Meta’s Manus Deal Is a Taster of AI Trends for 2026. Watch This Risk.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (BENJAMIN LEGENDRE/AFP via Getty Images)

It’s fitting that 2025 delivers what is probably one last headline-grabbing artificial intelligence deal, and Meta’s acquisition of AI start-up Manus—reportedly worth more than $2 billion—made it just under the wire.

The deal says a lot about this year’s AI trends and what lies ahead for 2026.

Manus made a splash in March by debuting an impressive agent that stoked fears the U.S. was falling behind China, where the start-up was founded. But the U.S. chokehold on advanced chips saw Manus relocate to Singapore, and months later the company is selling itself to Meta for a low price relative to this year’s other blockbuster deals, such as Meta’s own $14 billion investment for just 49% of Scale AI.

Chalk that up as another American win in the AI arms race with China, but U.S. supremacy is not a foregone conclusion. China’s chatbots are impressive and the country arguably leads in energy and infrastructure capacity.

The Manus acquisition is also a departure for Mark Zuckerberg’s tech giant, which focused on using AI to boost its own applications, but may now look to rival the likes of OpenAI with business-facing agents. It tees up Meta for one of the biggest trends into 2026: enterprises actually using AI productively to boost earnings.

But continued consolidation in AI also underscores the nagging risks of a bubble focused on the biggest names in the stock market.

The prospect of the AI sector diversifying beyond a few megacap tech stocks—and therefore lowering the risks of a collapsing bubble—dims each time a smaller competitor gets swallowed or sidelined by a huge rival. Agreements such as Meta’s Manus acquisition, or Nvidia’s $20 billion licensing agreement with chip start-up Groq, create concentrated risks.

For investors, the deal spree is a promise that AI will remain dominant in 2026. In all likelihood, that should help the biggest tech stocks continue to pull the whole S&P 500 higher—at least for now.

—Jack Denton

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The Dogs of the Dow Have Their Best Year Since 2019

This was a good year to be a Dog of the Dow—especially for dividend investors. The 10 highest-yielding stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average are notching their best year on an equal-weighted basis since 2019.

• The stocks are up an average of 17.8% through Dec. 26, beating the Dow 30’s 14.5% gain. Healthcare giants Amgen and Johnson & Johnson and tech leaders IBM and Cisco each gained 28% to 44% this year.
• Dividend-paying stocks, particularly ones with above-average yields, could keep outperforming in 2026, especially if the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates again. Long-term bond yields have tumbled from a high of 4.8% for the 10-year Treasury in January to 4.1% now.
• The Dow dogs will probably change in the year ahead. Based on current dividend yields, IBM, Cisco, and McDonald’s would be out. Their replacements would be a trio of underperformers this year: Nike, UnitedHealth, and Home Depot.
• Of the seven remaining stocks, Verizon and Chevron pay the biggest yields—6.7% and 4.6%, respectively. Verizon in particular looks attractive because it’s relatively cheap, too, trading at just 8.5 times 2026 earnings estimates.

What’s Next: Investors can take comfort that the dogs pay reliable—and often very large—dividends, which should help provide steady income if bond yields head lower next year. That mix of proven income and potential rebound plays should keep the Dogs competitive in 2026.

— Paul R. La Monica and Janet H. Cho

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More Companies Are Expected to Use AI in 2026

Corporations are relying more on artificial intelligence to do business, a trend that Barron’s Tae Kim predicts will just keep growing in the new year. Much of the evidence is anecdotal—but strong. AI, the tech columnist writes, will translate to big productivity gains for customer service, sales, and marketing.

• Micron Technology , for example, reports that more than 80% of its employees use AI tools, up tenfold from a year ago. The workers reported 30% productivity gains for software development and said integrating AI into the chip yield-management process has halved the time to identify problems.
• Cursor, an AI start-up, is getting more demand for its programming assistant, which allows programmers to autocomplete code, fix bugs faster, and automate boilerplate tasks. More than 60% of the Fortune 500 are now customers, CEO Michael Truell said.
• OpenAI has found that AI is creating “significant” economic value through large gains in productivity, writes chief economist Ronnie Chatterji. More than a million businesses use OpenAI’s AI tools, he said, and weekly message volume sent to ChatGPT Enterprise over the past year has risen nearly eightfold.
• Nvidia most certainly doesn’t need convincing about the power of AI—or its pervasiveness. On Monday, the chip maker completed its $5 billion purchase of Intel shares. Nvidia plans to pair Intel CPU chips with its industry-leading AI accelerators in Nvidia AI servers. The $23.28 purchase price was 36% below Intel stock’s closing price on Friday, but gives Intel much-needed capital.

What’s Next: If more and more big companies do turn to AI, today’s major leaders in the AI trade—think Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic—will keep winning.

— Tae Kim, Adam Levine, and Janet H. Cho

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Luluemon Founder Aims to Remake Board, Revive Brand

Lululemon Athletica founder is launching a proxy fight in a bid to remake the activewear retailer’s board of directors. Chip Wilson has nominated three candidates who he said would “put product and brand back at the center.”

• Wilson, who owns about 9% of the stock, nominated Marc Maurer, former co-CEO of On Running; Laura Gentile, ESPN’s former chief marketing officer; and former Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg. “Lululemon needs visionary creative leadership to thrive,” Wilson said.
• Lululemon’s board and leadership team communicated “extensively and in good faith” with Wilson to understand his perspective and nominees, the company told Barron’s on Monday. Wilson, however, “declined to engage further.” The board will weigh in on his nominations before the 2026 shareholder meeting, which is usually held in June.
• In October, Wilson laid out what was ahead. He said he was considering an activist campaign because the board was focused on financial projections instead of products, design, and innovation, which had hurt the brand. The stock is down 45% this year, and growth has been sluggish in North America.
• Lululemon is searching for a successor to CEO Calvin McDonald, who is stepping down on Jan. 31. Wilson called McDonald’s departure a failure by the board because it failed to “competently plan for the future” and advocated for the CEO search to be conducted by new independent directors.

What’s Next: Elliott Investment Management is a shareholder also pushing for change. Elliott, which has a $1 billion stake, wants Jane Nielsen, Ralph Lauren’s former CFO, to be named Lululemon’s next chief executive.

— Sabrina Escobar and Janet H. Cho

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SoftBank Acquiring DigitalBridge for $4 Billion

Japan’s SoftBank Group has struck a deal to acquire DigitalBridge Group, an investment firm specializing in data centers and other digital infrastructure.

• SoftBank said it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the investment firm for a total enterprise value of roughly $4 billion. The company will indirectly acquire all of DigitalBridge’s outstanding common stock for $16 a share in cash, which represents a 15% premium to Friday’s closing price.
• The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, after which DigitalBridge will continue to operate as a “separately managed platform,” SoftBank said.
• The acquisition is in line with SoftBank’s broader artificial-intelligence investment strategy. The company disclosed last month that it had shed its $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia to make room for an even larger investment in OpenAI.

What’s Next: Expect similar moves from the Japanese investment group in 2026. In addition to being one of OpenAI’s most prominent backers, SoftBank also is partnering with the ChatGPT maker and other players like Oracle on the Stargate project, a $500 billion initiative aimed at establishing U.S. dominance in AI.

— Mackenzie Tatananni

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—Newsletter edited by Melanie Gray, Rupert Steiner