This Week I Learned - Week 19 2026

This Week I Learned - 

* Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft all reported impressive quarterly earnings on Wednesday, surpassing Wall Street expectations thanks to booming demand for AI and cloud services. AI continues to be the main growth engine, with the four companies projected to invest around $650 billion in AI infrastructure this year.

* SpaceX & XAI will provide Anthropic with access to Memphis-based Colossus 1, one of the world’s largest and fastest-deployed AI supercomputers, to provide additional capacity for Claude. The supercomputer is powered by 220,000+ NVIDIA GPUs.

* Palo Alto Networks, a US-based cybersecurity firm, is set to acquire AI infrastructure startup Portkey to strengthen its AI security stack for enterprise use of autonomous agents, at twice its estimated $60–70 million valuation.

* Portkey’s AI gateway sits between applications and large language models, helping companies monitor, manage and secure AI traffic. Palo Alto Networks plans to fold it into Prisma AIRS as a central control plane for agentic AI systems.

Portkey was founded in 2023 by BITS Pilani alumnus Rohit Agarwal and SRM Chennai alumnus Ayush Garg. 

* India is the second largest smartphone market in the world and the third largest PC market for Apple.

* A look at low-trust vs high-trust societies through Apple’s sales policy in India and the US: 

India - "Products purchased at the Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged."

US - "In the unlikely event a product is not what you expected, you can return or exchange it with a receipt within 14 days of the date you receive the product from Apple." 

* PhonePe and Google Pay together dominate more than 80% of the UPI market, while Paytm holds about 10%.

* Coinbase co-founder and CEO, Brian Armstrong, informed that, it is "reducing" ~14% of its workforce and "non-technical teams are now shipping production code."

* The Russia-Ukraine war has been significantly shaped by drone warfare, with drones accounting for up to 80% of casualties in some engagements. 

* When two different datasets sync up to explain each other - Noise complaints & helicopter flight tracks visualized.

* A loud vehicle passing nearby can make the heart pound. Large single-cylinder engines, like those on the Royal Enfield Bullet, generate a lot of energy in the infrasound and low-frequency range (15-50 Hz), right near the edge of human hearing. The chest cavity resonates at around 50-60 Hz, while the abdominal cavity resonates at about 4-8 Hz. This can create a physical sensation in the body that amplifies the sense of threat triggered by the audible sound.

* "From the 1973 oil crisis to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, and more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has repeatedly encountered “black swan” events - unexpected, disruptive, and far-reaching. Each of these moments tested systems, challenged assumptions, and reshaped behaviours.

The common thread across these events is clear: resilience is built through adaptation, not avoidance." - Avinash Satwalekar, President, Franklin Templeton Asset Management (India) Pvt. Ltd.

* Cable News Network (CNN) was founded by Ted Turner in 1980. It upended established broadcasting with its dedication to around-the-clock breaking news and shot to global recognition with its coverage of the Gulf War in 1990-91.

* 10.64 lakh UPI fraud cases worth ₹805 crore were reported in FY26 (till November)

* Gold has always been India’s most widely held asset. Estimates from the World Gold Council suggest Indian households hold between 25,000 and 34,600 tonnes of gold. At today’s prices, that equates to a holding worth between $3.8 trillion and $5.2 trillion—roughly equivalent to India’s entire GDP. Most planners recommend a 5% to 10% portfolio allocation.

* Structural deficits in India’s health system - 43 new medical colleges have been established and 11,682 MBBS seats along with 8,967 postgraduate seats have been approved for the 2025-26 academic year. 

* Eleven out of 18 All India Institutes of Medical Sciences report around 40% vacancies in their teaching and research faculty positions.

There are 5,491 CHCs across 785 districts — about seven CHCs per district 

The vacancy rate in 5,491 rural Community Health Centres (CHC) across 757 districts in India is 79.9%, with only 4,413 specialists available against a requirement of 21,964.

* Kodinhi in Kerala is a village of 2000 families with over 400 twins -