| | Good morning. Warren Buffett called it the "newspaper test": He advised managers to judge an action by how it might appear on the front page of the local newspaper. Of course, if you're Buffett, you can just go out and buy a chunk of the newspaper of record. In a regulatory filing on Tuesday, Berkshire Hathaway revealed it had built up a roughly $352 million stake in The New York Times in the fourth quarter of 2025, which marked Buffett's final year at the helm of the storied conglomerate. It's a notable bet on media for Berkshire, which previously owned a portfolio of local newspapers, including the Omaha World-Herald and Tulsa World, before selling the flagging publications at a substantial discount to Lee Enterprises in 2020. The filing also revealed that Berkshire had slashed its stake in Amazon by more than 75% in the final quarter, just before the e-commerce giant's roughly 12% skid to start the New Year. Would you look at that? We buried the lede. | | | | | Alibaba's answer to ChatGPT, Qwen, got an upgrade this week that could put it ahead in the AI race. The Chinese company said Qwen3.5 is cheaper and more powerful than its predecessor and performs on par with US rivals including Claude and Gemini. It can understand text, images and videos, and it's compatible with trendy AI agents like OpenClaw. Qwen isn't a standalone offering for Alibaba. Instead, it's integrated into its main e-commerce biz. On the Qwen app, nearly 100 million users can, for instance, ask Qwen to make a Lunar New Year travel itinerary and then book it through Alibaba's travel agency. The new version of Qwen came out just in time to ring in the Year of the Fire Horse, alongside many competitors. Not Horsing Around Google DeepMind head Demis Hassabis told CNBC last month that Chinese AI was months away from catching up to US models. Now, Chinese tech companies are blazing ahead with AI updates: - TikTok-owner ByteDance rolled out Doubao 2.0 over the weekend, the latest version of China's biggest AI chatbot with nearly 200 million users. Like Qwen, Doubao prioritizes agentic AI capabilities, such as performing complicated, ongoing tasks like coding and customer support. Also this month, ByteDance launched a new video-generation model, while Chinese startups including Zhipu AI and MiniMax debuted new AI models.
- DeepSeek is expected to release a new model soon. DeepSeek kicked off the Chinese AI race last year when its offering, which it claimed cost significantly less to run than rivals like ChatGPT, sparked an AI stock rout. Tech leaders have since been racing to deliver the most performance for the lowest price, as investors question when AI will be worth the billions of dollars that companies spend building and running it.
Still, China's industry faces bumps in the road. ByteDance's new video-generation model, Seedance 2.0, drew attention for producing deepfake videos, including one featuring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting. Hollywood's Motion Picture Association called the tech "unauthorized use of US copyrighted works on a massive scale."   Costly Race: Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent are competing to win users during the Lunar New Year, historically a time when apps like WeChat rapidly gained users looking for promos. The three companies are spending nearly $650 million altogether on incentives, handing out digital red envelopes worth up to $1,450 each, along with other freebies. But the race is increasingly expensive, because as these companies attract more users, their models cost more to run. Technical difficulties plagued the launch of Qwen as too many users overloaded the chatbot, and Alibaba had to pause its promos to get Qwen back up and running. Written by Jamie Wilde | | | | | | | | | Photo via Oracle NetSuite | Even the best teams crash when complexity goes unchecked. In 1935, Boeing's revolutionary "Flying Fortress" fell out of the sky because one simple step was missed. The fix wasn't more meetings. It was a checklist. That's the idea behind KPI Checklists, Oracle NetSuite's guide to building measurement systems that executives can trust. Bernie Smith shows how to move from vague goals to clear strategic objectives, indicators and dashboards that help you make sense of the past and feel confident about what is coming. With 50 practical checklists and templates, it's built for leaders who want clarity fast. Because the difference between turbulence and traction is knowing what matters. Don't wing it, download the guide.  | | | | | | | | It's anything but smooth sailing for Norwegian Cruise Line and its new CEO. The company, which has struggled recently to keep up with rivals like Royal Caribbean and Carnival, announced last week that former Subway Restaurants chief executive John Chidsey was taking over as CEO, effective immediately. Stocks fell more than 7% on Friday after the news, and that wasn't the worst of it. On Tuesday, activist investor Elliott Investment Management, which says it now holds a stake of more than 10% in Norwegian Cruise Line, sent a letter to the company's board arguing that directors have failed to fulfill their duties — most notably, selecting the right leadership. CEO Woes "In 2015, the Board appointed a CEO whose tenure was defined by wasteful spending, misguided strategy and a share-price decline of more than 50%," Elliott said in the letter. "The board then saw fit to appoint this CEO's protégé, whose poorly executed strategic pivots and repeated guidance misses drove further underperformance of more than 140% relative to Norwegian's peers." Chidsey was certainly not spared: "Last week, shareholders abruptly received the troubling news that the same board that oversaw all of this value destruction had selected one of its own long-tenured members, who lacks any executive experience in the cruise industry, to be the company's next chief executive." In a statement to The Daily Upside, Norwegian said Elliott's letter was its first feedback to the board on strategy and progress. "We are committed to delivering durable, long-term value creation, which will be led by our recently appointed CEO, John Chidsey," the company added. Its next earnings call is March 2, and Reuters reports that the deadline for new board nominees is March 13. Elliott, which declined to comment beyond its press release and letter, seems to think it can turn this ship around: - The company proposed a variety of changes at Norwegian, including adding board members with relevant experience, reviewing the executive leadership team and developing a new business plan.
- Elliott Partner John Pike and Portfolio Manager Bobby Xu, who signed the letter, said that they see a path for the stock to hit $56 per share, a roughly 159% increase from Friday's close. (The shares surged 12% on Tuesday.)
Headed South: Norwegian isn't the only travel company facing criticism from an activist investor. Starboard Value released a letter Tuesday that it sent to Tripadvisor, calling for a board shakeup and criticizing the site operator's approach to generative AI. Starboard says it now has a 9% stake in Tripadvisor. Written by Mallika Mitra | | | | | | | | | Photo via Fisher Investments | | | | | | Anderson Cooper is leaving 60 Minutes but could be back at CBS before long. On Tuesday, CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed that it is reopening negotiations on a potential sale to Paramount, putting its tie-up with Netflix on hiatus for at least seven days ending February 23 as it awaits Paramount's "best and final offer." Paramount Plus What? In a statement Tuesday, WBD's board said it still unanimously recommends Netflix's offer over Paramount's. Inside the house, pressure is rising somewhat. Last week, activist investor Ancora announced it had acquired a $200 million stake in the roughly $69 billion company, while saying it would vote against the Netflix deal if WBD's board doesn't take another look at Paramount's latest offer. According to Ancora, Netflix's offer leaves WBD shareholders to grapple with two major unknowns: - The first is the value of WBD's cable properties, such as TNT and CNN, which would not be included in the Netflix deal but would be part of a sale to Paramount; in the event of a Netflix deal, the cable properties would likely be bundled up and spun off. Last month, Comcast completed the spinoff of its own cable companies into Versant Media Group, whose shares have already tumbled approximately 35%.
- The second unknown is whether antitrust regulators will even allow Netflix to complete its acquisition. In the same week earlier this month that Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos got grilled by a Senate panel, Paramount CEO David Ellison reportedly had a one-on-one meeting at the White House with President Trump.
House of Cards: WBD's board apparently took Ancora's recommendation to heart. On Tuesday, the board said that Paramount had floated raising its $ 30-per-share all-cash bid to $31. That's after Paramount last week said it would cover the $2.8 billion termination fee WBD would owe Netflix if it walked away now, and that it would throw in a "ticking fee" worth roughly $650 million per quarter in which the deal goes unclosed — a sort of bet against significant regulatory roadblocks. Netflix, meanwhile, retains the ability to match any Paramount offer moving forward, while WBD may not have shareholders vote on either bid until April. Which means that Paramount's next "final" bid could be about as final as the file on your computer titled "Final_FINAL_submission_Part_2_withnotes_v4_USETHISONE(6).PDF". Written by Brian Boyle | | | | | - One Claude After Another: Anthropic launched its second artificial intelligence model in under two weeks Tuesday, and says the cheaper and faster Claude Sonnet 4.6 is better at coding, data processing and performing tasks than previous releases.
- The Insider: ServiceNow's CEO disclosed plans to buy $3 million in shares in what analysts deemed "one of the first notable insider buying signals" in the beleaguered software sector.
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