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For 99% of the world’s population, salary is the main source of wealth since it is their only way of income main. However, the data collected by one of the largest fixed income managers, point out that the weight of salaries in global wealth is at its historic lows, while that of financial capital takes the largest share. This imbalance is not accidental and explains why the economy can show growth while many employees suffer to make ends meet. The disconnection between productivity and wages. A good example of this phenomenon is we see in the data of the Economic Policy Institute Updated to January 2026, between the fourth quarter of 1979 and the third quarter of 2025, productivity in the US increased by 90.2%, while hourly wage compensation only increased by 33.0% during this period. This means that the financial productivity has grown 2.7 times more than salaries, generating a gap that benefits companies, senior executives and shareholders, but not the employees of those same companies. He historical of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis leaves another illustrative example of this phenomenon. Since the late 1970s, the relationship between wages and GDP in the United States has been progressively sinking, except when serious global crises have occurred: in the 2000s with the dotcom crisis, and in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic. That is to say, salaries have been losing weight in the wealth of countries for decades. History of the relationship of salaries with respect to GDP in the US The historical minimum of the salary weight. The share of income from work has gone from representing approximately two-thirds of global GDP in the early 1980s to 52.4% of global GDP today, the rate lowest in the historical series according to the International Labor Organization. According to this organization, if employees received the same proportion of salaries to GDP as in 2004, global salaries would increase by an additional 2.4 trillion. This imbalance is mainly due to the fact that the economy rewards more capital returns than the human effort of work (salaries), with companies focused on obtaining quick returns for shareholders instead of raising payrolls. Increase in productivity and wages The impact of AI on salaries. In recent years, the development of artificial intelligence is beginning to increase this gap by automating tasks. at entry points. Research from the University of Navarra determined that the arrival of ChatGPT (and other LLM models) drove down wages of companies most exposed to AI by up to 4.5% on average, compared to companies less exposed to automation. ​The salary impact was greater among junior workers, that they lost 6.3% in starting salaries and a 4% drop in job offers, while senior workers lost an average of 5.9% in their salary level. Causes behind the turn towards capital. From PIMCO they explain that companies use intangible capital such as software and data (AI, in short), to scale profits without using more labor in the process. That decoupling of the hand work would be reducing the bargaining power of employees, while AI encourages companies to contain payroll expenses to maximize dividends. Since the 1990s, factors such as globalization, loss of bargaining power of unions, and concentration of capital in large firms have eroded the labor portion of income. Tiffany Wilding, an economist at PIMCO, said: “Starting with computers and software, and now adding automation and artificial intelligence, technological tools are easily replacing mid-level and increasingly skilled labor.” In Xataka | We believed that AI was going to retire an entire generation of workers early. The opposite is happening Image | Unsplash (Marcus Locke)

China has given the green light to buy NVIDIA chips. The problem for your companies is that you will closely monitor each operation

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NVIDIA has hundreds of thousands of H200 chips trapped in limbo. It is one of the company’s most powerful chips and the standard of the companies that are training AI. It is preferred for train the modelsand also the weapon with which The United States sought to leave China out of the game. After movements by the two countries, The US finally approved (25% commission through) that NVIDIA could sell the H200 to Chinese companies. China has taken some time, but finally it seems that it will accept the offer reluctantly and with an ace up its sleeve: DeepSeek. The mess. The H200 issue is a soap opera. In the context of the trade and technology warthe United States played one of the best cards they had: preventing one of their most powerful products from reaching Chinese hands. They also hindered European companies like ASML from selling their most advanced machinery for making semiconductors to companies like Huawei or SMIC. China responded, of course. He attacked with rare earth -that control almost exclusively– and has been showing little by little that they can not only create advanced semiconductors on your own (and pushing old technology to the limit), but they are alive and well in the battle for artificial intelligence. Furthermore, they have developed a robotics industry and other aerospace practically out of nowhere, making a vacuum to Western chips, and that has caught the United States on the wrong foot. China makes a move. Seeing that China was advancing and the US was not getting a cent, they moved tab: They opened the door for NVIDIA to sell its H200s to certain Chinese customers. For each sale, the US took 25%, but it seems that it was something that the Chinese Big-Tech wanted to take on because they need, at least currently, that NVIDIA technology. And the GPU company itself increased production expecting two million orders above normal. The problem is that everything moved very quickly. without China, really, having said anything. Because here it is not just a question of whether the United States lets it sell, but whether China wants its companies to buy. In a tense calm that left requests halted and thousands of H200 in limbo, China has finally made a move. According to Reuters, and as we told a few days agothere are companies that will be able to place orders for the H200. There is a “but”. It is not carte blanche for anyone to place an order. According to WSJ, Chinese authorities have indicated that each purchase must be for a use considered “necessary.” That includes advanced research or development in AI. Because two factors come into play here: On the one hand, it seems that there are Chinese companies that are pressuring the Government to let them access the technology. NVIDIA was allowed to sell the H20 to Chinese customers, but if these customers can now buy the H200 – six times more capable – they want to take advantage of it. But China does not want everyone to throw themselves into the arms of NVIDIA because, precisely, they have been building their own semiconductor industry for five years with SMIC and Huawei in the lead. China’s goal is to stop depending on the US, and if everyone starts buying US chips like crazy, they will not advance on the technological roadmap that the country marked a long time ago. That is to say, it seems that Chinese regulators are going to evaluate which companies can or cannot buy the H200 depending on the use they want to give it. It has been reported that, for example, ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent will be able to import 400,000 H200 chips. But there is a twist to all this. deepseek. China’s quintessential artificial intelligence model is one that has turned both NVIDIA and the United States upside down. The question was how it was possible that, without access to the latest technology, DeepSeek could optimize its AI so much. On the one hand, ingenuity to circumvent the CUDA standard. On the other hand, there are those who are clear that DeepSeek has been trained with NVIDIA cards… smuggled. Accusations of smuggling are nothing new in this commercial and technological war, but precisely, and according to Reutersthe company that joins NVIDIA’s massive H200 order along with ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent is… DeepSeek. Officially, and without restrictions, they will be able to access the H200. “We have given China the argument to launch its own industry and, at the same time, we are giving them access to ours again” – Samuel Bresnick Whiplash. I really liked this concept that Wired uses to define American policy in this regard. They are the ones who started the conflict and their position has been pivoting about tariffsbut with more or less lax measures depending on the moment. It seems clear that, now, they are at a point where they have had to think “if China is going to somehow reach the technology, at least we sell it and earn something along the way.” Samuel Bresnick is a researcher at the Georgetown Center for Security and Technology and comments in Wired that the worst thing you can do is “come and go,” noting that “we have given China the argument to launch its own industry and, at the same time, we once again give them access to ours.” Get your batteries. And meanwhile, there’s Jensen Huang. The CEO of NVIDIA has taken a mass bath in recent days in both China and Taiwan, where he has met with some of the companies that move the semiconductor sector. NVIDIA sat at the same table, TSMCFoxconn or Asus, and Huang came out, half joking, half seriouswith one request: you need wafers and RAM. Regarding the purchase of the H200, China is walking on eggshells, and it makes perfect sense. It is at a point where it does not want to be left behind, and to do so it needs its … Read more

The panic of technology companies about running out of chips has broken the RAM market. Manufacturers have said enough

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The RAM market is completely broken. In November of last year we talked about a 300% increasewas the result of the perfect storm caused by AI and data centers. Faced with brutal shortages, large companies are trying to get hold of as much memory as possible, which further destabilizes the market. Now manufacturers are taking matters into their own hands. No hoarders, thank you. In an extensive report published by Nikkei Asiatalk about the big three DRAM manufacturers (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix) implementing stricter rules for their customers in order to prevent them from hoarding memory. The measures are aimed at ensuring that demand is real, that is, that the chips are not going to end up collecting dust in a warehouse “just in case.” Manufacturers are asking for details about who the chips are for, the quantities and what they will be used for. OpenAI’s dirty deal. We go back to October 1, 2025. OpenAI signed an agreement with Samsung and SK Hynix to a potential demand for 900,000 DRAM wafers per month. The figure is equivalent to 40% of all world production, absurd, but what is striking is the “potential.” As they point out multiple users on Xare securing a critical product for data centers that have not yet been built, with money they do not have. Some analysts called this agreement “The dirty DRAM deal”whose hidden objective seemed to point to a rather dirty move: to create a moat by preventing its competitors from accessing critical technology. Open orders. The AI ​​race is not going to stop because chips rise in price and big technology companies have done what they had to do: everything possible to get chips. At the end of last year, Reuters He said that some companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta had even approached Micron with open orders, that is, they were willing to accept all the memory they could supply, without a price cap. A full-fledged preventive hoarding. Compulsive shopping. AI companies are not the only ones that have tried to secure their chips, PC manufacturers such as Asus, MSI, Dell or HP also began to buy RAM compulsively at the end of 2025 for accumulate inventory before what was coming. Manufacturers are aware of overorders and that is why they are now demanding data on the end customer. The winners. While everyone is fighting to get their chips, Samsung is getting rich. It is not only that has tripled its profitsFurthermore, it is the technological more has appreciated in 2025ahead of Alphabet and TSMC. For its part, SK Hynix has doubled its profitsmainly due to the boom in demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), of which it is a key supplier. In Xataka | There is a lack of RAM memories and Micron is going to spend 1.8 billion dollars to produce more. but not for you Image | Unsplashedited

Fewer and fewer teachers want to go on trips with their students. So in Galicia they are entrusting it to companies

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For students it is usually the best moment of the course, but if we talk about teachers, excursions are something else: a extra burden of responsibility and headaches. So much responsibility and so many headaches in fact that there are teachers who directly renounce participating in them. At the end of the day, a trip to the Prado, a few days visiting Barcelona or even a week in Rome is experienced differently if you are a kid willing to burn the night away than a teacher with the mission of taking care of twenty teenagers. For some faculty, this panorama is so demotivating that are turning to companies specialized. The objective: ‘outsource’ school trips. One trip, two ways to live it. Each student is a world. There are those in science and literature, extroverted and shy, responsible and brainless… but what the vast majority agree on is what is the best moment of the course: the excursions. Especially those that culminate ESO or high school, getaways of several days that involve spending nights away from home, leaving your region (maybe even the country) and savoring a dose of freedom that you normally don’t have in your daily life. It sounds exciting… unless you are not the student, but the teacher. Not given away. A few years ago Laura Gómez (Lauri Math Teacher), teacher and tiktoker, published a video which accumulates almost 145,000 likes and 2,000 comments in which he told what it is like to go on a school trip when you have to do it from the other side, that of the teachers who for a few days act as tutors-night watchmen. And its message is curious to say the least: these getaways are usually free for teachers, but even so, despite the opportunity to spend a few days of tourism in another country, many flee from that responsibility as from fire. “We’re going on a free trip” You know what? There are no teachers who want to go on study trips. In fact, many trips have had to be canceled because there were no teachers who wanted to go with them and, of course, if there are no teachers there is no trip,” the teacher reveals. The next question is obvious: Why? Why are there teachers who prefer to continue with the classroom routine rather than spend a few days in Paris, Tenerife, London, Rome… with a group of students? “You sleep between little and none.” The answer Laura’s story is quite simple: where kids see days and days of fun, freedom and more or less supervised revelry, teachers often see something else: “It’s a tremendous responsibility to go abroad with a group of teenagers, each with their father and mother. They get sick, anything happens to them… You sleep little to nothing and on top of that you have to be running around all day from one place to another.” The influencer She is not the only one who has spoken publicly about the issue. In 2024 I did it too through the pages of The Voice of Galicia José Ramón Alonso de la Torre, retired teacher from Vilagarcía de Arousa. In an article on the subject, he explained that it is one thing to accompany students on one-day cultural trips and quite another to go with them on trips of several days, often hundreds of kilometers from their homes. “The teachers back down, as has happened in some Arousa high schools, because they know they are at risk,” recognize. @laurimathteacher Would you go on a study trip?👩🏼‍🏫✌🏼🥵 ♬ original sound – ➗LauriMathTeacher➗ “What are they going to do?” “In the press there are often news stories about teachers legally accused of abandonment and abandonment because a student, while going down a slide into a pool, twisted his arm. Or because another was mugged on Paseo de Palma and had his phone stolen. And what are the poor teachers going to do, prohibit them from bathing, accompany each walker?” he was wondering Alonzo. “No, it is not easy to go on an excursion in front of 50 boys and girls ready to take on the world, especially the world at night.” Alcohol, scares, unforeseen events, nights guarding nightclubs and hotel hallways, run-ins with students from other schools… Seen that way, who would want to shoulder that enormous burden of extra responsibility? Outsourcing trips. So far nothing surprising. What is curious is what I revealed yesterday Vigo Lighthouse in a chronicle that explains how some teachers in the region are refusing to go on trips with their students. Given this scenario and to prevent kids from being left without the experience, there are centers in which the function is being outsourced directly. What does that mean? That trips are celebrated, but with teachers, but with other professionals. “Two years ago we had to call a company to travel with the children because no teacher wanted to go. This year we preferred to keep only the 4th year ESO excursions. In third year we would have to count on the company and we decided to stop doing it,” comment to Lighthouse Malores Villanueva, director of an institute in Vigo. Yours is not the only center that has covered the lack of volunteer teachers by resorting to a specialized company. “Pretty strict rules”. One of these businesses, Divertos, assures that it is not an exceptional practice, especially since the pandemic. “There are years when the same center calls us for several outings and other courses for nothing; and they call us again years later. There are promotions that are more complex than others,” comment to Lighthouse its manager, Marivíc García. The service provided not only relieves teachers of responsibility. It also marks the focus of travel. “We have quite strict rules and although at first they protest, they later get along well. They know that if they don’t comply the consequence is losing the trip,” explains Garcia before citing some guidelines they give to young people, such as not … Read more

Quietly, Big Tech are ceasing to be exclusively technological companies to be something else: energy

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Big technology companies not only compete for AI engineers. Now they also do it by energy profiles. And it is no wonder, because without the electricity that powers mammoth data centers necessary for AI tools to remain operational, the AI ​​race slows down. A bottleneck. AI has become the strategic axis of Big Tech, but its biggest bottleneck is no longer the talent around its systems, but access to energy. Data centers training and running larger and larger models consume massive amounts of electricityand guaranteeing that supply has become a business priority. According to account According to CNBC, with data collected by Workforce.ai, the hiring of energy-related profiles grew by 34% year-on-year in 2024. Numbers. As the media reports, a similar jump also occurred last year, with a level of energy profile hiring 30% above that of 2022, just before the explosion of generative AI after the launch of ChatGPT. The main reason is structural, since data centers represented approximately 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2024, after growing 12% in five years, according to data of the International Energy Agency. Everything indicates that this demand will continue to increase as new AI infrastructure is deployed. What profiles are you looking for?n the Big Tech. According to stands out the middle, Technology companies are looking for much more operational positions: experts in energy purchasing, electricity markets, grid connection and energy strategy. CNBC reports that these positions are directly linked to ensuring real supply, not only to improving the environmental image of companies. Furthermore, not everything is about guaranteeing supply at any cost, but also about ensuring that electricity can be obtained in the most efficient way possible. Who is winning the talent war. Amazon and Microsoft lead in volume of energy signings from 2022, according to point the middle. Amazon has more than 600 additions (including AWS), while Microsoft has more than 570. In the case of the latter, in 2024 signed Carolina Dybeck Happe, former chief financial officer of General Electric, as chief operating officer, a gesture that many interpret as a strategic commitment to integrate energy and management on a large scale. Google, for its part, has accelerated in recent months with more than 300 hires, incorporating profiles from both large energy companies and the academic world. Between the lines. The strategy is not limited to hiring people. Big tech is also buying other companies. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, agreed the acquisition of data center company Intersect for about 4.75 billion dollars. At the same time, they outsource key phases such as the construction of infrastructure, relying on temporary contracts to manage projects, land and works. The clash with the traditional energy sector. The medium too points outthrough data provided by specialized consulting firms, that more and more senior energy infrastructure professionals are considering making the leap into technology, attracted by higher salaries and projects linked to data centers. The problem is that the most in-demand profiles, such as energy strategy or grid connection, were already scarce in the traditional and renewable energy sector. This has led to a tighter and more competitive talent market. Not everything is direct absorption. Some analysts also see opportunities for electricity companies. Travis Miller, energy and utilities analyst at Morningstar, explains to CNBC that the magnitude of the demand makes it unfeasible for Big Tech to do everything on their own. In many cases, they will rely on traditional public service groups to develop infrastructure and operate networks, which can translate into new revenue and employment in the sector. And now what. The border between technology and energy is being diluted in a very interesting way. Meta, Amazon, Google or Microsoft already sign long-term power purchase agreements, even with nuclear projectsand some have requested permits to trade electricity and sell surpluses to the grid. “There are technology companies that are becoming energy companies,” account Daniel Smart, CEO of The Green Recruitment Company, in the middle. Of course, for now, only to feed its own AI. Cover image | Microsoft In Xataka | AI is creating a new paradigm of success: products that everyone uses but have to close due to lack of income

one where we pay 20 dollars a month (if we pay) and another where companies pay up to 200 per employee

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The AI ​​industry is forking into two paths. They are non-binary and actors can be in both at the same time, but it was expected that we would see this branching: Products aimed at the general consumer. ChatGPT wins there and Gemini is growing lately. Tools for companies. Gemini and Copilot from Microsoft stand out more there, but Anthropic is growing a lot thanks to Claude Code. This division also marks something else: who is going to capture the real economic value of AI. Why is it important. Companies pay up to $200 per month per employee for the best model. ChatGPT “domestic” users, one tenth. And in business environments, the difference between the best and the second best matters a lot. At least much more than in domestic environments. Yao Shunyu, who worked at OpenAI and is now at Tencent, sums it up: “If your salary is $200,000 and you have 10 tasks a day, an excellent model does eight or nine. A weaker model does five or six. And when you don’t know what those five or six are, you waste time monitoring it.” according to the newsletter ChinaTalk. The contrast. “If you compare the Today’s ChatGPT with the one from a year agothere’s really no perceptible difference,” Yao points out. “On the other hand, AI-assisted programming has already changed the entire coding industry. “People no longer write code, they talk to their computer in natural language.” Most ordinary people still use ChatGPT as a kind of enhanced search engine. In companies, more intelligence directly means more productivity with a clear economic value. Between the lines. Anthropic has bet everything on this. Claude Code has changed the way developers work. And now just launched Coworkwhich seeks to bring that same idea to office workers, outside of programming. They are not going after occasional users: they want entire teams that depend on AI to work. OpenAI dominates in adoption figures and brand recognition, but it has a problem: many users who pay little on average. Companies are increasingly looking for tools that truly improve productivity. The threat. In the business market, whoever has the best model wins. Companies will always pay for number one if its price is comparable to the rest of the proposals. In consumption, something decent is enough and the price sensitivity is greater. And OpenAI needs a lot of money. Training and operating these models costs a lot. The consumer market has a fairly low profitability ceiling, and that is why they seek to shore it up with advertising revenue and pointing towards those of affiliation. And now what. This year we will see it clearly: OpenAI needs to prove that its enterprise agents are worth the money. Anthropic will continue to refine its position in code and productivity. Google is a little late but has hit the nail on the head with Gemini 3. At the end of the year we will know if OpenAI’s generalist strategy works or if the AI ​​business ends up divided between those who dominate the office and those who dominate the couch. In Xataka | OpenAI fully enters health for a simple reason: ChatGPT is already our front-line doctor (although we don’t want to admit it) Featured image | Anthropic, OpenAI, Xataka

Energy companies are switching from oil to MW. The new mine is the support for data centers

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Gluttonous artificial intelligence and its demanding data centers are reshaping the decarbonization plans. When the world had begun a journey towards renewableswith countries like Chinaand Europeans betting big, and even some US states getting on the traindata centers arrived with needs that were almost impossible to satisfy. At the end of December 2024 we already have that data center consumption had skyrocketedpushing big technology companies to bet so much on renewable as, above all, for immediate access energy such as gas and even coal. Some were even aiming for nuclear to be able to operate. Shortly after, in January 2025, a Reuters report noted that European energy companies, which had embarked on a path of commitment to renewables, were doubling down on oil and gas. Giants like BP and Shell slowed down their investments in clean energy to return to fossil fuel projects. But it’s not all about where data centers extract energy from, but rather who provides them infrastructure. And that, and not so much oil or gas, may be the next energy mine. The new oil mine In an article of Financial Times It is suggested that the fleeting growth of data centers is generating a market that energy companies do not want to miss. As demand for traditional drilling weakens (although it is something that goes by “neighborhoods”), energy sector groups such as Baker Hughes, Halliburton or SLB are taking advantage to pivot to the data center sector. Not building them, not just supplying energy: supporting logistics. Taking advantage of their knowledge of the energy sector, these large companies would be providing equipment such as turbines and power generation systems to those who own data centers, but they also provide generators, batteries, dissipation systems and all the necessary framework to maintain correct energy efficiency. They would also oversee the team. It is, in short, what they already know how to do, but applied to a new sector such as data centers. Because these three examples are not typical oil companies, but technology providers for other companies to extract gas or oil. All three provide services to companies with oil fields, but also supply technology such as gas turbines, compressors or systems. LNG and they were inside sectors such as new energywith carbon capture and storage systems. All of this resonates with the idea that ‘Big Tech’ had when they began to build huge data centers, until they saw that increasingly demanding equipment needed more immediate and stable sources of energy. Data centers = El Dorado It is estimated that US electricity demand will increase by 90 GW -a real nonsense- from now to 2030 only to power the data centers. Traditional electrical grids may not support this load, and it is at that point that these companies that provide energy services They seem like a key entity. Pivoting toward artificial intelligence infrastructure is “key to the evolution of oil and gas,” said Lorenzo Simonelli, CEO of Baker Hughes. And it makes sense when we see that the number of US oil rigs contracted 7% year-over-year in 2025, margins have contracted and demand for drilling services is in interdict. On a business level, it is a masterstroke. Hypothetically speaking, when the new oil crisis arrives and the fall of the market for both crude oil and gas, companies that have pivoted to data centers, going from being service providers for energy companies to being service providers for ‘Big Tech‘, they will not have to take a turn in their strategy because they will already be where the money will be. Because that’s another question: whether the new MW gold for AI will be a lasting business or a passing fever. Image | freepik and Harpagornis In Xataka | The problem with renewables is what to do when there is excess energy. China believes it has the answer with a unique turbine

Their companies know how to sell them better than anyone else.

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Six G1 humanoid robots from Unitree They appeared last week performing perfectly synchronized somersaults on a concert stage, acting as dancers for pop singer Wang Leehom. They were dressed in shiny silver tops and black leather pants, and completed a choreography that included arm movements, kicks and spins before winning over the audience with their acrobatics. The video has ended up going completely viral on social networks, so much so that even Elon Musk he rated it of “impressive” in Humanoid robots created to go viral. Chinese companies specializing in robotics have been turning each demonstration of their humanoid robots into a viral phenomenon for months. Last August they were the first robot Olympics in Beijingwhere the Unitree H1 model broke speed records by completing 1,500 meters in 6 minutes and 34 seconds, reaching 4.78 m/s and surpassing the Boston Dynamics Atlas. Previously, H1 humanoids also appeared on the Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched TV show. Now we see them hogging the stage (We we also know about thatreferring to the last Xataka Awards gala). They know how to sell themselves. The most common thing is to see this type of robots in technical conferences or corporate videos, but in recent years they have also starred in electrifying videos showing their capabilities and, in the process, gaining millions of views. Chinese firms have chosen to turn robotics into mass entertainment, perhaps a strategy to bring them closer to the public and so that they are not strangers when it is time to buy them in the future. The performance At Wang Leehom’s concert it was part of his “Best Place Tour” before 18,000 spectators, a perfect showcase to demonstrate the capacity of these robots and their versatility in all types of scenarios. Figures. Beijing has made humanoid robotics a national priority. Your five-year plan for the industry set in 2021 an annual growth of more than 20%, supported by a state fund of 140 billion dollars for technology startups. This year they aimed to produce more than 10,000 humanoid robots. China also leads in patents: according to Morgan Stanley, submitted 7,705 applications related to humanoid robots in the last five years, compared to 1,561 in the United States and 1,102 in Japan. Cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing are where investment and development is concentrated. Unitree as national flag bearer. The company behind the robots at the Chengdu concert has established itself as a benchmark in the sector in China. Launched in 2024, the G1 measures 1.27 meters, weighs 35 kilos and has between 23 and 43 joints, and can reach a speed of 2 m/s. In August won the gold medal in the 100 meter hurdles at the first World Humanoid Robot Games by completing the race in 33.71 seconds. Its R1 model was recognized by Time magazine as one of the best inventions of 2025. From spectacle to real application there is a distance. “I don’t think anyone has found an application for humanoids that requires several thousand robots per installation,” pointed out in September Melonee Wise, former product manager at Agility Robotics, to IEEE. Technical problems persist: limited energy autonomy, industrial reliability still far from the required 99.99% and practically non-existent commercial applications. Although the predictions from Bank of America Global Research that mentioned that about 18,000 units would be sold in 2025 or that the market will reach $5 trillion by 2050, there are hardly any real commercial deployments beyond highly controlled pilot tests. The power of marketing. Wang Leehom’s website boasted that “the show marked a rare example of robotic dancers in concert, fusing advanced technology with powerful live music.” Many fans praised the performance as one of the most creative moments of the tour, and there was no shortage of comments like those of this userwhich highlighted that “China’s robots are at another level.” And now what. China is investing massively in creating a market that does not yet exist, trusting that artificial intelligence will solve the problems of autonomy, reliability and practical usefulness. And it applies a strategy that has served it well in other sectors: that of finding practical, large-scale applications that justify the investment and having a presence in the market before it even exists. We’ll see where we go. Cover image | CNC GROUP In Xataka | I have asked for water from the first humanoid robot working in Beijing. It’s a weird vending machine.

In Spain there are many graduates. The problem is that they are not the ones that companies need.

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a study on educational quality in Europe has put in black and white one of the keys to what is happening in the labor market in Spain: Graduate rates in Spain have exceeded the European average. However, the data suggests that these graduates have studied the wrong races. The result is a mismatch in the labor market and a inefficient use of talent because an important part of those who have spent years training end up in positions that either do not require that level of education or have nothing to do with the studies they completed. ​Many university students, many vacancies. According to the report ‘Education and Training Monitor‘ Prepared by the European Commission, in the age group of 25 to 34 years, 52.6% of people in Spain have higher education. This places Spain above the EU average, with 44.1%, and the European goal of 45% set for 2030. This is great news since Spain has already exceeded the European goal for graduates, and even so it continues to expand that advantage year after year. The problem is that all these graduates do not respond to what the labor market is demanding. According to Eurostat data By 2024, 35% of higher education graduates aged 20 to 64 are working in jobs for which their level of qualification is not required, compared to an EU average of 21.9%. Spain is at the rate of highest overqualification in all of Europe. What is studied and what is needed. The European Commission emphasizes that this mismatch between the higher education courses being taken in Spain and the demand from companies is structural and that the Spanish economic system is not being able to absorb the volume of graduates it generates. ​The European report describes a low employability of graduates in humanities, social studies and arts, who are more likely to end up in jobs below their educational level or far from the field they studied. In parallel, it is noted that overqualification affects women to a greater extent than men, which aggravates the gender inequalities in qualified employment. On the other hand, the demand for specialists in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), grows much faster than the supply of graduates. In 2024, the number of vacancies per worker in the green and digital sectors will exceed the average by 52% and 212% respectively, showing a growing gap between the skills coming out of the education system and those requested by companies. ​FP is taking off, but it’s not enough. The Vocational Training figures in Spain progress positivelybut they have not yet reached the point of balance between the supply of training and the demand for professionals. According to the study, only 10.1% of adults aged 25 to 64 have a mid-level VET qualification, well below the 34.6% average in the EU. This lower presence of intermediate qualifications translates into worse employment results. The data suggests that the average employment rate in 2024 of recent VET graduates is 68.6%, compared to the 80.0% European average and far from the target of 82%. Connecting education and business improves job placement. The dual vocational training reform It does seem to show signs of a positive impact on job placement. According to data From the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports, 73.8% of mid-level vocational training graduates in dual modality from the 2019-2020 academic year were working four years after finishing, compared to 66.5% of those who completed non-dual vocational training programs. Furthermore, 33.8% of dual vocational training students got a job in the first year after graduating, which confirms that direct contact with the company facilitates the transition to the labor market. In Xataka | Spain has a big problem with the generational change in the labor market: there is a lack of 3.5 million young workers Image | Unsplash (Christian Lendl)

All tech companies are putting AI in all their products. The problem is that nobody wants them

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It’s been a year and a half and it seems like 10 have passed. In May 2024, Microsoft announced the launching Windows Recallan artificial intelligence option that allowed us to remember and recover things we had done on our PC. It seemed like an interesting idea, but soon he was criticized his approach to privacy and security and the company had to delay it and then relaunch it without making too much noise. That was one of those AI features that promised to transform our PC experience, but three years after the launch of ChatGPT, one thing is certain: AI has not meant no revolution. Not at least on the PC, we insist. Microsoft, of course, has not stopped adding more and more AI functions to Windows 11. We have co-pilots and theoretically revolutionary functions to bore, and that obsession with putting AI even in the soup has been demonstrated with the legendary Notepadwhich has gone from being a minimalist app to one that is losing focus. Microsoft’s reasons are legitimate: they have invested a real fortune in AI and they will want to take advantage of it. Surely the intention was good (at least, in part) when it came to offering new ways of working and enjoying our PC. The problem is that good intentions have caused just the opposite of what Microsoft intended. Instead of us wanting to use Windows 11 more and more, is making us want to use it less and less. We have seen it with renewed interest for some Linux distributionsbut also with the appearance of an app that is exclusively dedicated to eradicating Windows 11 any trace of AI functions. AI fatigue The same thing is happening with AI browsers. Comet, Day and Atlas They are two striking proposals for this integration of AI functions, but neither of them seems to have caught on, and Microsoft Edge – which of course has integrated Copilot – has not proposed any change in trend either: the browsers we want to use, at least for the moment, continue to be the traditional ones, without AI. And there is the key. In what We users have not asked for so much AI. That is precisely the great criticism of these industry efforts to boast that their products have AI. Those two magic letters no longer get expectations. What they are starting to get is rejection. Firefox is the latest example. Mozilla has just appointed a new CEO, and in its first public statement it pointed out its intention to transform Firefox into a product in which AI was the central axis. The users of this browser – and I count myself among them – are not at all clear, and the unified response message has been clear: “Firefox does not need AI, but rather listen to its users“. What has happened and is happening with Windows 11 and Firefox shows that we are entering a new stage in which AI no longer excites, but rather fatigues. It’s everywhere: The list is of course much longer, and in many cases there is another added problem: that AI is the excuse to raise prices. Microsoft is here again a notable example with Microsoft 365but we have also seen it in Adobe, which He raised the price to his customers right off the bat because now they could enjoy an AI that they had not asked for. It’s happening everywhere because the promised AI revolution still hasn’t happened. There are, of course, areas in which it has proven to be transformative—programming is the clear case—but in many others that acronym has lost its meaning. The industry’s commitment to making this work is logical: companies have invested hundreds of billions of dollars invested with the idea that this was going to explode… and so far it hasn’t. But they continue to fill everything with AI. And as often happens, that’s the bad thing. It tires you a lot…And if we haven’t asked for it, even more so. In Xataka | Adobe has presented itself as the champion of copyright in the AI ​​era. Now we know that maybe not so much

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