Here’s Semafor Business’ 2026 bingo card. Your free space is a new Fed chair, and other predictions run the gamut from likely to long-shot. We’ll check back a year from now to see how we did.
- Apple ponies up. Breaking its aversion to big M&A, Apple buys an AI search engine or model lab — think Mistral or Perplexity — to catch up in the tech and talent war it can’t afford to be losing.
- A new $1 trillion asset manager. Blackstone has held the mantle for too long. KKR is still a few years away, so this newcomer will be formed by acquisition. Here’s one combination you can cross off, and one to watch.
- Bitcoin at $120,000: Trump makes crypto the base of a US sovereign wealth fund. Nothing sends asset prices higher than a forced buyer.
- FREE SPACE: New Fed chair
- A predictions-market scandal will make Nobelgate look small and bring new regulation down on online betting.
- A European digital tax. France, Italy, and Spain already have one, and splitting €38 billion in revenue could help deficit-strapped and debt-shy governments pay for defense buildouts.
- SEO death spiral. Human-directed web traffic falls by 25% as agents come of age, sparking a sharp drop in e-commerce stocks.
- Tariff refunds. Either checks sent directly to Americans as a popularity play before the midterms, or payments to retailers after the Supreme Court finds some of the levees unconstitutional.
- Robinhood buys a bank. It becomes the latest fintech to embrace the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” ethos.
- NASCAR takes outside money. With the antitrust lawsuit settled, sports eating finance, and red-state culture ascendant, the lane is wide open.
- A major labor action over AI. Thousands of workers in telecom, healthcare, and manufacturing walk off the job, demanding ‘human-in-the-loop’ contracts that block AI from doing mission-critical tasks.
- Alphabet becomes the world’s most valuable company. Custom TPU chips, the Gemini 3 rollout, and a big Waymo expansion drive its market cap past a cooling Nvidia and Apple.
- Saudi Arabia starts serving. Allowing booze will lure Westerners who prefer the libertinism of Dubai, boosting the kingdom’s ambitions to win the “regional headquarters” race.
- China bans Teslas. Beijing enacts a total ban on Tesla sales, citing the recently passed cybersecurity law and “national security risks” posed by the cars’ cameras.
- Sam Bankman-Fried gets pardoned after a media campaign reframing his 25-year sentence as a partisan hit job.