Kristin Lanham won last week’s world famous news haiku competition™ with this beauty about how fans don't want Berkshire Hathaway's '90s-style website to ever change:

Congratulations, Kristin! She writes: “Whoo Hoo just wished I had money in Berkshire Hathaway and used their old website to make $$$.”

Here’s your celebratory gif, Kristin, and it features none other than super investor Warren Buffet Michael Douglas Gordon Gekko, himself:

And here’s how Kristin stacked up against the competition:

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Old Berkshire webpage, Mirror image of Congress, Both fear an update. ~Sara Vogelsand (68)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Old website is fun! Not fun? Rest of world on fire. Oh well. Now the news. ~Lodro Rinzler (18)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Berkshire Hathaway, What a stinkin' great website. Forever nineties. ~Kyleen M. (39)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yo, the 90s called! Berky Hath hath nostalgia, A dying breed, no? ~Jon Daigle (19)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Old money, old site, change is for the young and broke, Why fix what prints cash?~Kristin Lanham (129)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Gap, Cracker Barrel, Jaguar, Tropicana… walked, so Berkshire could run. ~Erika Ettin (24)
297 Votes

This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how high energy prices are driving Europeans towards solar power in record numbers. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Now: News!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• Energy prices are driving solar demand in the EU

• China is flooding America with robots, but this st …

• Do humans still matter more than AI in finance?

• The company positioning itself at the center of th …

• Habitat for Humanity celebrates 50 years

• Poll of the day: Bleep blorp? Blorp bloop?

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 0.84% ) $DJI ( ▲ 0.02% ) $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$COST ( ▼ 0.32% )  $SWK ( ▲ 1.09% )  $VOYG ( ▲ 16.08% )  

Energy prices are driving solar demand in the EU

In an ironic twist, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is acting as the ultimate catalyst for the global green energy transition. Thanks to the war in Iran, European natural gas prices have shot up by about 40%, and the European Union was forced to cough up an extra 24 billion euros on energy imports in the last two months.

Instead of doubling down on expensive oil, Europeans are actually learning their lesson. Realizing they are always just "one war away" (in the words of an EU climate analyst) from financially crushing heating and refueling bills, consumers are frantically sprinting toward the exact renewable technologies that the U.S. president pointedly dislikes.

In the very first month of the conflict, European electric vehicle registrations surged by over 40%. Meanwhile, residential solar panel sales for Britain’s largest power company leaped by 50%, and inquiries in Germany have doubled. Here in the U.S. we still love our gas guzzlers, of course, although at my local Costco $COST ( ▼ 0.32% ) , cheeky people have been applying these stickers to the pumps:

To his credit, the stock market has never been higher, of course, and gas prices have started to come down slightly as hopes improve for peace in Iran:

Quote of the Day

China is flooding America with robots, but this startup is fighting back

The United States is losing the global robotics race on the factory floor. In 2023, China installed over 275,000 industrial robots, dwarfing America's 37,000. Industry advocates warn that "subsidized below-cost Chinese robots are flooding into the United States to win market share," devastating domestic manufacturers. Beyond the economic damage, experts point to serious national security risks, arguing that "each robot from China that's in America is a potential Trojan horse.”

Enter StandardBots, a New York-based startup fighting to restore American dominance. StandardBots builds robots from the ground up, utilizing "physical AI." Their mission is to create a robotic arm so intuitive that a factory worker with zero technical background can deploy it. Instead of writing complex code, users simply show the robot what to do by moving it, and the AI learns the task autonomously. The results speak for themselves: "We've just seen people go from never touching a robot to programming their full system in two days of training,” said Evan Beard, their CEO.

By making automation accessible, StandardBots also hopes to save American industry. As Evan told us, "Customers tell us bluntly that without our robots, they would shut down lines, close facilities, or lay off workers.”

Although Stanley Black & Decker $SWK ( ▲ 1.09% ) recently closed a Connecticut plant, blaming customers for preferring double-sided tape measures made abroad. So, it’s a low bar for American industry to close its facilities these days!

Do humans still matter more than AI in finance?

As artificial intelligence sweeps through Wall Street, many wonder if algorithms will soon replace human bankers. The answer, according to recent experiences, is a resounding no. Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett recently highlighted a revealing anecdote from a New York financier whose 2025 summer interns were "the first true AI natives." While these young recruits initially appeared wildly impressive, senior executives who probed their ideas ultimately found them "alarmingly shallow."

In response, the firm actually made fewer return offers to STEM graduates, pivoting their recruitment toward humanities students. As the executive explained: "We want critical thinking, not just AI." 

Despite the massive industry hype, Tett observes that AI in finance is "neither delivering the profit nirvana predicted by tech evangelists nor hastening the doom the Cassandras have warned about." In fact, a staggering 76% of large financial groups currently struggle to even measure the value of their AI tools.

At the end of the day, "intelligent machines do not automatically deploy themselves," Tett writes. Human strategy is crucial. She argues that the future of finance won't belong to the machines, but to firms that develop skilled AI natives who possess the deep critical thinking needed to navigate both emerging opportunities and complex risks.

Best of luck with that.

Song of the Day: The love theme from Chinatown

Here’s an oldie but a goodie, courtesy of film composer Jerry Goldsmith. I’ve been listening to it on repeat over the past week and can’t recommend anything more highly to make you feel like a noirish detective in pre-war Los Angeles.

The company positioning itself at the center of the new space economy

As the commercial space race intensifies, plenty of companies want to build the critical infrastructure to make it all happen. Voyager Technologies $VOYG ( ▲ 16.08% ) is one such firm, acting as the "picks and shovels" of the new space economy, tackling everything from missile defense to lunar exploration, according to CEO Dylan Taylor.

Dylan envisions a future defined by a "3L strategy": low-earth orbit, lunar, and long-range (deep space). Voyager is already replacing the International Space Station with their commercial "Star Lab," expected in 2029, and co-developing the "Golden Dome" architecture to defend against hypersonic nuclear threats.

Crucially, Voyager thrives on collaboration. They boast milestone-based contracts with NASA, including the self-funded Bishop airlock—a "sovereign piece of real estate" attached directly to the ISS. The company is also looking to the moon, partnering to build "expandable, inflatable habitats" so that astronauts can efficiently live off the land.

Looking ahead, Taylor predicts massive cross-industry convergence between space-based data centers and AI. He has a stark warning for business leaders: "I tell other CEOs from other industries, I'm like, ‘you're all in the space industry. You just don't know it yet.’”

For Voyager Technologies, the moon isn't just a destination; “it's the eighth continent.”

Habitat for Humanity celebrates 50 years

As Habitat for Humanity marks its 50th anniversary alongside the 40th Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project, the organization is reflecting on its massive global impact.

CEO Jonathan Reckford told us that while this is a joyful time to "celebrate the millions and millions of people we've been able to help, we're also in the midst of the largest housing crisis in modern history." To combat this, Habitat is launching a year-long campaign called Let's Open the Door to remind society that a home is "way more than walls and a roof. It's really that platform and foundation for all the other things we want in life," including better health and education.

The true engine behind Habitat's 50 years of success is its volunteers. TV personality (and one identical twin half of The Property Brothers) Jonathan Scott, who regularly builds with the organization, emphasizes that absolutely anyone can help: "The only tool that you need to have experience with is a heart," he said. Scott shares that "nothing has been more rewarding than seeing a bunch of people who just come out, volunteer for complete strangers." 

Reckford agrees, urging everyone to grab a hammer because "when you come out and build alongside others you get a sense and feeling of community that's all too rare in our world today." 

Ultimately, building homes profoundly transforms the volunteers as well. I can say that’s true because I’ve built a couple of Habitat for Humanity houses myself, and it really was a wonderful experience, although your normal cynical service will resume here, shortly.

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