture of me blinking, blinking, and they’ll catch me with the blink.”

Oz was at the Oval Office presentation in November and said he believed Trump became bored. Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and others have urged cabinet members to shorten their presentations, according to administration officials.

When asked about his hearing, Trump grew sarcastic. “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you. I can’t hear a word you’re saying,” he said mockingly. The president said he only sometimes struggles to hear “when there’s a lot of people talking.”

At times the president has had trouble hearing questions from reporters that others heard. During a dinner in September with heads of major technology companies, Trump took questions from the press and motioned with his hand for a reporter to speak up. The journalist asked if Trump planned to speak soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“What did—? What?” Trump said. Then he leaned toward his wife, Melania, who repeated the question to him, her comments captured on his microphone. Leavitt said such incidents are rare.

Barbabella described the president’s hearing as “normal” and said in a statement to the Journal that Trump doesn’t require a hearing aid.

Trump said he hasn’t made changes to his diet. In a podcast interview in October, Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters described being shocked by Trump’s eating habits when they traveled together during the campaign. While flying to a campaign event, according to Gruters, Trump consumed french fries, a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburger, a Big Mac and a Filet-O-Fish.

Trump said he had plenty of energy, which he credited to his parents, who he said were energetic until their old age.

“Genetics are very important,” he said. “And I have very good genetics.”

FT : How the UAE-Saudi Arabia alliance ruptured

How the UAE-Saudi Arabia alliance ruptured
Relationship between the Gulf’s heavyweights has developed into open confrontation

It was a covert military shipment docking at a Yemeni port that finally brought simmering tensions between Gulf heavyweights Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates dramatically into the open.

Riyadh had for weeks been unsuccessfully using diplomatic channels to pressure a UAE-backed Yemeni faction to withdraw from provinces it had seized next to the Saudi border in December. Now, Saudi Arabia alleged, the UAE was shipping weapons and armoured vehicles to the group, the separatist Southern Transitional Council.

Riyadh was infuriated. It bombed the shipment, publicly accused the UAE of supporting the Yemeni faction’s offensive and called for Abu Dhabi to pull its remaining troops from the war-torn state. The UAE rejected the Saudi allegations but said it would withdraw its forces as it sought to de-escalate the crisis.

The extraordinary escalation plunged the Saudi-backed Yemeni government into chaos. But its repercussions could be felt far wider, pitting key US allies, major trading partners and the Arab world’s two most influential leaders against each other: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, or MBZ.

“It’s worrying because it compromises efforts to address every point of tension in the region — Yemen, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Sudan,” said Dan Shapiro, a former US diplomat now at the Atlantic Council. “Each of those will be harder to solve if Saudi Arabia and the UAE are not on the same page and see their interests in conflict.”

A decade ago, the two Gulf states’ long alliance seemed destined for an energising new chapter between ambitious leaders.

MBZ, who at 64 is more than two decades older than MBS, was an early backer of his Saudi counterpart’s drive to modernise and promote a more moderate version of Islam in the deeply conservative kingdom.

The UAE had long profited from acting as a base for foreign companies doing business in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter and the Gulf’s largest economy. But Abu Dhabi was wary of the social and political risks of the conservative nation on its doorstep stagnating. Attempts at reform were welcomed.

As their relationship blossomed, MBZ promoted MBS and his plans in Washington. Some analysts suggested the older, more experienced Emirati acted as the millennial prince’s mentor — a characterisation dismissed in Riyadh.

In the region, they joined forces to assert power: the UAE was Riyadh’s main partner when MBS led a coalition to intervene against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen’s civil war in 2015. They also spearheaded a regional embargo imposed on Qatar in 2017 — which triggered the last Gulf crisis.
But as MBS became more confident and consolidated his power, he sought to propel his nation into what he believed was its rightful role on the global stage — and friction between the two assertive, absolute monarchies resurfaced.

“Each saw itself as the natural leader: Saudi believes its size and symbolic power should prevail, while the UAE believes its trailblazing power is more in sync with global dynamics,” said Emile Hokayem at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Under MBZ, the UAE used its financial clout and relationships in the west to become arguably the most influential Arab state, despite its small size. After the 2011 popular uprisings threatened the status quo in the Middle East, the UAE became the most assertive regional actor as it sought to push back against Islamist movements and shape the region in its vision.

Hokayem said Saudi Arabia and the smaller, agile UAE “have very different risk profiles, domestically and globally, and different views of how the region should be structured”.

Tensions first surfaced in Yemen in 2019 when the UAE shifted policy and announced it would withdraw its troops, which were the Saudi-led coalition’s main foreign force on the ground. The same year, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government accused the UAE of bombing its forces as the Gulf states backed competing anti-Houthi factions.

Economic rivalry also intensified, reaching a high in 2021 when MBS launched a campaign to coerce multinationals to move their regional headquarters from the UAE to Riyadh. Corporates were given three years to make the move or risk losing out on lucrative government contracts. Emiratis viewed the move as a direct challenge to Dubai’s role as the region’s leading finance hub.

Differences have also festered over Syria, the Sudanese civil war and crude production quotas determined by Opec+ — the oil cartel of which Saudi Arabia is the de facto leader.

As tensions ebbed and flowed, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser and MBZ’s brother, would be dispatched to Riyadh to smooth over their differences.

Considered less ideological than MBZ, Sheikh Tahnoon has good relations with the Saudis. But as the gaps between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi widened and the power dynamics shifted, his task became harder, a former US official said.

“Tahnoon used to go regularly to Saudi Arabia to tend the grass, and the worse things were, the longer he would stay,” the former official said. “Now MBS is king in all but name, it’s affected Tahnoon’s ability to do his relationship mending.”

Analysts say the Gulf states still have more in common than not, and both sides talk of their “brotherly” neighbours. But in recent months, the war in Sudan has put them at odds.

Both had backed the Sudanese military leadership that took over after Omar al-Bashir was ousted in 2019. But when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group turned their guns on each other, differences emerged between the Gulf nations.

Riyadh is closer to the SAF, which it sees as representing the state, but the UAE thinks it is infiltrated by Islamists. Abu Dhabi is alleged to have instead supplied weapons to the RSF, which has faced accusations of genocide. The UAE denies arming the militia.

MBS voiced his concerns about the Sudan conflict and the RSF with Donald Trump during a White House visit in November.

Soon after the Trump-MBS meeting, the latest Yemen crisis erupted. In December, the UAE-backed STC faction — which is ostensibly part of the Yemeni government — seized control of the two provinces by Saudi borders, Hadhramaut and al-Mahra.

Riyadh believes Abu Dhabi wrongly thought that MBS raised the issue with the US president of sanctioning the UAE over its alleged support for the RSF — and then greenlit the STC’s advance out of anger with the kingdom.

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati academic, said linking the events in Yemen to differences over Sudan was “wild analysis”.


The conflict in Yemen had stagnated after Riyadh agreed to a truce with the Houthis in 2022 and sought to extract itself from the war, with MBS focusing on his domestic agenda.

But the separatist offensive dealt a severe blow to Saudi Arabia’s influence, as well as the Yemeni government it backs. And, in Riyadh’s thinking, it impinged on its national security.

“Yemen is Saudi Arabia’s backyard,” said Firas Maksad, managing director for the Middle East and north Africa at Eurasia Group. “The offensive launched by UAE-backed forces . . . crossed Saudi redlines.”

Maksad said Abu Dhabi’s decision to withdraw its remaining forces provided an “off-ramp from what otherwise would be a head-on collision with significant fallout”.

However, the risk, Maksad said, is that the crisis “could transform Saudi-UAE geopolitical competition to a personal showdown between the region’s leading strongmen”.

FT : Chip shortages threaten 20% rise in consumer electronics prices

Chip shortages threaten 20% rise in consumer electronics prices
Manufacturers and analysts warn AI data centre build-out is crowding out market for semiconductors

Consumers should prepare for price increases this year, of as much as 20 per cent for smartphones, computers and home appliances, analysts and manufacturers have warned, as artificial intelligence demand drives up the cost of memory chips used in electronics.

Consumer electronics makers including Dell, Lenovo, Raspberry Pi and Xiaomi have warned that chip shortages were likely to add to cost pressures and force them to raise prices, with analysts forecasting increases of 5 to 20 per cent.

Dell’s chief operating officer Jeff Clarke said during an earnings call in November that the company had never seen “costs move at the rate” they were rising now and the impact would inevitably reach consumers.

British PC maker Raspberry Pi called the cost pressures “painful” as it raised computer prices in December, while Lenovo, the world’s biggest PC maker, was stockpiling memory chips and other critical components, chief financial officer Winston Cheng told Bloomberg TV in November.

The global build-out of data centres to power AI models has spurred demand for cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory chips, leading chipmakers to deprioritise the lower-end semiconductors used in consumer electronics, said analysts.

This has created shortages of dynamic random-access memory chips, which are used in everything from cars to computers for temporary data storage. As a result, companies have been stockpiling chips and driving up semiconductor prices.

“We are already seeing a supply shortage across the board,” said Daniel Kim, an analyst at Macquarie. “The market is crazy with buyers in panic as they struggle to secure enough memory no matter how much they are willing to pay.”

Market researcher TrendForce forecast average Dram prices, including for HBM chips, would rise between 50 and 55 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025 from the previous quarter.

Samsung and SK Hynix, the world’s two largest memory-chip makers with control over 70 per cent of the Dram market, said orders for 2026 had already exceeded capacity. Samsung last month raised the price of some memory chips by as much as 60 per cent.

“AI-related server demand keeps growing and this demand significantly exceeds industry supply,” said Kim Jae-june, a Samsung executive, during an earnings call in October.

Consumers could end up paying the price. Macquarie’s Kim forecast electronics prices would increase 10 to 20 per cent in 2026, while CW Chung, joint head of Asia-Pacific equities research at Nomura, expected a 5 per cent increase given companies could seek savings elsewhere.

Consumer electronics makers had no choice but to accept higher prices because cloud service providers such as Amazon and Google were signing long-term agreements with chipmakers to secure Dram supply for servers, according to Greg Roh, an analyst at Hyundai Motor Securities.

Big US technology companies were expected to spend $620bn on AI infrastructure in 2026, up from $470bn in 2025, according to Morgan Stanley, which forecast total global spending on AI data centres and related hardware would reach $2.9tn by 2028.

“AI data-centre inference demand is far greater than anticipated, depleting chip inventories for PCs and smartphones as well,” said Peter Lee, an analyst at Citigroup. “Supply will remain tight until 2027, with no additional capacity expected. Chip stockpiling will be worse in 2026.”

Lu Weibing, president of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which increased the price of its flagship product in October, said in November he expected supply chain pressures in 2026 to be “far greater than” in 2025.

Macquarie’s Kim warned that a worst-case scenario would involve the “serious supply chain disruptions seen during the pandemic”.

Samsung said in November it would add a chip production line at its South Korean plant, while SK Hynix is building a $91bn chipmaking cluster announced in 2024.

“We are thinking hard about how to address all demand,” said SK chair Chey Tae-won at a company event in November.

But the new capacity is not expected to come online soon.

“We are trying to increase supply, but it takes at least two to three years to build a chipmaking plant,” said an industry executive in Seoul.

Meanwhile, companies will have to “either raise product prices or sacrifice margins”, said Citi’s Lee.

FT : China’s wall of cash could prop up its lagging stocks

China’s wall of cash could prop up its lagging stocks
Local banks stand to benefit most from the country’s large pool of savings

In many parts of Asia, households are finally learning to love risk. In Japan, a combination of policy, demographics and a search for yield have seen a new generation of savers pour into equities, pushing the benchmark Nikkei 225 index to record highs last year. In South Korea, retail investors have become a market-moving force, helping lift the Kospi index by two-thirds during 2025.

China has followed a different path. Last year, households were hoarding cash at unprecedented levels: in September they added nearly Rmb3tn to their deposits, the largest increase in six months, to reach a record Rmb160tn even as the yield on deposits has continued to fall. That risk aversion rose across asset classes, leaving local equities among one of the worst casualties.

With domestic savers reluctant to engage with the stock market, the benchmark CSI 300 Index, which tracks China’s largest blue-chip stocks listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, has lagged regional peers. It trades at a modest 14 times forward earnings as foreign investors have continued to pull money out of Chinese equities over the past two years. Domestic mutual fund inflows have also slowed.


Yet the very caution that was behind undemanding valuations is now starting to support the market. Years of property losses coupled with high youth unemployment have helped create today’s massive cash buffers. As China keeps policy rates at historic lows, with its benchmark lending rates unchanged for the seventh consecutive month in December, that pool of savings is starting to become a key support for the local stock markets.

Local banks would stand to benefit most. Abundant liquidity and strong capital buffers are helping keep profitability up even as loan demand and confidence remain weak. The sector trades below 0.6 times tangible book, a significant discount to global peers, despite dividend yields above 5 per cent, which is around double that of regional peers.

Structural challenges continue to cloud the outlook. China’s property crisis is expected to drag on into next year, according to Fitch Ratings, even as the government steps up stimulus efforts to revive demand. Unlike in previous cycles, today’s households face persistent uncertainty from weakening income growth and a fading belief in property as a reliable store of wealth. Companies also remain cautious about expanding capacity amid policy uncertainty.

But for now, liquidity that sat on the sidelines is starting to make a comeback into local equities. That shift is proving especially crucial for local banks just as policy leans more heavily on them.

FT : Russian shoppers pay double for sanctions-hit luxury goods from Europe

Russian shoppers pay double for sanctions-hit luxury goods from Europe
Famous Moscow department store Tsum still lists thousands of items from high-end brands despite EU ban

Moscow shoppers can still access a full range of high-end western fashion goods despite western sanctions on luxury items entering Russia — but only if they are willing to pay twice as much as shoppers in the EU.

The online catalogue for Tsum, a famous Moscow department store, shows significant selections of items from high-end marques such as Burberry, Kering-owned Gucci, Bottega Veneta and YSL, Valentino and Richemont-owned Chloe — in spite of a 2022 EU ban on exporting expensive luxury items with a wholesale cost of more than €300.

Tsum lists more than 4,000 separate items from Dolce & Gabbana, the Italian fashion company, as well as for Brunello Cucinelli, which suffered a steep decline in its stock price last year after Morpheus Research, a short seller, published research on its stores in Russia.

“This is something of an open secret. The goods are there to be seen not only by those who visit Russia but by anyone who takes a peek on the internet,” said one luxury chief executive in Milan speaking on condition of anonymity.

Large volumes of European luxury goods are re-exported into Russia after first being sold to buyers in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and China.

These goods, however, are sold in Russia at a significant premium to outlets in other countries.


To work out the Moscow mark-up, the Financial Times built a sample of about 600 European luxury-brand items sold by Tsum for which it was able to find matching items at retailers in Italy or France. This group of high-end goods cost an average of €1,229 in the EU but the equivalent of €2,626 in Moscow. Tsum did not respond to a request for comment.

The matches were made using artificial intelligence assistance and were based both on images posted on the Tsum website as well as text descriptions. All matches were then checked manually. The FT sample focused on a group of celebrated EU brands including Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Bottega Veneta and Burberry.

The data suggests high-end watches are being sold at about double their western prices: €33,100 in Moscow for watches costing €17,700 in the west.

The most extreme mark-ups in the sample were for handbags. The average bag for which the FT was able to find prices, matching both text descriptions and images, cost €1,900 in Europe but €5,200 in Moscow.


EU legislation bans the sale of any luxury goods costing more than €300 per item “to any natural or legal person, entity or body in Russia or for use in Russia”.

The law contains a list of goods and includes items such as truffles, caviar, purebred horses, champagne, sporting goods as well as clothing and luggage.

The €300 limit on the value of goods refers to the value disclosed in the export declaration, which will usually be close to the wholesale price.

This can translate into a retail price of about €1,000 to €1,200 for luxury goods, according to industry experts. Luxury items can, however, legally be sold to intermediaries in third countries who can then choose to sell the items into Russia.

In September, Brunello Cucinelli’s chief executive Luca Lisandroni told the FT that the company continued to supply department stores in Moscow but shipped “items of our collections within the price caps fixed by the EU”.  

Russian customs returns confirm that Brunello Cucinelli goods shipped directly from the EU are overwhelmingly below the €300 limit. More expensive pieces, however, do continue to enter the country via third parties, with Turkey acting as the key conduit for Brunello Cucinelli.

Brunello Cucinelli did not respond to a request for comment.



Similarly, customs records show Mercury Fashion, the company that runs Tsum among other retail brands, only buys cheaper goods directly from suppliers in the EU. Mercury did not respond to a request for comment.

For example, customs data shows the company bought $6.7mn of Dolce & Gabbana goods in the first quarter of 2025, but none of the shipment documents implied a price-per-item in excess of the €300 limit, even though it stocks items from the brand priced well above that threshold.


While Dolce & Gabbana appears not to have shipped goods over the sanctions limit directly into Russia, its website refers customers to Tsum as an official retailer of its goods. There they can buy goods that EU sanctions have sought to keep off the Russian market. The company also continues to run a store in Moscow.

Dolce & Gabbana did not respond to a request for comment.

Circumvention of sanctions has created a Russian domestic logistics industry that routes large volumes of more expensive European goods via third countries. For example, Global Style Import, a Moscow logistics operator, advertises that it helps with “access to the latest styles and trends from around the world”.

In the first quarter of 2025, the company imported about $1.7mn of Dolce & Gabbana goods originating in Italy via Turkey and the UAE. The prices being paid by Global Style, however, were routinely significantly higher than the €300 limit. The most expensive, a silk dress, was listed at $1,300.

Mercury was founded by Leonid Fridlyand and Leonid Strunin in 1993, importing western luxury goods to Moscow at the height of Russia’s roaring nineties. It went on to become the largest luxury goods distributor in the country, buying Tsum, a historic department store, in 2016. Mercury also owns the auction house Phillips.

FT : SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to launch landmark IPOs

SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic prepare to launch landmark IPOs
Three biggest US private tech groups plan listings as early as this year, raising hopes of windfall for banks, lawyers and investors

The three most valuable private US tech companies are preparing for public offerings as early as this year, raising hopes among their investors and advisers that they may enjoy their most lucrative year ever.

Elon Musk’s rocket maker SpaceX and artificial intelligence labs OpenAI and Anthropic are working on listings expected to raise tens of billions of dollars in proceeds, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of their plans.

Those three deals alone would outstrip the total haul from about 200 US IPOs in 2025 and represent a potential gold mine for investment banks, law firms and investors.

“I can’t recall a crop like this — three private companies which would be among the largest public market caps in the world,” said Peter Hébert, co-founder of venture firm Lux Capital.

“The likelihood of all these companies listing [in 2026] is small, but possible, and would mean an epic bonanza for VCs, bankers and deal attorneys.”

SpaceX executives told investors in recent weeks that the company will go public within the next 12 months unless there is a major market shock, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Anthropic has appointed West Coast law firm Wilson Sonsini to begin preparations.

OpenAI has also been in talks with leading firms, including Cooley, about IPO preparations, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The ChatGPT parent company has not yet selected its legal advisers, according to a person close to the company.


The groups have yet to set IPO valuation targets. OpenAI, which is currently valued at $500bn, is engaged in discussions with investors about a new fundraise at a valuation of $750bn or more. Those talks are at an early stage, but OpenAI is likely to raise tens of billions of dollars in new funds, the people said.

SpaceX is working on a secondary stock sale that would value it at $800bn, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deal.

Anthropic is also in talks for new funding, which investors expect will value the company at more than $300bn.

Hopes for a revival of large tech listings in 2025 faded when Donald Trump launched his sweeping tariffs in April and were set back again by the government shutdown in October.

Figma, Klarna, CoreWeave and Chime were among the technology groups to list in 2025, contributing to a total of more than $30bn in US IPO proceeds in the first nine months, the bulk of it from technology groups, according to EY.

This year’s total is likely to dwarf that sum, if even one of the three big start-ups goes public. SpaceX alone is widely expected to surpass Saudi Aramco’s $29bn raise in 2019 to become the largest public listing.

Those plans could still be knocked off course by unexpected political or economic upheaval — and listings will expose these private groups to a new level of scrutiny.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment. OpenAI declined to comment.


Other large private companies are also in contention to go public this year, according to executives and others close to the situation. This includes data analytics group Databricks, which has been valued at $134bn and the $42bn design platform Canva.

Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s VC firm, invested $20mn into SpaceX in 2008 and has participated in multiple subsequent funding rounds, amassing a stake now worth tens of billions of dollars, while Alphabet also owns a multibillion-dollar position. Khosla Ventures, the earliest venture investor in OpenAI, took a 5 per cent stake in the group in 2019.

In 2025, Anthropic and OpenAI prepared for life on the public markets by appointing executives with experience leading listed companies, tidying up their corporate governance and bringing in large public investors.

Those moves position the groups to an IPO at a time of their choosing, although recent weeks have brought fresh market uncertainty. Oracle and Broadcom are among the large listed groups that have sold off sharply over concerns of an AI bubble forming.

Ryan Biggs, co-head of venture investment at Franklin Templeton, said SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are so large and well known that their performance will not be wholly subject to the wider market.

“When you have a generational company who is defining their category, I don’t think their decision to go public is a reaction to a macro market view,” he said. “These businesses are so strong that they are the ones driving the macro.”

FT : Apple cuts Vision Pro production and marketing after weak sales

Apple cuts Vision Pro production and marketing after weak sales
High prices, limited apps and comfort issues expose difficulty of turning futuristic hardware into a mass-market product
Apple has scaled back manufacturing and marketing efforts around its Vision Pro headset, as the $4tn tech giant suffers a rare failure to draw consumers to a new device.

The company’s Chinese manufacturing partner Luxshare halted production of its “spatial computing” device at the start of last year, according to the market research group International Data Corporation, having shipped 390,000 units in 2024 during the Vision Pro’s launch. 

Apple has also reduced digital advertising spending for the headset by more than 95 per cent in the year to date in markets including the US and UK, according to market intelligence group Sensor Tower.

Those moves are a sign of muted consumer demand for a device that was seen as a big test of Apple’s ability to continue to innovate and find growth beyond the iPhone, which accounts for about half of total revenues. 

The Silicon Valley group has not revealed sales figures for Vision Pro, which starts at $3,499. But IDC expects Apple to ship just 45,000 new units of the Vision Pro in the last quarter of 2025 during the crucial Christmas sales period. This compares to millions of iPhones, iPads and MacBooks sold each quarter.

Apple sells the device directly in 13 countries but did not expand its international rollout in 2025.

“We can say the cost, form factor and the lack of VisionOS native apps are the reasons why the Vision Pro never sold broadly,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring.

Critics have faulted the Vision Pro for being heavy and uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time, as well as having a relatively low battery life.

In October, Apple launched an upgraded M5 version of the Vision Pro with a more powerful chip, extended battery life and a new headband design aimed at addressing some of these issues. Apple is expected to release a cheaper, lower-specification version of the device this year.

Similar devices are also failing to grab consumer interest, however. The overall market for virtual reality headsets fell 14 per cent year on year, according to Counterpoint Research.

About 80 per cent of the market is Meta’s Quest headsets, which start at roughly $370 but have less technically advanced features. Meta has also substantially reduced its digital marketing spending for its virtual reality gadget over the past year.

Industry analysts have said Apple has struggled to solve the dilemma of having enough apps to draw in customers for the Vision Pro, without enough users to incentivise developers to build the content.

Apple says there are 3,000 apps designed specifically for the Vision Pro. This is far below the tens of thousands of apps that appeared on the iPhone within a year of the App Store launching in 2008.

Market intelligence group Appfigures said this number likely included some industry-specific apps. The Vision Pro has made some headway in the enterprise market, where it is used for specific purposes, such as pilot training and surgeries.

Apple declined to comment.