TRILLION

The burst of energy was likely triggered when an unusually large star wandered too close to the black hole.

Scientists have documented the most energetic flare ever observed emanating from a supermassive black hole, a cataclysmic event that briefly shone with the light of 10 trillion suns.

The new findings were published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Astronomy, with astronomer Matthew Graham of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) leading the study.

The phenomenal burst of energy was likely triggered when an unusually large star wandered too close to the black hole and was violently shredded and swallowed.

“However it happened, the star wandered close enough to the supermassive black hole that it was ‘spaghettified’ – that is, stretched out to become long and thin, due to the gravity of the supermassive black hole strengthening as you get very close to it. That material then spiralled around the supermassive black hole as it fell in,” said astronomer and study co-author KE Saavik Ford.

The supermassive black hole was unleashed by a black hole roughly 300 million times the mass of the sun residing inside a faraway galaxy, about 11 billion light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

The star, estimated to be between 30 and 200 times the mass of the sun, was turned into a stream of gas that heated up and shined intensely as it spiralled into oblivion.

Almost every large galaxy, including our Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole at its centre. But scientists still aren’t sure how they form.

First spotted in 2018 by the Palomar Observatory, operated by the Caltech, the flare took about three months to reach its peak brightness, becoming roughly 30 times more luminous than any previously recorded event of its kind. It is still ongoing, but diminishing in luminosity, with the entire process expected to take about 11 years to complete.

Because of how far away the black hole is located, observing the flash gives scientists a rare glimpse into the universe’s early epoch. Studying these immense, distant black holes helps researchers better understand how they form, how they influence their local stellar neighbourhoods, and the fundamental interactions that shaped the cosmos we know today.

The figure amounts to roughly $111,000 of debt for every person in the US, think tank says.

The United States national debt has topped $38 trillion, as the gap between government spending and revenues in the world’s largest economy expands at a rapid pace.

The US Department of the Treasury included the staggering figure in its latest report on the nation’s finances, with the debt standing at $38,019,813 as of Tuesday.

The figure amounts to roughly $111,000 of debt for every person in the US, and is equivalent to the value of the economies of China, India, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom combined, according to the Peter G Peterson Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank.

The milestone comes a little over two months after debt in the US surpassed $37 trillion in mid-August. The debt stood at $36 trillion in November 2024, and $35 trillion that July.

Michael A Peterson, CEO of the Peter G Peterson Foundation, said US lawmakers were failing to live up to their “basic fiscal duties”.

“Adding trillion after trillion to the debt and budgeting-by-crisis is no way for a great nation like America to run its finances,” Peterson said in a statement.

“Instead of letting the debt clock tick higher and higher, lawmakers should take advantage of the many responsible reforms that would put our nation on a stronger path for the future.”

In May, Moody’s ratings downgraded the US government’s credit rating from Aaa to Aa1, citing the failure of successive administrations to “reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs”.

The move followed similar downgrades by rating agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s in 2011 and 2023, respectively.

While there is debate among economists about how much debt the US can take on before triggering a financial crisis, there is widespread agreement that the current trajectory is unsustainable.

In a 2023 analysis, economists at the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated that financial markets would not tolerate US debt levels above 200 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the debt could reach 200 percent of GDP by 2047, in part due to sweeping tax cuts included in US President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The electric carmaker had unveiled chief Elon Musk’s proposed $1 trillion compensation plan in September.

Tesla’s proposed $1 trillion pay package for CEO Elon Musk has come under renewed scrutiny after proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) urged investors to vote against what could be the largest compensation plan ever awarded to a company chief.

ISS’s comments on Friday marks the second consecutive year that it has urged shareholders to reject a compensation plan for Musk.

Proxy advisers often sway major institutional investors, including the passive funds that hold large stakes in Tesla.

The ISS recommendation adds pressure on Tesla’s board before a closely watched November 6 shareholder meeting and renews scrutiny of Musk’s compensation after a Delaware court earlier voided his $56bn pay package.

Musk’s record Tesla pay plan could still hand him tens of billions of dollars even if he falls short of most of its ambitious targets, however, thanks to a structure that rewards partial achievement and soaring share prices.

Last month, Tesla’s board proposed a $1 trillion compensation plan for Musk in what it described as the largest corporate pay package in history, setting ambitious performance targets and aiming to address his push for greater control over the company.

ISS said that while the board’s goal was to retain Musk because of his “track record and vision”, the 2025 pay package “locks in extraordinarily high pay opportunities over the next ten years” and “reduces the board’s ability to meaningfully adjust future pay levels.”

Tesla’s shares rose after the compensation plan was unveiled last month, as investors believe the pay package would incentivise Musk to focus on the company’s strategy.

“Many people come to Tesla to specifically work with Elon, so we recognise that retaining and incentivising him will, in the long run, help us retain and recruit better talent,” Director Kathleen Wilson-Thompson said in a video posted to Tesla’s X handle on Friday.

Unlike the 2018 pay deal, Musk will be allowed to vote using his shares this time, giving him about 13.5 percent of Tesla’s voting power, according to a securities filing last month. That stake alone could be enough to secure approval.

The proxy adviser cited the “astronomical” size of the proposed grant, design features that could deliver very high payouts for partial goal achievement and potential dilution for existing investors.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Reuters news agency.

ISS valued the stock-based award at $104bn, higher than Tesla’s own estimate of $87.8bn.

The grant would vest only if Tesla reaches market capitalisation milestones up to $8.5 trillion and operational targets, including delivery of 20 million vehicles, one million robotaxis and $400bn in adjusted core earnings.

The proxy adviser’s guidance on Musk’s pay was part of a wider set of voting recommendations issued on Friday.

As of 3:45pm in New York (19:45 GMT), Tesla’s stock was up 2.4 percent.

Over the past few years, investors have witnessed in real time how breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) have sparked a new revolution in the technology sector. The next frontier — quantum computing — promises an even greater leap forward, unlocking efficiency and solving problems that strain the limits of today’s classical machines.

Together, the fusion of AI and quantum computing is expected to create trillions of dollars in economic value over the coming decades. While many companies are dabbling in quantum systems at the margins, two of the industry’s most influential players are already weaving this emerging capability into their broader strategies.

Let’s explore how Nvidia (NVDA -0.62%) and Alphabet (GOOG 0.55%) (GOOGL 0.61%) are positioning themselves to remain leaders at the cutting edge of AI’s next transformation.

Nvidia: GPUs, CUDA, and infrastructure

Nvidia’s rise throughout the AI revolution is deeply rooted in its dominance of the GPU market, where its chips have become the backbone of generative AI development. What investors may not fully realize yet is that the company’s ambitions extend beyond supplying accelerators to train large language models (LLMs). Quietly, Nvidia has been laying the groundwork for a prominent role in the quantum era.

A key part of this strategy is Nvidia’s software architecture, CUDA. CUDA includes tools designed to bridge classical computing systems with quantum-inspired research. At the moment, Nvidia’s CUDA quantum (CUDA-Q) platform is used by a number of academic institutions, as well as integrated with existing developers such as IonQ and Rigetti Computing.

This is a savvy move, as Nvidia is doing all of this without committing massive capital expenditures (capex) to build quantum machines from scratch. Instead, the company is positioning itself as the connective backbone across both hardware and software supporting the next wave of advanced computing applications.

Image source: Getty Images.

Alphabet: Willow, Cirq, and DeepMind

Alphabet has carved more direct inroads into quantum computing through its Google Quantum division.

A central focus is Willow, a processor built to scale quantum workloads more efficiently. To drive adoption, Alphabet introduced Cirq — an open-source software framework that enables developers to design quantum algorithms and run them directly on Google’s infrastructure. The company’s internal research lab, DeepMind, adds another dimension that gives Alphabet the unique advantage to test quantum technologies in-house and refine them at a faster pace.

What makes this approach so compelling is that Alphabet weaves these efforts into a vertically integrated stack. The company’s hardware, software, and research converge within a single ecosystem — allowing emerging services like Google Cloud and Gemini to compete from a position of strength against entrenched rivals like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Are Nvidia and Alphabet good buys right now?

Nvidia and Alphabet are each building durable platforms optimized for the next phase of advanced computing.

For Nvidia, the company’s GPUs and CUDA architecture are already indispensable to AI infrastructure. Moreover, the company’s collaborations in quantum computing create additional tailwinds across both hardware and software for the data centers of tomorrow. Meanwhile, Alphabet is stitching quantum into a broader, diversified ecosystem that spans processors, software frameworks, cloud distribution, and research.

For both companies, quantum computing is not the ultimate destination, but rather a strategic layer that reinforces their long-term growth prospects — positioning each as resilient, differentiated platform businesses in an increasingly competitive landscape.

I think that each company’s early bets on quantum computing will look shrewd in hindsight as these applications evolve from research-driven environments into real-world value creation.

For investors with patience, owning shares of both Nvidia and Alphabet today offers exposure to two businesses not just benefiting from the AI boom, but actively writing the narrative of its next chapter. For these reasons, I see both stocks as no-brainer opportunities right now.

A flood of wealth is anticipated to sweep from baby boomers to younger generations over the next couple of decades. Cerulli Associates estimates $106 trillion will pass to younger generations. Of that, a large chunk is destined to be passed on to the companies that manage their finances.

Robinhood (HOOD 1.90%) and Lemonade (LMND 2.67%) are two fintechs laser-focused on providing financial services to Great Wealth Transfer winners. Robinhood offers the next generation of investing, banking, and credit products. Lemonade does the same for insurance.

Here’s a look at each.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Robinhood

Robinhood is widely seen as the face of fintech by young, tech-savvy investors. It pioneered zero-commission stock trading, a win that continues to pay reputational dividends. It continues to attract interest by beefing up its premium Gold subscription. Perks include 3% IRA match, a credit card with 3% rewards, and $1,000 of interest-free margin trading. The subscription is cheap, at $5 a month as of this writing.

Robinhood has promising user base demographics. In a May 2025 Investor Day presentation, the company discloses the median age for Robinhood customers is 35. Robinhood is popular with millennials and Gen X, the two generations primed to inherit the most over the next 10 years. But what really sets it apart from competitors is how it’s sprinting to meet these users where they’ll be not next year, but a decade from now.

The company has diversified from trading into wealth management and banking, a huge profit driver. The recent unveiling of Banking and Strategies products is evidence of a company executing on an ambitious long-term vision. Both product lines are key to convincing young and maturing customers that Robinhood is a “serious” wealth manager.

The stock is far from undervalued. As of this writing, it trades at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of over 50x, a valuation typically attributed to tech stocks — much higher than the 29x S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.48%) average. There might be better-valued opportunities among competitors like Block.

Strong fundamentals justify its high multiples. The company is profitable and has been so for over a year. It’s grown total platform assets at a staggering 99% in a single year, and it has over $4 billion on the balance sheet — plenty to invest in growth, or lean upon during tough times.

Robinhood’s young user base, ambitious vision, and strong fundamentals position it perfectly to win the Great Wealth Transfer. Its quickly growing suite of products is proof the company is moving to meet the next generation where it’s at: online, via an award-winning interface that does investing, banking, and wealth management.

2. Lemonade

Lemonade is very well positioned to serve as a major insurer of young and maturing users. It offers insurance via the Lemonade app, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered interface that can pay out claims in as little as 3 seconds. It typically attracts customers with the promise of cheap rental insurance. As customers mature, they purchase higher-margin insurance from Lemonade, like Car and Pet.

Powerful machine learning models put Lemonade in a league of its own. From Car to Life, these models gobble up data that the company uses to improve predictions. Combined with AI models that manage customers and employees, it can scale premiums from $609 million to $1,083 million while shrinking operating expenses, excluding growth spend.

To scale quickly, Lemonade is leaning into the expansion of its car insurance product. Car insurance is a huge unlock for users who want to stick with a single insurer across all products, snagging discounts. Lemonade knows this. In the Q1 2025 Shareholder letter, the company reveals it sees a 60% boost to conversion rates in states where it offers car insurance.

Lemonade has yet to prove it’s a sustainable business. The company is unprofitable, a red flag in a volatile market that places a premium on stability.

Critics point to the Car product in particular. Car insurance is a loss leader, with an 82% loss ratio, well above the 40% to 60% industry ideal. That needs to improve. An ideal gross loss ratio is typically between 40% to 60%, according to data by Relativity6.

All signs point to Lemonade reaching profitability on a reasonable timeline. Gross loss ratios, a key insurance metric, are trending in the right direction: down. Loss ratios dropped from 79% in Q2 2024 to 69% in Q2 2025. Lemonade expects to reach adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) profitability in 2026, meaning the core business generates more profits than it spends. Investors would love to see it.

Great Wealth Transfer winners to buy and hold

Robinhood and Lemonade may be the real winners of the Great Wealth Transfer. Both are innovative fintech companies with strong and improving fundamentals. I plan on holding both in my portfolio for five years or more.

Sept. 15 (UPI) — Shares of Google‘s parent company Alphabet soared on Monday, pushing the tech conglomerate’s market capitalization past the $3 trillion mark for the first time.

The development puts the search engine giant among a handful of other tech companies that have reached the milestone, which include Apple and Microsoft, as well as AI chipmaker Nvidia. Shares of Alphabet were up by more than 4% and were hovering at around $250 as of Monday afternoon.

The company’s all-time high follows its precipitous stock rise that began in early September when a federal judge ruled that Google would not have to sell off its Chrome browser or Android operating system. The ruling by Judge Amit Mehta was in response to antitrust lawsuit brought by the Justice Department accusing the company of running illegal search engine monopoly.

The ruling meant that Google dodged some of the most consequential remedies sought by federal prosecutors and Mehta still ordered the company to share some search engine data with rivals. The order also barred Google from contracts with other companies making its search engine and other products the default options on their products.

Stock market analysts anticipated the asendance of Alphabet’s stock following the ruling, and the company’s gains Monday account for nearly a third of its value this year, reported Investopedia.

The milestone for Google comes nearly two decades after the company’s first IPO when it began selling publicly traded stocks.

There are 10 companies with a market cap over $1 trillion right now, and all of these except one are involved in artificial intelligence (AI). This technology will drive a substantial amount of economic growth in the 21st century, providing investors the chance to earn substantial gains from the right stocks.

Some companies that are well positioned to play a key role in shaping the economy with AI are still valued at less than $1 trillion. Although their share prices could be volatile in the near term, the following two companies could be worth a lot more down the road they are today.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Palantir Technologies

More than 800 companies have chosen Palantir Technologies (PLTR 4.14%) to transform their business operations with AI. Businesses can upload data on Palantir’s platforms, and it basically shows them how to be more efficient, grow their revenue, and become more profitable. It is working magic for businesses and the U.S. military, which trusts Palantir to keep top-secret information secure about the U.S. and its allies. Despite its already high market cap of $400 billion, Palantir’s unique value proposition and stellar profitability has all the makings of a $1 trillion business.

Palantir is not just slapping a large language model on a company’s data to make it easy to search information. It pulls together data from different sources within a company, which creates a framework for understanding how the company operates. Palantir is essentially building a digital copy of a company’s operations that can detect problems and solve those problems instantly.

Palantir’s financials suggest there is no replacement for the value it provides. It reported accelerating revenue growth over the last year. In the second quarter, revenue grew 48% year over year, compared to 27% in the year-ago quarter.

Moreover, its net income margin was stellar at 33% in Q2, with an adjusted free cash flow margin of 57%. It’s not common for a small software company in the early stages of growth to be reporting margins like Microsoft.

These margins are being driven by high prices that Palantir charges customers. For example, it recently secured a $10 billion contract with the U.S. Army for the next decade. Organizations are willing to pay up for Palantir’s software because the savings realized are that big. Palantir is saving enterprises millions, even hundreds of millions in costs in some cases, providing an attractive return on investment that is driving the company’s growth.

Palantir stock is expensive, trading at high multiples of sales and earnings. But this is a unique software company with a huge opportunity ahead. CEO Alex Karp is aiming to grow revenue by 10x over time, which would bring annual revenue to more than $40 billion from this year’s analyst estimate of $4.1 billion. Based on its current margins, that could equate to $20 billion in annual free cash flow over the long term. Applying a high-growth multiple of 50 to that would put the stock’s market cap at $1 trillion.

2. Advanced Micro Devices

For AI to keep advancing and transform how people work and communicate, it needs more powerful chips. Nvidia has been the biggest winner so far, but investors shouldn’t overlook Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 1.91%). It is the second-leading supplier of graphics processing units (GPUs), and it could be well positioned to meet growing demand in edge computing and AI inferencing that could send the stock from its current $250 billion market cap to $1 trillion.

As AI proliferates across the economy, people will be able to use powerful AI applications and processing on their devices, which makes edge computing a large opportunity for AMD. The company offers a range of high-performance and energy-efficient chips that are aimed at running AI devices and PCs, positioning it to benefit from a booming market estimated to be worth $327 billion by 2033, according to Grand View Research.

Investors were disappointed by the company’s Q2 data center growth of 14% year over year, but management expects stronger demand once it launches its Instinct MI350 series of GPUs. As it continues to bring new solutions to the data center market, AMD’s data center business should accelerate.

AMD’s chips are clearly addressing needs in the AI market. It announced a partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Humain to build AI infrastructure using AMD’s GPUs and software. Meanwhile, Oracle is building a massive AI compute cluster using multiple AMD chips. AMD says it is also working with governments globally to build sovereign AI infrastructure.

Analysts expect AMD‘s earnings to grow at an annualized rate of 30% over the next several years. Against those prospects, the stock trades at a reasonable forward price-to-earnings multiple of 40. There is enough earnings growth here to potentially triple the stock in five years, putting it easily within striking distance of reaching $1 trillion within the next decade.

There’s no denying the trajectory of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past few years. Many of the companies that have pivoted to adopt this game-changing technology have ascended the ranks of the world’s largest companies when measured by market cap. When the stock market closed on Tuesday, there were 11 members of the vaunted $1 trillion club, the vast majority of which have significant ties to AI.

After the market close, industry stalwart Oracle (ORCL 1.37%) reported its recent quarterly results, and despite missing Wall Street’s expectations, the stock surged higher and never looked back. Why? In a stunning turn of events, the company signed numerous multibillion-dollar contracts that kicked its future growth potential into overdrive.

Given the magnitude of these deals, it seems the writing is on the wall for Oracle to join this elite fraternity. The company’s growth is at a tipping point, and management’s commentary suggests the company has a long AI-centric runway for growth ahead.

Image source: Getty Images.

A trusted partner

Oracle holds a coveted place in the technology community, as roughly 98% of Global Fortune 500 companies make up its customer rolls. The industry stalwart provides its customers with a strategic combination of cloud, database, and enterprise software. Naturally, when the shift to AI began in earnest, this captive audience began to turn to Oracle for its expanding collection of cloud and AI solutions.

The company’s growth has been uneven, but the future looks bright. During Oracle’s fiscal 2026 first quarter (ended Aug. 31), total revenue grew 11% year over year to $14.9 billion, while its adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.47 grew by 6%. Both numbers accelerated compared to Q4, but missed Wall Street’s consensus estimates, which called for revenue of $15 billion and adjusted EPS of $1.48.

However, that wasn’t the headline. Last quarter, CEO Safra Catz noted that the company had reached a “tipping point,” noting that revenue growth was accelerating, “and it’s only going up from here.”

That turned out to be an understatement. Oracle reported explosive growth in its remaining performance obligation (RPO) — or contractual obligations not yet included in revenue — which skyrocketed 359% year over year to $455 billion, up from $138 billion in Q4.

Catz explained, “We signed four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers in Q1,” calling the results “astonishing.” He went on to say that demand for Oracle Cloud “continues to build.” The company expects to sign “several additional multi-billion-dollar customers and RPO is likely to exceed half a trillion dollars.”

Looking to the future, Oracle is forecasting Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue to grow 77% to $18 billion this year — but that’s just the beginning:

• Fiscal 2027 cloud revenue of $32 billion, up 78%.
• Fiscal 2028 cloud revenue of $73 billion, up 128%.
• Fiscal 2029 cloud revenue of $144 billion, up 97%.

Mind you, this is just Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue, and Catz noted that “most of the revenue in this five-year forecast is already booked in our reported RPO.” That means that any future contracts will probably increase those growth targets.

The path to $1 trillion just got much shorter

Oracle is leveraging its position as a trusted partner to help customers choose suitable AI and cloud solutions and profit from the growing adoption of generative AI.

Before today’s results, Wall Street was expecting Oracle to generate revenue of $66.75 billion in its fiscal 2026 (which began June 1), giving it a forward price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of about 10. Assuming its P/S remained constant, Oracle needed to generate revenue of approximately $98 billion annually to support a $1 trillion market cap. Given those figures, Oracle could have achieved a $1 trillion market cap before 2028.

Wall Street hasn’t yet had time to update its models, but given the magnitude of the company’s results, previous forecasts are out the window. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I predict Oracle will join the $1 trillion club within the next 12 months.

Estimates regarding the market potential of generative AI continue to ratchet higher. Big Four accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) calculates the opportunity could be worth as much as $15.7 trillion annually by 2030, which illustrates the magnitude of the opportunity.

Given the recent contract wins, Oracle has proven that it is leveraging its experience to profit from this windfall. The writing is on the wall, and Oracle is poised to join the fraternity of trillionaires in short order.

Alphabet (GOOGL 1.13%) (GOOG 1.04%) is already one of the biggest companies in the world, but there is no reason to think it couldn’t become much bigger. With a market cap of about $2.8 trillion, it has a real shot at becoming the next $4 trillion stock and possibly the largest company in the world one day.

The recent court ruling that let it keep its search advantages pulled a big risk off the table, and the company now has multiple growth drivers lined up. Let’s look at why Alphabet is set to run higher.

Search advantage stays intact

One of the biggest risks hanging over Alphabet for the past year or so was the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against it. The judge could have forced it to spin off Chrome and Android or end its exclusive search deal with Apple, but that didn’t happen. Alphabet still owns both, and it can still pay Apple and others for default search placement. The only change is that these contracts need to be renewed every year instead of for longer terms.

One of Alphabet’s key advantages in search, as well as in artificial intelligence (AI), is its distribution. Almost 70% of the world uses Chrome, while Android powers about three quarters of the world’s phones. Meanwhile, through a revenue-sharing agreement, Apple’s Safari defaults to Google, helping it reach most of the rest of the world’s population. That makes Alphabet the gateway to the internet, and the judge’s ruling protected that advantage. People don’t often change default browsers, which means billions of users are going to stick with Google Search.    

At the same time, AI isn’t taking away from search; it’s doing the opposite. Over 2 billion people are already using AI Overviews every month, and Alphabet just started rolling out AI Mode globally, which lets users switch between traditional search and chatbot-style results without leaving Google. Last quarter, Alphabet saw its search revenue growth accelerate, as AI helped drive queries.

Meanwhile, the company has been at the forefront of AI search innovation, with features like Lens and Circle to Search driving incremental queries, often with a commercial intent. It’s also embedded AI commerce features in its offering, such as Shop with AI, where users can even virtually try on clothes.

Finally, Alphabet has spent decades building one of the most far-reaching ad networks on the planet. From your local landscape business down the street to global powerhouses, the company has the tools to reach any type of audience for advertisers.

Image source: Getty Images.

Cloud is finally breaking through

While Google Search is Alphabet’s foundation, its cloud computing unit, Google Cloud, has become its growth engine. Revenue jumped 32% last quarter, while operating income more than doubled. This segment is now scaling fast, and it is one of the best ways Alphabet is tied into the AI boom.

One of Alphabet’s big edges here is that it’s designed its own custom AI chips specifically for its infrastructure. Its Tensor Processing Units are designed to handle AI workloads within its TensorFlow framework, which gives it cost and performance benefits. Developers are also adopting its Gemini models and Vertex AI platform at a rapid pace, which keeps customers tied into Google Cloud.

Capacity is tight, and Alphabet is spending aggressively to expand. It recently upped its capex budget by $10 billion to $85 billion to build new data centers, and management has said constraints will likely last into 2026. That shows just how strong demand is.

Emerging opportunities

Alphabet also has a set of bets that could pay off big. YouTube is still dominant in online video and pulling more ad dollars from TV, but the real long-term excitement sits with Waymo and quantum computing.

Waymo is rapidly growing its robotaxi service, rolling into new cities and testing in major markets like New York. It may take time, but if autonomous driving takes off and Alphabet can reduce the cost of its robotaxis, it could end up with another giant business.

Quantum computing is even further out, but progress with Alphabet’s Willow chip shows it is moving forward. Reducing errors is the biggest hurdle for quantum computing, and Alphabet is one of the few companies that have made headway in this area.

Still an attractive valuation

While Alphabet’s stock has recently hit new highs, it still hasn’t seen the momentum of many other megacap AI stocks over the past few years. Investors were too worried about the impact of AI on search and the potential risk of the antitrust trial. However, the worst-case scenario with the trial is now behind it, and Alphabet has been demonstrating that it is set to be an AI winner. In fact, after the trial, it has been reported that Alphabet and Apple are getting close to expanding their relationship, with Google’s Gemini model set to power an AI version of Siri. That’s not the sign of a company that is losing the AI race.

Trading at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of just 21 times 2026 analyst earnings estimates, Alphabet is much cheaper than peers like Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. If it were to trade at a similar 30 times multiple on 2026 analyst estimates as these names, it would already be a $4 trillion company.

Given its strong leadership positions in search and streaming, along with its growth opportunities around AI, cloud computing, robotaxis, and quantum computing, there is now no reason why Alphabet may not become the world’s largest company by the end of the decade.

Nvidia (NVDA -2.78%) is the most valuable company in the world, with a market cap of around $4.1 trillion. Every time it faces adversity, the stock finds a way to go higher.

Early this year, investors were rattled by news of a budget-friendly AI model, DeepSeek R1, developed in China. This raised doubts about the necessity of large investments in Nvidia’s next-generation chips, ultimately causing a drop in the company’s stock price. Then there were the concerns around tariffs in early April, which resulted in the stock hitting its lowest levels this year, falling to below $100.

However, time and time again, Nvidia’s stock has proven to be resilient, and it has continued to rise higher. It would need to rise by another 22% to hit yet another milestone: $5 trillion in market cap. Are there any factors that could hinder Nvidia’s progress, or is it just a matter of time before it reaches that value?

Image source: Getty Images.

Nvidia’s growth rate expected to remain above 50%

Last week, Nvidia posted its latest earnings numbers, and demand remained strong for its cutting-edge AI chips. Its revenue rose by 56% year over year, totaling $46.7 billion for the period ending July 27. That was slightly better than analyst expectations of just over $46 billion. And adjusted per-share profits of $1.05 were also higher than estimates of $1.01.

But what’s most encouraging for investors is that the guidance also looks good, as Nvidia still expects to see its growth rate to be above 50% for the current quarter. Although its growth rate is slowing down, that’s still incredibly impressive for a business of Nvidia’s size.

NVDA Revenue (Quarterly YoY Growth) data by YCharts.

Has Nvidia’s valuation finally gotten too high?

Year to date, Nvidia’s stock has risen by about 25% (as of Sept. 2). It’s trading at a price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple of around 50, which isn’t cheap, but it still may not be all that expensive given the company’s incredibly fast growth rate. And based on analyst estimates, it’s trading at a forward P/E multiple of 38.

Nvidia’s stock price has effectively become a gauge of how much growth potential investors see for AI in general. News of the DeepSeek AI model hurt its valuation temporarily, as did tariff-related news back in April, which affected the stock market as a whole. Given the robust demand anticipated for AI chips, I believe Nvidia, even at its current price, could still climb higher and be a worthwhile investment.

However, if there are any concerns or rumblings that tech companies are cutting back on AI investments, investors who are sitting on big gains may be eager to cash out, which could lead to a decline in Nvidia’s value, at least in the short term.

When might Nvidia hit $5 trillion?

I believe it’s only a matter of time before Nvidia hits a $5 trillion market cap, considering the enormous potential of AI and its likely dominance in the AI chip market for the foreseeable future. But I wouldn’t expect it to reach $5 trillion this year or even within the next 12 months. It could take multiple years, as the stock’s high valuation, combined with uncertainty in the markets due to tariffs and trade wars, may limit its near-term returns.

That’s clear from the stock’s latest earnings beat. Even though Nvidia did well and its guidance was strong, the stock hasn’t been taking off. Investors are clearly thinking about the longer-term picture, including its slowing growth, and what lies ahead. Nvidia still looks to be a solid buy for the long term, but there could be some challenges ahead for it in the short term.

Sept. 5 (UPI) — Tesla is preparing to offer Elon Musk a new pay and incentives plan that would give him more control, more shares and up to nearly $1 trillion in compensation.

Musk is already the world’s wealthiest person, and this new plan is worth about $975 billion.

In order to cash in on the full amount, Musk would have to multiply Tesla’s stock value by eight times over the next decade. All of his compensation would be in Tesla shares. Stockholders will vote on the package at a Nov. 6 annual shareholders’ meeting. Tesla also said in the filing Friday that it will ask shareholders to vote on whether to invest in Musk’s new xAI.

“Retaining and incentivizing Elon is fundamental to Tesla achieving these goals and becoming the most valuable company in history,” Robyn Denholm, chair of the Tesla board, and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, a director on the board, said in a letter to shareholders.

Musk’s net worth is more than $400 billion, according to Forbes. This compensation plan would add around $900 billion. If he raises Tesla’s stock value from $1.1 trillion to $8.5 trillion, it would be the highest compensation in history.

He would also have to stay at Tesla for 7.5 years to cash in his shares, and 10 years to get the full amount. He would also have to deploy 1 million autonomous taxis and humanoid robots, plus see a more than 24-fold increase in profits.

“If he performs, if he hits the super ambitious milestones that are in the plan then he gets equity — it’s 1% for each half a trillion dollars of market cap, plus operational milestones he has to hit in order to do that,” Denholm said on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

As companies around the world work to create electric cars, self-driving cars and robots, these milestones will be an enormous challenge.

Many shareholders are disillusioned with Musk over his recent performance. Tesla has seen profits slow in the past year as his behavior and his foray into politics hurt the company’s stock prices.

In January, a Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled against Musk’s 2018 compensation package and ordered him to return what he’d already earned from it.

Each of the 96 million shares received in the deal trades at just over $300. Musk would have to pay $23.34 for each of those shares, equal to the amount he was expected to pay when he was first awarded his 2018 compensation package. Tesla is appealing the ruling.

In early August, ​​Tesla’s board gave Musk a $29 billion pay package.

The new package was a “good faith” award designed to keep Musk at the helm of the company.

It would give him 96 million shares of the company that he could take after two years of service in a “senior leadership role” at Tesla. Musk hinted last month that he wanted more ownership at Tesla beyond his 13% stake to prevent his ouster by “activist” shareholders.

The surge comes following announced investments in AI after the company laid off thousands of workers earlier this month.

Microsoft is now the second company ever to surpass $4 trillion in market valuation, following artificial intelligence giant Nvidia.

Microsoft, which is traded under the ticker “MSFT”, is continuing to surge and as of noon in New York City (16:00 GMT) on Thursday, it is up 4.6 percent from the market open.

The technology behemoth said it will spend $30bn in capital spending for the first quarter of the current fiscal year to meet soaring artificial intelligence (AI) demand. Microsoft also reported booming sales in its Azure cloud computing business on Wednesday.

“It is in the process of becoming more of a cloud infrastructure business and a leader in enterprise AI, doing so very profitably and cash generatively despite the heavy AI capital expenditures,” said Gerrit Smit, lead portfolio manager, Stonehage Fleming Global Best Ideas Equity Fund.

Redmond, Washington-headquartered Microsoft first cracked the $1 trillion mark in April 2019.

Its move to $3 trillion was more measured than that of technology giants Nvidia and Apple, with AI-bellwether Nvidia tripling its value in just about a year and clinching the $4 trillion milestone before any other company on July 9.

In its earnings report, revenue topped $76.4bn.

‘Slam-dunk’

“This was a slam-dunk quarter for MSFT [Microsoft] with cloud and AI driving significant business transformation across every sector and industry as the company continues to capitalize on the AI Revolution unfolding front and center,” Dan Ives, senior analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note provided to Al Jazeera.

Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar bet on OpenAI is proving to be a game-changer, powering its Office Suite and Azure offerings with cutting-edge AI and fuelling the stock to more than double its value since ChatGPT’s late-2022 debut.

Its capital expenditure forecast, its largest ever for a single quarter, has put it on track to potentially outspend its rivals over the next year.

“We closed out the fiscal year with a strong quarter, highlighted by Microsoft Cloud revenue reaching $46.7bn, up 27 percent [up 25 percent in constant currency] year-over-year,” Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft, said in a statement.

However, Microsoft’s surge in market value is overshadowed by a wave of layoffs at the tech giant. Earlier this month, the company laid off 9,000 people, representing 4 percent of its global workforce, while doubling down on AI.

Lately, breakthroughs in trade talks between the United States and its trading partners ahead of US President Donald Trump’s August 1 tariff deadline have buoyed stocks, propelling the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq to record highs.

Meta Platforms also doubled down on its AI ambitions, forecasting third-quarter revenue that blew past Wall Street estimates as artificial intelligence supercharged its core advertising business.

The social media giant upped the lower end of its annual capital spending by $2bn – just days after Alphabet made a similar move – signalling that Silicon Valley’s race to dominate the artificial-intelligence frontier is only accelerating.

July 9 (UPI) — The Nvidia technology company now stands alone at the top of the worth list as on Wednesday it became the first publicly traded company to reach $4 trillion in market value.

Its stock went up 2.5% on Wednesday to hit a record single trading day high that pushed it over the $4 trillion line. It’s had a sensational 2025 so far, growing approximately 20% due in part to its key role in the AI boom.

Apple had entered the year at around $3.9 trillion, which at that point made it the world’s most valuable company, but it took a hit during the chaotic tariff rollout of President Donald Trump.

Nvidia and Microsoft have both ebbed and surged in value so far this year, trading places as the most valuable company on Earth, but as of Wednesday Nvidia has found itself in the highest weight class of all time.

It first found fortune for its graphics processing units, a big hit in the PC gaming world, and now it can brag of new AI models intended to power autonomous vehicles and robots, and this comes at an extremely opportune time as its chips power the data centers that companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft need to keep their AI models and cloud services humming.

Nvidia created $44.1 billion in revenue for the quarter that ended in April, 69% up from the same period from the year before.

The future for Nvidia certainly bodes well as AI investments are expected to keep swelling upwards, as market research by the International Data Corporation portends global spending on AI infrastructure will pass $200 billion by 2028.

In an interview with CNBC Wednesday, Goldman Sachs Asset Management co-head of public tech investing Brook Dane reacted to Nvidia’s ascent to a $4T market cap by saying, “We’re at the early stages of the biggest tech transformation we’ve seen in decades.”

That concept was echoed by a June research note from the Loop Capital investment firm, which speculates that Nvidia could hit a $6 trillion market cap by 2028.

WASHINGTON — The changes made to President Trump’s big tax bill in the Senate would pile trillions onto the nation’s debt load while resulting in even steeper losses in healthcare coverage, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a new analysis, adding to the challenges for Republicans as they try to muscle the bill to passage.

The CBO estimates that the Senate bill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034, a nearly $1-trillion increase from the House-passed bill, which the CBO has projected would add $2.4 to the debt over a decade.

The analysis also found that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law, an increase over the estimate for the House-passed version of the bill, which predicts that 10.9 million more people would be without health coverage.

The stark numbers are yet another obstacle for Republican leaders as they labor to pass Trump’s bill by his declared July 4 deadline.

Even before the CBO’s estimate, Republicans were at odds over the contours of the legislation, with some resisting the cost-saving proposals to reduce spending on Medicaid and food aid programs even as other Republicans say those proposals don’t go far enough. Republicans are slashing the programs as a way to help cover the cost of extending some $3.8 trillion in Trump tax breaks put in place during his first term.

The push-pull was on vivid display Saturday night as a routine procedural vote to take up the legislation in the Senate was held open for hours as Vice President JD Vance and Republican leaders met with several holdouts. The bill ultimately advanced in a 51-49 vote, but the path ahead is fraught, with voting on amendments still to come.

Still, many Republicans are disputing the CBO estimates and the reliability of the office’s work. To hoist the bill to passage, they are using a different budget baseline that assumes the Trump tax cuts expiring in December already have been extended, essentially making them cost-free in the budget.

The CBO on Saturday released a separate analysis of the GOP’s preferred approach that found the Senate bill would reduce deficits by about $500 billion.

Democrats and economists decry the GOP’s approach as “magic math” that obscures the true costs of the GOP tax breaks.

In addition, Democrats note that under the traditional estimation system, the Republican bill would violate the Senate’s “Byrd Rule” that forbids the legislation from increasing deficits after 10 years.

In a Sunday letter to Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, CBO Director Phillip Swagel said the office estimates that the Finance Committee’s portion of the bill, also known as Title VII, “increases the deficits in years after 2034” under traditional scoring.

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

Amid the relentless clatter of machinery, Ravi Kumar Gupta feeds a roaring steel furnace with scrap, blown metal and molten iron. He carefully adds chemicals tailored to the type of steel being produced, adjusting fuel and airflow with precision to keep the furnace running smoothly.

As his shift ends about 4pm, he stops briefly at a roadside tea shop just outside the gates of the steel factory in Maharashtra state’s Tarapur Industrial Area. His safety helmet is still on, but his feet, instead of being shielded by boots, are in worn-out slippers – scant protection against the molten metal he works with. His eyes are bloodshot with exhaustion, and his green, full-sleeved shirt and faded, torn blue jeans are stained with grease and sweat.

Four years after migrating from Barabanki, a district in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Ravi earns $175 per month – $25 less than India’s monthly per capita income. And the paycheques are often delayed, arriving only between the 10th and 12th of each month.

Middlemen, who are either locals or longterm migrants posing as locals, supply labour to factories in Maharashtra, India’s industrial heartland. In return, the middlemen skim between $11 and $17 from each worker’s wages. In addition, $7 is deducted monthly from their pay for canteen food, which consists of limited portions of rice, dal and vegetables for lunch, as well as evening tea.

Asked why he continues to work at the steel factory, Ravi responds with resignation in his voice: “What else can I do?”

Giving up his job isn’t an option. His family – two young daughters in school, his wife and mother who work on their small plot of farmland, and his ailing father who is unable to work – depend on the $100 a month that he is able to send home. Climate change, he says, has “ruined farming”, the family’s traditional occupation.

“The rains don’t come when they should. The land no longer feeds us. And where are the jobs in our village? There’s nothing left. So, like the others, I left,” he says, his thick, calloused hands wrapped around a cup of tea.

Ravi is a cog in the wheel of the soaring dreams of the world’s fifth-largest economy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has boldly spoken of making India a $5 trillion economy, up from $3.5 trillion in 2023.

But as Modi’s government woos global investors and assures them that it is easy today to do business in India, Ravi is among millions of workers whose stories of withheld wages, endless toil and coercion – telltale signs of forced labour, according to the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO) – provide a haunting snapshot of the ugly underbelly of the country’s economy.

Farm to furnace

The Factories Act of 1948, which governs working conditions in steel mills like the one where Ravi works, mandates annual paid leave for workers who have been employed for 240 days or more in a year. However, workers like Ravi do not receive paid leave. Any day taken off is unpaid, regardless of the reason.

Like many others, Ravi is required to work all seven days a week, totalling 30 days a month, despite the fact that Sundays were officially declared a weekly holiday for all labourers in India as far back as 1890.

Workers in many Indian factories do not receive a salary slip detailing their earnings and deductions. This lack of transparency leaves them in the dark about how much money has been deducted – or why.

Worse still, if a worker is absent for three or four consecutive days, their entry card is deactivated. Upon returning, they are treated as a new employee. This reclassification affects their eligibility for important benefits such as the provident fund and end-of-service gratuity.

In many cases, workers are forced to rejoin under these unfair terms simply because their pending wages – either direct from the company or via the middlemen – have not been paid. Walking away would mean forfeiting their hard-earned money.

In addition to all this, Ravi confirms that neither he nor his colleagues, both in his company and in nearby factories within the industrial area, have received any written contracts outlining their job roles or employment benefits.

According to a 2025 study (PDF) published in the Indian Journal of Legal Review, many workers face exploitation through unfair contracts, wage theft and forced labour due to the absence of written agreements. These practices particularly affect more vulnerable groups like migrants, women and low-skilled workers, who often have limited access to legal recourse. Al Jazeera contacted the Maharashtra Labour Commissioner on May 20 seeking a response to concerns around forced labour in industries where workers like Ravi are employed, but has not received a reply.

There is also the absence of adequate safety gear: Ravi works near the furnace, where temperatures cross 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). But workers aren’t provided with protective glass. “Neither the middlemen nor the employer gives us even the most basic safety gear,” he says.

Yet, helplessness wins.

“We know how dangerous it is. We know what we need to stay safe,” he says. “But what choice do we have?

“When you’re desperate, you have no choice but to adapt to these harsh, uncertain conditions,” he said.

‘If I get thrown out, what then?’

In the port town of Kakinada, along India’s Bay of Bengal coast – about 1,400km (870 miles) from where Ravi works – 47-year-old Sumitha Salomi earns even less than him.

A shrimp peeler, Sumitha has no formal job contract with the factory where she works. Like many others, she has been hired through a contractor – a woman from her own village. The factory, a heavily fortified facility that exports peeled vannamei shrimp to the United States, employs migrant workers from the neighbouring state of Odisha and other regions. The premises are tightly guarded, and access is strictly controlled.

But in the villages where the factory’s workers live, a common story emerges: None of them have written contracts. No one has social security or health benefits. The only work gear they have are gloves and caps – not for their safety, but to maintain hygiene standards for the exported shrimp.

India exported shrimp worth $2.7bn to the US in the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to official figures.

Sumitha explains that her pay depends on the weight of the shrimp she peels. “The only break we get is about 30 minutes for lunch. For women, even when we’re in severe menstrual pain, there’s no rest, no relief. We just keep working,” she says.

She earns about $4.50 a day. She knows the precarity of her job. Her wages are handed to her in cash, without any payslip, leaving her with no way to contest what she receives.

As a divorced mother, Sumitha carries the burden of multiple responsibilities. She’s still repaying loans she took for her elder daughter’s marriage, while also trying to keep her younger daughter in school. On top of that, she cares for her elderly widowed mother who needs cancer medication that costs about $10 a month.

But she does not question the factory bosses about her working conditions or the absence of a written contract. “I have a job – contract or no contract. That’s what matters,” she says, her voice stoic.

“There are no other jobs here in this village. If I start asking questions and get thrown out, what then?”

Unlike seasoned veteran Sumitha, 23-year-old Minnu Samay is still grappling with the harsh realities of her job in the seafood industry.

Minnu, a migrant worker from the eastern state of Odisha, is employed at a shrimp processing factory located within the high-security Krishnapatnam Port area in Nellore, about 500km (310 mile) south of Kakinada.

Migrant workers like Minnu are allowed to leave the factory just once a week for about three hours, mainly to buy essentials in Muthukur, a village 10km (6 miles) from the factory. As she hurries through the narrow market lanes, picking up sanitary pads and snacks during this brief window of freedom, she tells her story.

“I was 19 when I left home. Poverty forced me. My parents were deep in debt after marrying off my two sisters. It was hard to survive,” Minnu says. “So when we met an agent in our town, he arranged this job here.”

Slowly, she has learned while on the job, cutting and peeling shrimp. Minnu earns approximately $110 per month.

“We know we’re being exploited, our freedom is restricted, we have no health insurance or proper rights, and we’re constantly under surveillance,” she says. “But like many of my coworkers, we don’t have other options. We just adjust and keep going.”

Most overtime work is not paid, she said. “We’re watched by cameras every moment, trapped in what feels like an open prison,” she says.

On May 20, Al Jazeera sent queries to the Andhra Pradesh Labour Department, and on May 22, to the Indian Ministry of Labour, seeking responses to concerns over widespread forced labour in industries where workers like Sumitha and Minnu are employed. Kakinada and Nellore are in Andhra Pradesh state. Neither the Andhra Pradesh Labour Department nor the federal Indian Ministry of Labour has responded.

Labour rights experts say that these stories lay bare the urgent need for enforceable contracts, the abolition of exploitative hiring practices and initiatives to educate workers about their rights – vital measures to combat forced labour in India’s unorganised and semi-organised sectors.

On March 24, India’s federal Labour Minister Shobha Karandlaje told parliament that approximately 307 million unorganised workers (PDF), including migrant workers, were registered under an Indian government scheme.

But researchers say that the true scale of India’s unorganised workforce is likely even larger.

‘Concealed’ forced labour

Benoy Peter, executive director of the Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID), a civil society organisation based in the southern Indian state of Kerala, cited a document (PDF) from India’s National Sample Survey Organization, which said that the country’s total workforce is approximately 470 million in strength. Of this, about 80 million workers are in the organised sector, while the remaining 390 million – more than the entire population of the United States – are in the unorganised sector.

The UN International Labour Organization’s India Employment Report 2024 (PDF) supports Benoy’s observation, stating that low-quality jobs in the informal sector and informal employment are the dominant forms of work in India. The ILO report said that 90 percent of India’s workforce is “informally employed”.

And many of these workers are victims of forced or bonded labour. India ratified the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention 29 in 1954 and abolished bonded labour in 1975. Yet, according to the Walk Free Foundation, India has the highest estimated number of people living in modern slavery worldwide, with 11.05 million individuals (eight in every 1,000) affected.

The real numbers, again, are likely worse.

In 2016, the then Indian Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya informed Parliament that the country had an estimated 18.4 million bonded labourers, and that the government was working to release and rehabilitate them by 2030.

But in December 2021, when Indian parliamentarian Mohammad Jawed inquired (PDF) about this target in parliament, the government stated that only approximately 12,000 bonded labourers had been rescued and rehabilitated between 2016 and 2021.

The textile sector is among the worst offenders.

According to a parliamentary document from March this year, the southern Tamil Nadu state led textile and apparel exports, including handicrafts, with a value of $7.1bn. Gujarat, Modi’s home state, followed in second place, exporting $5.7bn worth of these goods.

Thivya Rakini, president of the Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union (TTCU), says that in a decade of visiting factories to work with garment workers, she has, in almost all instances, seen at least one – and often multiple – indicators of forced labour as defined by the ILO. Those indicators include intimidation, excessive overtime, withheld wages, sexual harassment, and physical violence, such as slapping or beating workers for failing to meet production targets.

India’s textiles industry has around 45 million workers, including 3.5 million handloom workers across the country.

“Forced labour in the textile industry is widespread and often concealed,” Thivya says. “It’s not a random occurrence. It stems directly from the business model of fashion brands. When brands pay suppliers low prices, demand large volumes on tight deadlines, and fail to ensure freedom of association or basic grievance mechanisms for workers, they create an environment ripe for forced labour.”

Women make up 60-80 percent of the garment workforce, she says.  “Many lack formal contracts, earn less than men for the same work, and face frequent violence and harassment,” she said. Many are from marginalised groups – Dalits, migrants or single mothers – making them even more vulnerable in a patriarchal society.

Other sectors are plagued by forced labour too. Transparentem, an independent, nonprofit organisation focused on uncovering and addressing human rights and environmental abuses in global supply chains, investigated 90 cotton farms in the central state of Madhya Pradesh from June 2022 to March 2023 and released its final report (PDF) in January 2025, uncovering child labour, forced labour and unsafe conditions: Children were handling pesticides without protection.

‘No choice but to tolerate exploitation’

Between 2019 and 2020, the Indian government consolidated 29 federal labour laws into four comprehensive codes. The stated aim of these reforms was to improve the ease of doing business while ensuring worker welfare. As part of this effort, the total number of compliance provisions was significantly reduced – from more than 1,200 to 479.

However, while many states have drafted rules needed to implement these codes, there has still not been a nationwide rollout of these laws.

Supporters of the new labour codes argue that they modernise outdated laws and provide greater legal clarity. Critics, however, particularly trade unions, warn that the reforms favour employers and dilute worker protections. One of the codes, for instance, makes it harder to register a workers union.

A union must now have a minimum of 10 percent of the workers or 100 workers, whichever is less, in an establishment to be members of a union, a significant rise from the earlier requirement of just seven workers under the Trade Unions Act, 1926.

Santosh Poonia from India Labour Line – a helpline initiative that supports workers, especially in the unorganised sector, by offering legal aid, mediation and counselling services – tells Al Jazeera that if workers are barred from forming unions, that would weaken their collective bargaining rights.

“Without these rights, they will have no choice but to tolerate exploitative working conditions,” he says.

To Sanjay Ghose, a senior labour law lawyer practising at the Indian Supreme Court, the problem runs deeper than the new consolidated codes.

“The real issue is the failure to implement these laws effectively, which leaves workers vulnerable,” he says.

Ghose warns that India’s stagnating job creation could compound the exploitation and forced labour among workers.

India’s top engineering schools, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), have long prided themselves on how the world’s biggest banks, tech giants and other multinationals queue up at their gates each year to lure their graduates with massive pay packages.

Yet, the percentage of graduates from the IITs who secure jobs as they leave school has dropped sharply, by 10 percentage points, since 2021, when the Indian economy took a major hit from COVID-19 – a hit it hasn’t fully recovered from.

“Even graduates with high ranks from premier institutions like the IITs are struggling to secure job placements,” Ghose says. “With limited options available, job seekers are forced to accept whatever work they can find. This leads to exploitation, unfair working conditions, and, in some cases, forced labour.”

Pramod Kumar, a former United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) senior adviser, adds that weakened private investment and foreign direct investment (FDI) have made national growth largely dependent on government spending. Consequently, job opportunities are primarily limited to the informal sector, where unfair working conditions are prevalent, leading to exploitation and forced labour.

Private sector investment in India dropped to a three-year low of 11.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in fiscal year 2024, down from the pre-COVID average of 11.8 percent (fiscal years 2016-2020), according to ratings firm India Ratings & Research. Additionally, FDI in India declined by 5.6 percent year-on-year to $10.9bn in the October-December quarter of the last fiscal year, driven by global economic uncertainties.

Against that economic backdrop, Poonia, from the India Labour Line, says he can’t see how the government plans to meet its ambitious target of rescuing 18 million bonded labourers in India. He said he expects the opposite.

“The situation is going to worsen when the ease of doing business is prioritised over human rights and workers’ rights.”

On Sunday, a key congressional committee in the United States approved President Donald Trump’s new tax cut bill, which could pass in the House of Representatives later this week.

The bill extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and may add up to $5 trillion to the national debt, deepening worries after a recent US credit ratings downgrade by Moody’s on Friday, which cited concerns about the nation’s growing $36 trillion debt.

The US has the highest amount of national debt in the world and is facing growing concerns about its long-term fiscal stability.

What is US debt?

Debt is simply the total amount of money the US government owes to its lenders, currently amounting to $36.2 trillion. This represents 122 percent of the country’s annual economic output or gross domestic product (GDP), and it is growing by about $1 trillion every three months.

The highest debt-to-GDP ratio was during the pandemic in 2020, when the ratio hit 133 percent. The US is among the top 10 countries in the world with the highest debt-to-GDP ratio.

What is the debt ceiling, and why does it keep increasing?

When the government spends more money than it collects, it creates a deficit.

To cover this deficit, the government borrows more money. To ensure that borrowing is subject to legislative approval, the US Congress sets a limit to how much the government can borrow to fund existing obligations like Social Security, healthcare and defence. This limit is known as the debt ceiling.

Once the ceiling is reached, the government cannot borrow more unless Congress raises or suspends the limit. Since 1960, Congress has raised, suspended or changed the terms of the debt ceiling 78 times, allowing the US to borrow more money.

The federal deficit under different presidents

The federal deficit is how much more money the government spends than it brings in during a single year. A federal surplus would mean the US is bringing in more money than it is spending.

The deficit grew sharply during Trump’s first term, especially in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the government spent heavily while tax revenues dropped due to job losses. That year, the deficit reached nearly 15 percent of the entire economy (GDP).

Under former President Bill Clinton, there was a federal surplus – the result of favourable economic conditions such as the dot-com boom, as well as tax increases which raised more revenues.

What are Treasury bills, notes and bonds?

When the US wants to borrow money, it turns to the Treasury – the finance department of the federal government.

To borrow money, the Treasury sells various types of debt securities, such as Treasury bills, Treasury notes and Treasury bonds to investors.

These securities are essentially loans made by investors to the US government, with a promise to repay them with interest.

US Treasuries have long been considered a safe asset because the risk of the US failing to repay its investors has been very low.

Different debt securities mature over different times – this is when the debt is repaid to the investor.

• Treasury bills (T-bills) are short-term and mature within one year
• Treasury notes (T-notes) are medium-term and mature between 2 and 10 years
• Treasury bonds (T-bonds) are long-term and mature in 20 to 30 years.

Who holds US debt?

Three-quarters of the $36.2 trillion US debt, approximately $27.2 trillion, is held domestically, of which:

• $15.16 trillion (42 percent) is held by US private investors and entities, mostly in the form of savings bonds, mutual funds and pension funds.
• $7.36 trillion (20 percent) is held by intra-governmental US agencies and trusts.
• $4.63 trillion (13 percent) is held by the Federal Reserve.

Among individuals, Warren Buffett, through his company Berkshire Hathaway, is the single largest non-government holder of US Treasury bills, valued at $314bn.

Foreign investors hold the remaining quarter, valued at $9.05 trillion (25 percent).

Over the past 50 years, the share of US debt held by foreign entities has increased fivefold. In 1970, only 5 percent was owned by overseas investors; today, that figure has risen to 25 percent.

Which countries hold the most foreign debt?

Countries buy US debt because it offers a safe, stable investment for their foreign currency reserves, helps manage exchange rates and provides reliable interest income.

Foreign investors hold $9.05 trillion of debt, of which:

• Japan holds $1.13 trillion
• The United Kingdom holds $779.3bn, overtaking China in March as the second-largest non-US holder of treasuries
• China holds $765.4bn
• The Cayman Islands ($455.3bn) holds a large amount of US debt because it is a tax haven
• Canada ($426.2bn)

In response to Trump’s tariffs, both Japan and China have indicated they will use their substantial holdings of US treasuries as leverage in trade negotiations with the Trump administration.

Earlier this month, Japanese Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato said Japan’s massive holding of US treasuries could be a “card on the table” in trade negotiations.

Similarly, China has been gradually selling US treasuries for years. In February, China’s US treasury holdings dropped to their lowest level since 2009, reflecting efforts to diversify reserves and ongoing trade tensions.

What does high US debt mean for the average American?

If the US government is spending more on debt interest repayments, it can affect budgets and public spending as it becomes more costly for the government to sustain itself.

The government may raise taxes to generate more revenue to pay down its national debt, increasing costs for average people. Increasing debt could also lead to higher interest rates, making mortgages, car loans and credit card debt more expensive.