A graph showing the Apple stock price in a smartphone app.

Jaap Arriens | Photo only | Getty Images

Retail investors had a disastrous year in 2025.

Mom-and-pop investors bought at key points of decline this year, driving strong returns as the market climbed to all-time highs. A new generation of retail investors, once considered unsophisticated and easily deceived, is giving competition to the professionals who long rejected them, according to investors and market data analysts interviewed by CNBC.

“Retail is getting smarter and it’s getting tougher on the market,” said Mark Malek, head of investments at Siebert Financial. In other words, these investors are really “growing up.”

Individual traders were quicker to buy the decline during market declines earlier in the year, according to JPMorgan Quant analyst Arun Jain, who called it a “successful year” for this group. It was an effective strategy: 2025 is shaping up to be the second-best year for dip buying since at least the early 1990s, according to data released this month by Bespoke Investment Group.

According to JPMorgan, starting in May, these investors shifted their focus from individual stocks to ETFs. The group was particularly concerned with SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) JPMorgan noted that inflows in 2025 exceeded those of the previous five years combined. The gold-focused ETF has posted a record-breaking gain of more than 65% this year as the precious metal rose to all-time highs.

The result: According to data the bank released earlier this month, retail investors’ individual stock portfolios posted higher profit-loss ratios than baskets tied to artificial intelligence and JPMorgan-powered software. Everyday investors’ exchange-traded fund holdings had much higher win rates than that SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) And Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ)the company noted.

Buy “TACO” and the dip

A key driver of their strong performance this year dates back to a week in April that left investors of all sizes on tenterhooks.

Big money came crashing down when President Donald Trump first unveiled his plan for sweeping, high tariffs on most foreign countries on April 2, which he dubbed “Liberation Day.” The S&P 500 briefly fell into bear market territory as institutional investors feared the policy would drive up inflation and weigh on corporate earnings.

But small investors plunged headfirst into the turbulence. According to VandaTrack, they made a record net purchase of more than $3 billion in stocks on April 3 – even though the S&P 500 fell about 5% in the session. The increased buying continued the following day, although the benchmark average fell another 6%.

On April 9, exactly one week after “Liberation Day,” Trump put most of his key duties on hold. Small shareholders were on the ground floor of the S&P 500’s 9.5% rise this session. The broad index is up more than 21% since April 2. It is on track to end 2025 up more than 17% after hitting several new intraday and closing records.

“We often talk about retail being a little late to the party,” said Viraj Patel, Vanda’s deputy head of research. “But that was the exact opposite.”

Stock chart iconStock chart icon

S&P 500, year-to-date

At Siebert, Malek said professionals were starting to get nervous as the S&P 500 fell below 5,000 during the tariff-related selloff. However, its retail traders continued to buy until the end of the session, capitalizing on their previous successes in increasing exposure amid setbacks rather than panicking.

Retail investors “were more right about the market and how to react to many of the year’s emotionally charged trades,” Malek said. “They were much more precise in their dealings than my colleagues in the institutional sector.”

These traders not only believed in buying on dips, but also benefited from the belief that “TACO trading” would be successful, according to Zhi Da, a professor of finance at the University of Notre Dame whose research focuses on the activities of retail traders.

Read more about CNBC’s retail investor coverage

This strategy, known in full as “Trump Always Chickens Out,” encourages investors to buy into stocks when White House policy decisions lead to market downturns in anticipation of the policies reversing. On the other hand, institutional partners have been more cautious about circumventing Trump’s policies, Da said.

He acknowledged that there was some luck involved and that 2025 was an “exception” to the rule. Typically, retail investors buy market declines too late and don’t benefit as much on average, he said.

A more “sophisticated” investor

The positive 2025 for retail comes one year after the investment boom among Americans that began during the pandemic. The next severe market downturn will test whether the increased participation will last.

In 2024, more than one in three 25-year-olds have transferred significant amounts from checking to investment accounts since turning 22, according to JPMorgan data released earlier this year. That’s up from just 6% of 25-year-olds in 2015.

JPMorgan noted that retail flows reached record highs in 2025, up more than 50% from the previous year and about 14% higher than the meme stock boom of early 2021. The share of individual investors in total trades climbed this year to highs last seen during the short-squeeze mania four years ago, according to data from a working paper by professors at Chapman University, Boston College and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign emerges.

The narrative during the meme stock boom in 2021 – which focused on stocks like GameStop And AMC – was that private investors made simplified investment decisions in order to “leave it to the man.” Two years later, the sentiment toward these meme-stock-era investors was captured in a film starring Pete Davidson, Seth Rogen, and Sebastian Stan called Dumb Money.

Vandas Patel and others said perspectives are changing. Retail investors are taking advantage of expanded access to market research and data — and gaining a better reputation on Wall Street as a result, they said. Retailers have also proven more adept at buying at low prices and are increasingly comparable to larger rivals, Patel said.

“The average retail investor is becoming more sophisticated,” Patel said. “This year was a good example of that.”

A scene from the trailer for the film: Dumb Money

Courtesy: Sony Pictures Entertainment

Of course, there is also a new class of meme stocks OpenDoor was created this year. But Vanda found that in 2025, far more retail investor money has flowed into names like… Nvidia, Tesla And Palantir which has outperformed the market in recent years.

Siebert’s Malek said he has noticed that everyday investors are increasingly focused on longer-term investments, which can save them from panic selling when the market falls. Still, one question remains top of mind for Malek and other investment managers: What will retailers do when the stock market finally enters a sustained period of trouble after several years of big gains?

For now, private investors are taking note of their improved position.

Real estate professional Josh Franklin remembers a decade ago when they were easily written off by major investors. The 28-year-old Tampa resident who has invested in stocks like Robinhood and Palantir over the years, spending dozens of hours a week studying the market, now sees the little guy as a central part of the story.

“Back then, no one really cared about retail. They thought retail was dumb money,” Franklin said. “Retail is now at the top of the charts, so to speak.”

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Copper anodes come out of a furnace at the Glencore Canadian Copper Refinery (CCR) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on Tuesday, August 12, 2025.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Copper is on track for its biggest annual price rise in more than a decade, driven by supply disruptions, a weakening U.S. dollar, rising expectations for Chinese economic growth – and blockbuster spending on artificial intelligence.

Analysts expect the red metal’s rally could continue next year, especially amid supply fears and a rapidly expanding global data center footprint.

Three-month copper prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) rose 1.5% to $12,405 a tonne on Tuesday, erasing recent gains after hitting a record high of $12,960 in the previous session.

The benchmark contract, which has gained about 41% this year, is on track for its best year since 2009, when it gained more than 140% as it emerged from the global financial crisis.

In New York, copper prices have risen more than 40% since the start of 2025, on track for their biggest annual gain since 2009, when the contract rose 137.3%.

Demand for copper is widely seen as an indicator of economic health. The base metal is crucial to the energy transition ecosystem and is an essential part of the production of electric vehicles, power grids and wind turbines.

In fact, electrification, grid expansion and data center expansion require large amounts of copper for cabling, power transmission and cooling infrastructure.

Ian Roper, commodities strategist at Astris Advisory Japan KK, cited a global boom in AI demand as the latest driver for copper prices, with “very tight” markets likely meaning the red metal could rise even further next year.

“The story for copper in recent years has been green energy, right? Even though China has seen a huge real estate downturn.” [and] “That impacts things like steel demand and iron ore prices, but it doesn’t have as much of an impact on copper,” Roper told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Dec. 23.

“Copper has been a big beneficiary of the expansion of renewable energy and electric vehicles, and now of course data centers are the big growth story,” he added.

AI and defense

Analysts at JPMorgan said in a research note published in late November that LME copper prices could rise even further next year, forecasting an average of $12,500 a tonne for the second quarter.

The Wall Street bank said it expects copper to cost an average of $12,075 by 2026, calling growth in data center demand an “extremely current” upside risk.

“All in all, we believe these unique dynamics of disjointed inventories and acute supply disruptions exacerbating the copper market are driving bullish sentiment for copper and will be enough to drive prices above $12,000 per ton in the first half of 2026,” Gregory Shearer, head of base and precious metals strategy at JPMorgan, said in the note.

Coils, wound copper wires, lie on pallets in the wire mill (coiler) of Aurubis AG. After a casting and rolling process, hot copper wire is wound through the reel into a coil that weighs up to five tons and is around twelve kilometers long.

Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

However, not everyone is so optimistic about the copper price outlook.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs Research expect copper prices to retreat from recent record highs, even as growing demand for the metal gradually pushes prices higher in the longer term.

In a research note published on December 11, Goldman Sachs Research analysts said LME copper prices are expected to remain in a range of $10,000 to $11,000 as robust global demand growth from the grid and energy infrastructure sector, “supported by investments in strategic sectors such as AI and defense,” prevents prices from falling below $10,000.

Analysts expect LME copper prices to average $10,710 in the first half of 2026. Looking further ahead, they forecast LME copper prices to rise to $15,000 in 2035, noting that this is above industry analyst consensus.

A selection of 1-kilogram silver bars at precious metals dealer Conclude Zrt in Budapest, Hungary, on Monday, February 17, 2025.

Akos Stiller | Bloomberg | Getty Images

One of the best trades of the year just saw a massive reversal overnight.

Silver The price slipped more than 3% on Monday after breaking above $80 an ounce for the first time ever in overnight trading. The precious metal is still up more than 155% year to date. At the start of 2025, the price was over just $20 per ounce.

Silver futures were last trading at around $75.41 an ounce.

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Silver futures for March, current year

This has helped the precious metal even outperform gold this year. February gold futures, which recently topped $4,550 for the first time this month, are up more than 70% this year.

Gold futures recently fell by around 1.5%.

There are several reasons for the enormous profits. Along with gold, silver is considered a safe haven for investors wary of increasing geopolitical tensions and other risks such as the rising US deficit. The two metals are also considered stores of value, meaning they can serve as a hedge against a weakening U.S. dollar due to inflation or economic uncertainty. In addition, a weaker US dollar makes assets cheaper for other countries too.

Silver also benefited from strong industrial demand for electronics such as solar panels, data centers and electric vehicles.

Travelers at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in the Queens borough of New York, USA, on Friday, December 26, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

More than 900 U.S. flights were canceled and nearly 8,000 were delayed Saturday after a severe winter storm hit the northeastern U.S., testing airlines during one of the busiest travel times of the year.

According to the National Weather Service, the region saw less snowfall overall than originally forecast, although John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey each recorded more than four inches of snow.

More than 136 flights, about a fifth of scheduled departures from Kennedy Airport, were canceled, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. Another 87 were canceled from New York’s LaGuardia Airport, about 20% of the day’s scheduled departures and 72 or 12% of departures from Newark were canceled.

Airlines canceled more than 1,700 flights on Friday, most of them in advance of the storm. According to FlightAware, only 27 U.S. flights were listed as canceled for Sunday.

American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways and other airlines waived change fees for restrictive basic economy tickets. They said they would not charge a price difference for other customers flying to and from numerous airports in the northeastern United States

Customers will have to travel until the end of the year if they change their flights, the airlines said. With limited seats available during the busy Christmas week, flying as early as possible is probably your best bet.

Airlines for America, the industry lobbying group, expects airlines to carry a record 52.6 million people between Dec. 19 and Jan. 5, with Friday and Sunday among the busiest days.

Airlines typically cancel flights early during predicted major weather events, such as blizzards or hurricanes, to prevent aircraft, connecting travelers and crews from being stranded and disruptions from worsening.

Read more CNBC airline news

The QTS data center in Cambois, North East England

When the UK announced its AI Opportunities Action Plan in January – a major plan for deploying the technology across society – Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the strategy would make the country an “AI superpower”.

One of the key pillars of this plan was to rapidly build data centers capable of meeting the enormous computing needs of AI adoption. This would be driven by “AI growth zones” – designated areas with relaxed building permits and improved access to electricity.

Almost a year later, and Nvidia, MicrosoftAnd Google All of them have committed billions of dollars to AI infrastructure in the country. Four AI growth zones have been unveiled, and homegrown startups such as Nscale have emerged as major players in this space.

But critics point to severely limited access to energy via the national grid and slow construction as signs that the country risks falling even further behind its global rivals in the AI ​​race.

“Ambition and execution are not yet aligned,” Ben Pritchard, CEO of data center power provider AVK, told CNBC.

“Growth has been largely held back by constraints on electricity availability. In particular, grid constraints have slowed the pace of development and mean the UK is not yet building infrastructure fast enough to keep pace with global competition.”

Delays in connection to the grid

The expansion of AI infrastructure in the UK is still in its early stages, with AI growth zones currently in the early stages of their development.

A site in Oxfordshire, the first announced in February, has yet to begin construction and is still considering proposals for delivery partners. Ground preparation work for a building in north-east England, announced in September, has begun, with construction officially due to begin in early 2026.

Two further sites in North and South Wales opened in November. The former is looking for an investment partner, which the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSIT) expects to confirm to CNBC in the coming months. The latter consists of a collection of sites, some of which are already operational and others that require additional construction work, DSIT said.

The UK government announced in July that it was targeting a core group of AI growth zones that would cover at least 500 megawatts of demand by 2030, with at least one growing to more than a gigawatt by then.

However, the biggest challenge in achieving these ambitions is the UK’s limited network capacity, Pritchard said.

“Developers are anticipating grid connection delays of eight to 10 years, and the volume of outstanding connection requests, particularly around London, is unprecedented,” he told CNBC.

AI workloads are also “dramatically increasing energy demands” as businesses and consumers begin to use the technology, putting additional pressure on an overburdened energy system, Pritchard added. “They are no longer isolated risks, but are actively slowing or blocking development across the country.”

The open call for applications for the AI ​​Growth Zones initiative has resulted in landowners with poles or power cables running across their land applying for designation, said Spencer Lamb of Kao Data.

“This resulted in the national grid being flooded with power grid applications from speculative sources” with no realistic prospect of success, he told CNBC.

Lay the foundation

The National Energy System Operator (Neso) – the UK public agency responsible for managing the national electricity grid – has taken steps to improve the situation.

Earlier this month, the company announced plans to prioritize hundreds of projects to provide faster access to the power grid. Neso declined to comment on whether AI infrastructure projects were among the prioritized projects when asked by CNBC, but said a significant portion were data centers.

There have also been big pledges of money from tech giants, many of which were unveiled by the UK government in September.

Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, CoreWeave and others announced billions of dollars in AI investments during US President Donald Trump’s state visit, which included plans to deploy the latest chips in the country and open new data centers.

Homegrown startup Nscale, which provides access to AI computers and builds data centers, also announced contracts to deploy tens of thousands of Nvidia chips in an AI factory just outside London by early 2027.

The Nvidia GB10 Grace Blackwell superchip will be on display at the company’s GTC conference in San Jose, California on March 19, 2025.

Max A. Cherney | Reuters

“Investment from large private players has laid important foundations,” Puneet Gupta, general manager for the UK and Ireland at data infrastructure company NetApp, told CNBC. “Momentum is also growing around national research supercomputers and plans for new computing capacity, with commitments to build AI ‘gigafactories’ in the UK.”

But the “real test” will be how quickly these plans can be translated into usable computing power for UK organizations, Gupta said.

Avoiding a “sugar rush” of the AI ​​infrastructure

The long-term success of expanding the country’s AI infrastructure requires investment in the “full stack,” including data pipelines, storage, energy sourcing, security, talent and capabilities, Stuart Abbott, managing director of UK and Irish AI infrastructure company VAST Data, told CNBC.

“If the UK wants this to last and not become a year-long sugar rush, it needs to treat AI infrastructure like economic infrastructure.”

Stuart Abbott

Managing Director for UK and Ireland at AI infrastructure company VAST Data

That means “developing an operational structure that enables real-world institutions to safely deploy AI at scale,” he added. “If the UK wants this to last and not become a year-long sugar rush, it needs to treat AI infrastructure like economic infrastructure.”

The challenges are significant. The value of data center deals in Europe pales in comparison to the amounts flowing into projects in the US. The UK also currently has the most expensive energy in Europe, around 75% higher than before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and aging grid infrastructure that can take many years to connect to new locations.

A possible solution for projects that cannot ensure secure access to the national grid is microgrids, AVK’s Pritchard said. Microgrids are self-contained networks of electricity from sources such as motors, renewable energy and batteries.

Pritchard said AVK is currently designing two microgrids for partners building cloud computing, but not AI, in the UK. Construction can take about three years and currently costs about 10% more than energy from the grid.

Co-locating computing power where there is already power, rather than “forcing everything into greenfield sites” – the term for undeveloped sites – is also a way to get AI infrastructure up and running faster, VAST Data’s Abbot said.

The pace of implementation will be crucial, Kao Data’s Lamb told CNBC. “Unless fundamental issues surrounding energy availability and prices, AI copyrights and funding for AI developments are resolved quickly, the UK will miss out on one of the most remarkable economic opportunities of our time and ultimately risk becoming an international AI laggard.”

Jonathan Ross, CEO of Groq Inc., during the GenAI Summit in San Francisco, California, USA, on Thursday, May 30, 2024.

David Paul | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nvidia has agreed to buy assets of Groq, a developer of powerful artificial intelligence accelerator chips, for $20 billion in cash, according to Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive, which led the startup’s latest funding round in September.

Davis, whose firm has invested more than half a billion dollars in Groq since the company was founded in 2016, said the deal came together quickly. Groq raised $750 million three months ago at a valuation of about $6.9 billion. Investors in the round included Blackrock and Neuberger Berman as well as Samsung. CiscoAltimeter and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner.

Groq said in a blog post on Wednesday that the company had “entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia for Groq’s inference technology,” without disclosing a price. With the deal, Groq founder and CEO Jonathan Ross, along with Sunny Madra, the company’s president, and other senior executives, will “join Nvidia to help further develop and scale the licensed technology,” the post said.

Groq added that it will continue to operate as an “independent company” under the leadership of finance chief Simon Edwards as CEO.

Nvidia CFO Colette Kress declined to comment on the deal.

Davis told CNBC that Nvidia is acquiring all of Groq’s assets, although the emerging Groq cloud business is not part of the deal. Groq said: “GroqCloud will continue to operate without interruption.”

The deal represents by far Nvidia’s largest purchase ever. The chipmaker’s largest acquisition to date came in 2019, when it bought Israeli chip designer Mellanox for nearly $7 billion. At the end of October, Nvidia had $60.6 billion in cash and short-term investments, up from $13.3 billion at the start of 2023.

In an email to employees obtained by CNBC, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the deal will expand Nvidia’s capabilities.

“We plan to integrate Groq’s low-latency processors into NVIDIA’s AI factory architecture and expand the platform to cover an even broader range of AI inference and real-time workloads,” Huang wrote.

Huang added: “Although we are adding talented people to our ranks and licensing Groq’s intellectual property, we are not acquiring Groq as a company.”

Nvidia arranged a similar but smaller deal in September when it spent over $900 million to hire Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar and other employees of the AI ​​hardware startup and license the company’s technology, CNBC reported at the time.

Other tech giants including MetaGoogle and Microsofthave spent heavily in recent years to hire top AI talent through various types of licensing deals.

Nvidia has increased its investments in chip startups and the broader ecosystem as its cash pile has grown. The company has backed AI and energy infrastructure company Crusoe and AI model developer Cohere and increased its investments in CoreWeave as the AI-centric cloud provider prepared to go public this year.

In September, Nvidia announced that it planned to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, with the startup committing to deploying at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia products. The companies have not yet announced a formal deal. That same month, Nvidia announced it would invest $5 billion in the company Intel as part of a partnership.

Groq is targeting $500 million in revenue this year as demand booms for AI accelerator chips designed to speed up the process for large language models to complete inference-related tasks. The company wasn’t looking to sell when Nvidia approached the company, Davis said.

Groq was founded in 2016 by a group of former engineers, including Ross. He was one of the creators of Googles Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU, the search giant’s custom chip used by some companies as an alternative to Nvidia’s graphics processing units.

In its first filing with the SEC, announcing a $10.3 million fundraising in late 2016, Groq listed as directors Ross and Douglas Wightman, an entrepreneur and former engineer at Google

Groq isn’t the only chip startup that has gained traction during the AI ​​boom.

AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems had planned to go public this year, but withdrew its IPO application in October after announcing it had raised over $1 billion in a fundraising round.

In a filing with the SEC, Cerebras said it does not intend to complete a proposed offering “at this time,” but did not provide a reason. A spokesperson told CNBC at the time that the company still hoped to go public as soon as possible.

Cerebras filed for an IPO in late 2024, just as it was taking on Nvidia to develop processors to run generative AI models.

—CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

REGARD: How the enormous power consumption of generative AI is overloading our network

Traveling is no longer just about the destination – or even the journey. It’s about the experience you go home with.

Since the end of the coronavirus crisis, experiential travel has evolved, moving away from checking off sights and toward meaningful journeys that help travelers connect with the people and places they visit.

CNBC analyzed 25 year-end trips reports and identified the five biggest trends that will shape the coming year.

1. The anti-tourist

To better experience local culture, avoid contributing to overtourism, and potentially save a few bucks, travelers are increasingly avoiding peak seasons and busy destinations.

45 percent of travel agency Virtuoso advisors say their clients are adjusting their plans due to climate change. According to the company’s 2026 “Luxe Report,” 76% of these advisors report increased interest in traveling in low season or off-peak times, while 75% say clients prefer destinations with temperate weather.

The report, The study, published in October, also revealed how travelers can best travel sustainably to reduce pressure on local communities and preserve authentic experiences.

This shift is driving the rise of so-called “secondary cities,” which are located away from major tourist centers and offer more immersive experiences.

Online travel platform Agoda has found that searches for accommodation in Asia’s secondary destinations are growing 15% faster than in traditional tourism hubs.

The Travel Outlook Report 2026 also showed that governments are catching up. For example, Indonesia has launched its “Tourism 5.0” strategy, which aims to further develop five “super priority” secondaries. Destinations that are set to transform tourism beyond Bali.

Japan is also relying on regional campaigns Keep visitors away from Tokyo and other major city centers.

2. “Decision Detox” vacation

Traditionally, all-inclusive travel was about efficiency, as travelers planned their itineraries to maximize their vacation time.

However, these days travelers are mentally exhausted before a trip and are increasingly outsourcing their planning to agencies or even hotels that offer all-inclusive packages, as Lemongrass Marketing’s latest travel report shows.

Essentially, “travellers want someone they trust to make good decisions for them so they can unwind properly,” said Tara Schwenk, senior director of digital strategy at Lemongrass Marketing, in an email response to CNBC’s inquiries.

“As cognitive overload becomes a defining feature of modern life, low-decision travel is no longer a niche wellness addition but is becoming a core expectation, especially among time-poor, high-stress travelers,” Schwenk added.

The trend has transformed high-end travel, replacing endless options with curated selections, said luxury travel company HunterMoss.

This allows ultra-luxury travelers to “not have to think about additional costs or logistics planning during their trip,” said Julie Hunter, director and chief operating officer of HunterMoss.

3. Wellness goes beyond spas

Another growing trend is wellness travel, which has evolved from spa packages to science-based longevity programs that focus on mental health Travel.

Offerings include Ayurveda programs in India, yoga and surf trips in Costa Rica and silent retreats in Canada.

Many travelers value wellness According to the Virtuoso report, travel represents long-term health investments.

The appeal of these trips transcends class boundaries, from budget-friendly nature trips to a “healthy wealthy” trend. It is also popular with solo travelers and couples, as well as older and younger travelers, the report added.

According to a separate report from tour operator Contiki, two-thirds of U.S. travelers under 35 say they prefer active travel that includes hiking, rafting and biking, and over 50% believe in maintaining a wellness routine while traveling.

4. Nostalgic travel

Younger travelers are looking for vacations that will make them reminisce.

According to the Contiki report, nearly eight in 10 Americans under the age of 35 say they have either taken a childhood trip or would like to take it again.

At the same time, new retirees – a group that includes the oldest members of Generation X – are enjoying their newfound freedom through “golden gap year” travel, according to consulting firm The Future Laboratory.

With no bosses to report to and no children in tow, they take extensive trips, both overland and on cruise ships, that are more adventurous than the trips of retirees of the past, their Future Forecast 2026 report said.

The report added that almost 25% of retirees have traveled or would consider traveling for a year, citing a study by UK retirement village operator Inspired Villages.

5. AI in hotel service

As more travelers turn to artificial intelligence to book trips, hotels are also using it to better understand their guests.

Next year is expected to mark a significant shift in hotels from responding to guests’ desires to predicting their desires – using predictive intelligence to personalize stays before guests arrive, according to the Oracle Hospitality report.

According to a separate report from the travel technology company, some hotels already allow guests to personalize every detail of their room, such as: B. installing a reformer Pilates machine and blackout blinds or choosing a room closest to the breakfast buffet Amadeus.

“As AI becomes faster, personalization will no longer be a nice-to-have, but rather the default operating system of choice,” the Amadeus report continued.

In this screenshot from a social media video, a Waymo car is stopped on the street during a power outage in San Francisco, California, USA, on December 20, 2025

Reuters

Three days after a power outage in San Francisco, Waymo was forced to suspend its driverless car service alphabet-owned company said it is modernizing its fleet so its vehicles are better prepared for future failures.

“We have always been focused on building the Waymo Driver for the world as it is, even in the event of infrastructure failure,” the company said in a blog post late Tuesday.

The outages began early Saturday afternoon in San Francisco and peaked about two hours later, affecting about 130,000 customers, officials said Pacific Gas and Electricity. As of Sunday morning, around 21,000 customers remained without power. PG&E said a fire at a substation resulted in “significant and extensive” damage.

Since traffic lights and traffic signals were not working, there was a widespread gridlock in the city. Videos shared on social media appeared to show several Waymo vehicles stuck in traffic in various parts of the city.

“We have instructed our fleet to stop and park appropriately so that we can return vehicles to our depots in waves,” Waymo said in Tuesday’s blog post. “This ensured that we did not cause more congestion or hinder emergency vehicles during the peak of recovery efforts.”

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said in an update Saturday evening that police officers, firefighters, parking enforcement officers and city ambassadors were deployed in the affected neighborhoods.

Waymo said it was analyzing the event and taking three “immediate steps.”

The first includes “fleet-wide updates” to give vehicles “more context on regional outages” so cars can respond more decisively at intersections. The company said it is also improving its “emergency response protocols” and coordinating with Mayor Lurie’s team in San Francisco to better collaborate on emergency preparedness. Finally, Waymo said it is updating its training for first responders “as we learn lessons from this and other widespread events.”

In addition to the Bay Area, Waymo currently offers paid rides to the public in and around Austin, Texas, Phoenix, Atlanta and Los Angeles. The company recently surpassed an estimated 450,000 paid rides per week and announced in December that it completed 14 million rides in 2025. This puts the company on track to end the year with more than 20 million total rides since its launch in 2020.

“With more than 100 million miles of fully autonomous driving experience and a track record of improving road safety, we are undaunted by the opportunity to challenge the status quo of our streets and are proud to continue serving San Francisco residents and visitors,” the company said in Tuesday’s blog.

—CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

REGARD: Waymo service is resuming after bugs caused problems in San Francisco

An electronic quotation board displays Nikkei 225 stock prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on November 5, 2025 in Tokyo.

Greg Baker | Afp | Getty Images

Asia-Pacific markets opened mostly higher on Tuesday after AI trading lifted major Wall Street indexes overnight.

Nvidia shares rose more than 1% after Reuters said the company plans to begin shipping its H200 chips to China by mid-February. Micron Technology rose about 4%, while Oracle rose more than 3%.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.1% to close at 8,795.7, marking a fourth straight day of gains.

Japan Nikkei 225 The price ended slightly above the zero line at 50,412.87, extending gains into the third day. The broad-based Topix gained 0.53% to 3,423.25, led by financials and healthcare stocks.

Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama reportedly said on Tuesday that the country has a “free hand” in dealing with the recent sharp devaluation of the yen, signaling that currency intervention is not off the table.

The yen weakened sharply on Friday even as the Bank of Japan raised interest rates to a 30-year high, hitting a low of 157.77 against the dollar before rising on Monday and Tuesday. The last trade was at 156.14.

Katayama said the Japanese currency’s fluctuations did not reflect economic fundamentals and called them “speculative.”

South Korea Kospi rose 0.28% to 4,117.32, also snapping a three-day winning streak, but the small-cap Kosdaq slipped 1.03% to 919.56.

Shares of shipbuilding company Hanwha Ocean rose 10% after US President Donald Trump said the company would work with the US Navy to build its new frigates.

Hong Kong Hang Seng Index bucked the trend and fell 0.25%, with materials stocks leading the decline, while the CSI 300 in mainland China rose 0.17%.

Chinese newcomers lit up the Hong Kong market in their debut on Tuesday, with QingSong Health Corporation and Nuobikan Artificial Intelligence Technology rising 134% and 323%, respectively, after their strong, albeit small, initial public offerings.

QingSong Health Corporation’s initial public offering in Hong Kong was met with overwhelming demand: the domestic tranche was subscribed 1,421 times and raised nearly 602 million Hong Kong dollars (about $77 million), according to an exchange filing. The public tranche of Nuobikan in Hong Kong was subscribed 188.74 times and raised HK$303 million.

alphabetCompany-owned Waymo has resumed its driverless ride-hail service in the San Francisco Bay Area after a temporary pause due to power outages that hit the city starting Saturday afternoon.

“Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that resulted in gridlock throughout San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic lights and disruptions to public transit,” a Waymo spokeswoman, Suzanne Philion, told CNBC in an emailed statement Sunday afternoon.

“Although the loss of utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring that our technology adapts to traffic flow during such events,” she added.

Enlarge symbolArrows point outwards

Waymo Service Outage Notification in San Francisco.

Source: Waymo

As power outages spread yesterday, videos shared on social media appeared to show several Waymo vehicles stuck in traffic in various parts of the city.

San Francisco resident Matt Schoolfield said he saw at least three Waymo autonomous vehicles sitting in traffic around 9:45 p.m. local time on Saturday, including one he photographed on Turk Boulevard near Parker Avenue.

“They just stopped in the middle of the street,” Schoolfield said.

A Waymo vehicle was stuck between Parker and Beaumont on the north side of Turk Boulevard in San Francisco.

Photo credit: Matt Schoolfield

According to Pacific Gas and Electric, the outages began around 1:09 p.m. Saturday and peaked about two hours later, affecting about 130,000 customers. As of Sunday morning, about 21,000 customers remained without power, mostly in the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and parts of downtown San Francisco.

PG&E said the outage was caused by a fire at a substation that resulted in “significant and extensive” damage and could not yet provide an exact timeline for full restoration.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said in an update at 9 p.m. on X that police officers, firefighters, parking enforcement officers and city ambassadors were deployed in the affected neighborhoods.

Waymo’s Philion also told CNBC, “While Waymo Driver treats non-functional signals as four-way stops, the sheer magnitude of the outage resulted in vehicles stopping longer than usual to check the condition of affected intersections. This contributed to traffic friction during the peak of congestion.”

Waymo “coordinated closely with San Francisco city officials,” she said, and proactively suspended its service starting Saturday evening and through the first half of the day on Sunday.

“Most active trips were completed successfully before vehicles were safely returned to depots or stopped,” she noted.

Amid the disruption, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on X: “Tesla robotaxis were not affected by the SF blackout.”

Unlike Waymo, Tesla does not operate a driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco.

Tesla’s local ride service uses vehicles equipped with “FSD (Supervised),” a premium driver assistance system. The service requires a human driver behind the wheel at all times.

According to state regulators — including the California Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission — Tesla has not received permits to conduct driverless testing or services in the state without human safety officers at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time.

Tesla is aiming to become a robotaxi titan but doesn’t yet operate commercial driverless services. Tesla’s Robotaxi app allows users to hail a ride; However, its vehicles currently have human safety officers or drivers on board, even in states where the company has received permits for driverless operations.

Waymo, which leads the emerging industry in the West, is its main competitor in AVs alongside Chinese players like Tesla Baidu-own Apollo Go.

The outage-related disruptions in San Francisco come as robotaxi services are becoming more common in other major U.S. cities. Waymo is among the few companies offering fully driverless ride-hailing services to the public, although concerns about autonomous vehicles remain high.

A survey by the American Automobile Association earlier this year found that about two-thirds of U.S. drivers said they were afraid of autonomous vehicles.

The Waymo pause in San Francisco suggests that cities are not yet prepared for highly automated vehicles to flood their streets, said Bryan Reimer, a researcher at the MIT Center for Transportation and co-author of “How to Make AI Useful.”

“Something was overlooked in the design and development of this technology, which clearly shows that it was not the robust solution that many would like to believe,” he said.

Reimer noted that power outages are entirely predictable. “Not forever, but in the foreseeable future, we need to combine human and machine intelligence and establish human backup systems around highly automated systems, including robotaxis,” he said.

State and city regulators need to consider what the maximum penetration of highly automated vehicles should be in their region, Reimer added, and AV developers should be held responsible for “chaos gridlock” just as human drivers would be held responsible for how they drive during a power outage.

—CNBC’s Riya Bhattacharjee contributed reporting.