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One small Step for Mr Beast; One Giant Leap for Goldman Sachs; Billions More Poured into AI and Ferrari's New EV

MrBeast is stepping into fintech after acquiring youth-focused financial services app Step, marking the creator economy’s latest push into traditional finance. Elsewhere, Goldman Sachs is working with AI startup Anthropic to automate core back-office roles, Ferrari has teased its first fully electric sports car, and Big Tech is preparing to spend an eye-watering $650 billion as the AI arms race accelerates. All this and more in today's Read It And Eat!


Markets Around The World

Markets as of 9th February 2026. Cells in RED mean that the value is down, cells in Green mean the value is up.


MAJOR HEADLINES




  • YouTube star MrBeast acquires financial services firm Step


The world's largest YouTuber by subscriber count, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has acquired the financial services app Step, marking his company's entry into fintech with a focus on serving younger users.

 

Step is advertised as an all-in-one money app for teens and young adults to manage money, build credit and access financial tools. The app will operate under the umbrella of Donalson's company, Beast Industries. "Nobody taught me about investing, building credit, or managing money when I was growing up. That's exactly why we're joining forces with Step," MrBeast told his millions of fans on Monday. "I want to give millions of young people the financial foundation I never had. Lots to share soon."

 

Beast Industries did not disclose how much it paid for Step. The newly acquired Step was founded in 2018 by fintech veterans CJ MacDonald and Alexey Kalinichenko, with a mission of providing the next generation with tools for financial literacy. While it is not a bank, Step partnered with Evolve Bank & Trust, a consumer banking company, for banking services in 2022. The platform also includes a Step Visa Card, an account for saving, spending, sending money and investing, with no monthly fees. CNBC


  • Meet Goldman Sachs New Back Office Hire; Anthropic's Claude

 

 

Goldman Sachs has been working with the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic to create AI agents to automate a growing number of roles within the bank, the firm’s tech chief told CNBC exclusively.

 

The bank has, for the past six months, been working with embedded Anthropic engineers to co-develop autonomous agents in at least two specific areas: accounting for trades and transactions, and client vetting and onboarding, according to Marco Argenti, Goldman’s chief information officer.

The firm is “in the early stages” of developing agents based on Anthropic’s Claude model that will collapse the amount of time these essential functions take, Argenti said. He expects to launch the agents “soon,” though he declined to provide a specific date.“Think of it as a digital co-worker for many of the professions within the firm that are scaled, are complex and very process intensive,” he said.

 

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said in October that his bank was embarking on a multiyear plan to reorganize itself around generative AI, the technology that has made waves since the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. Even as investment banks like Goldman are experiencing surging revenue from trading and advisory activities, it will seek to “constrain headcount growth” amid the overhaul, Solomon said. CNBC

  • Ferrari's New EV; The Luce


Ferrari released teaser images of its new fully electric sports car on Monday, revealing the name and interior design of the eagerly awaited first for the luxury Italian carmaker.

 

The new Luce, which means light in Italian, was announced with images of its leather seats, the steering wheel, instruments and the control panel. The car's external appearance, however, is being kept under wraps until May. LoveFrom, a creative collective founded by designers Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson in San Francisco, has been collaborating with Ferrari on the Luce's design, the automaker said.

 

The technology underpinning the new model was revealed by Ferrari in October. The car will have a specially designed sound system to amplify actual vibrations from its engine to create a distinctly electric Ferrari sound, rather than faking engine noise, the company said at the time. Reuters


  • Big Tech Spends Even Bigger on AI

     

Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that will reach about $650 billion in 2026; a mind-boggling tide of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear housed within them.  The spending planned by Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp., all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for AI tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected to either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. 

 

They would set a high-water mark for capital spending by any single corporation in any one of the past 10 years, according to Bloomberg data. The search for a comparison to the spending projections, which came as the four reported earnings in the past two weeks; requires going back at least as far as the telecommunications bubble of the 1990s, and perhaps to the build-out of the US railroad networks in the 19th century, the postwar federal investments in interstate highways or New Deal-era relief programs. 

 

The ever-larger numbers, in total, an estimated 60% increase from a year ago, means yet another acceleration in the wave of data center construction taking place around the world and in the financing boom required to pay for all of it. The four companies ‘see the race to provide AI compute as the next winner-take-all or winner-take-most market,’ said Gil Luria, an analyst at DA Davidson. ‘And none of them is willing to lose.’ Bloomberg


Minor Headlines

 

 

 

  • Global chip sales is expected to hit $1T this year Reuters

 

  • SpaceX delays Mars plans to focus on 2027 moon landing Reuters

 

 

  • Goldman, JPMorgan, and BofA bankers see bonus pools rise over 10% Bloomberg

 

  • Grocery giant Kroger said it named Greg Foran, a former Walmart executive, as its next chief executive CNBC 


  • Keir Starmer defies call to quit as UK prime minister Financial Times

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