WIRED

The battle for AI dominance has left a large footprint—and it’s only getting bigger and more expensive.

Questions around the reliability of the US greenback are dulling the luster of what was the world’s currency of trade. New, global alternatives are emerging.

In the AI boom, chatbots and GPTs come and go quickly. (Remember Llama?) GPT-5 had a big year, but 2026 will be all about Qwen.

In a year that began with a memecoin trading frenzy, stablecoins have emerged as the respectable face of the crypto industry.

Savvy countries will discover there’s a way to mitigate the harm incurred by Trump’s tariffs—and it’ll boost their own economies while making goods cheaper too.

Apple, Michigan taxpayers, and one of Detroit’s wealthiest families spent roughly $30 million training hundreds of people to build iPhone apps. Not everyone lands coding jobs right away.

A surge of AI-generated content is frustrating Pinterest users and left some questioning whether the platform still works at all.

The company made 80 times as many reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children during the first six months of 2025 as it did in the same period a year prior.

The billionaire’s involvement with the Trump administration and DOGE had deep impacts on Tesla’s bottom line. But Elon Musk was still able to turn his attention to SpaceX.

In today’s episode of Uncanny Valley, we dive into five stories—from AI to DOGE—that encapsulate the year and give us clues as to what might unfold in 2026.