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Snapchat invented the format that dominates the Internet. 15 years later it is still unable to make it profitable

April 16, 2026 by usatoday24

Evan Spiegel this week sent a memo to your employees announcing that Snap is going to lay off about 1,000 people16% of the entire workforce, in addition to canceling 300 vacant positions that had yet to be filled. Snap thus hopes to save more than $500 million in annualized costs starting in the second half of this year, although the cut is expensive in the short term, since it will have to pay between $95 and $130 million in compensation. Nevertheless, the stock rose 7% in response to the layoffs. The markets have been asking for them for a long time. Why is it important. Snap’s is not a “normal” failure story. It’s much more interesting than that. It’s the story of a company that forever changed how we communicate online and yet has failed to build a profitable business on it. In 2025 it lost 460 million dollars, although it is true that in 2024 it lost more and in 2023 even more. He has spent his 15 years of life in that dynamic. It still hasn’t closed a single complete year on a positive note. The context. His paradox begins in 2013, when he launched Stories: photos and videos that lasted 24 hours, published before disappearing. A format that is common today but at that time groundbreaking. A format that freed people from the pressure of permanence, of the trail. In August 2016, Instagram launched exactly the same thing, with the same name, and with much bigger muscle behind it. Within two months, Instagram had 100 million Stories users. It had taken Snapchat four years to reach that number. A year later it had already surpassed Snapchat. Yes, but. The problem was not that they were copied. The problem was that Meta, TikTok and YouTube adopted the format with an advantage that Snap never had: data. Meta and Google know who we are, what we buy, what interests us. Snap knows much less. That’s why their advertising converts worse, and advertisers pay less for it. A vicious circle. The coup de grace was Transparency Tracking AppApple’s privacy policy released in 2021, which sank tracking-based advertising models. Meta also sufferedbut Meta had the scale and ecosystem to absorb the impact. Not Snap, so its stock went from touching $83 to trading today around $6. A drop of more than 90% from its highs, in less than five years. However, Snap has 946 million active monthly users, grows 12% in year-over-year revenue and has one of the youngest audiences on all platforms. The most coveted demographic for fashion and entertainment brands. It has cutting-edge augmented reality technology and also has Snapchat+, your paid subscription, which is growing well. That is the contradiction that a thousand layoffs do not resolve: Cutting costs improves margins, but alone does not truly monetize a platform with almost a billion users when its audience is young and difficult to convert, and its competitors have ten times more resources. There is also an activist fund in the capital, Irenic Capital Management with 2.5%, which has been pushing for months exactly in this direction: cuts. And now what. Spiegel speaks at memo to concentrate investments where monetization already works. That is, give up on markets that are difficult to grow and profitable (Spain has every chance to be one of them) and focus on more powerful ones, presumably in the style of the United States or the United Kingdom. Give up growth in search of sustainability. Snap has been trying to solve an equation that others have solved at their expense for 15 years. These layoffs are bought time to keep trying. Featured image | Shutter Speed In Xataka | Snapchat introduced its own version of ChatGPT in its app. Nothing has gone, nothing good

Amazon Web Services is such a profitable business that its CEO is already thinking about something more ambitious: competing with NVIDIA

April 14, 2026 by usatoday24

Andy Jassy is the CEO of Amazon and an advocate of artificial intelligence to the point that he expects AI to transform the company’s workforce in the coming years. It makes sense that he is the captain of a liner that has turned to the AI business, since before succeeding Bezos, he came from leading Amazon Web Services. And in his last letter annual to shareholders, Jassy leaves several notes that give us clues about the future of the company. It plans to compete against NVIDIA and SpaceX. And they have 200 billion dollars to invest. The photo. The company is going like a rocket. amazon hill 2025 at 717,000 million dollars, exceeding by 12% the 638,000 million of the previous year. Operating income increased by 17% to 80,000 million and, for its part, AWS cloud business it also worked well, achieving 24% year-on-year in the last quarter. They have done so, according to Jassy, without being able to meet the demands of some clients due to the current situation of the data centers, but even so, they are more than happy. Burning pasta. And those good vibes are going to reach Amazon to invest some 200,000 million dollars in the coming months. The CEO has commented that “they are not going to invest that amount in 2026 following a hunch,” also pointing out that they are not going to be conservative in their bets and that what they are looking for is to lead the artificial intelligence business. HE wait that 50,000 of those millions will end up in the pockets of an OpenAI that will need a boost after the NVIDIA “sit-in”he Sora’s closure and Disney’s withdrawal of investment. Those 200 billion will be concentrated on AI infrastructure, a bet on the future that can add pressure to margins in the short term, but from which they expect a lot.or when the business starts operating. For its part, OpenAI is going to invest 100 billion in AWS over the next eight years. The chickens that enter by those that leave, like almost everything in this AI market. business engine. What business? Well… the one with the chips. Amazon is one of the companies (like Goal, tesla or one’s own OpenAI) that buys from NVIDIA, but that also you are developing your own solution. There are three proper names: Graviton, Trainium and Nitro, training and inference chips (depending on the case) whose business is growing at triple digits year-on-year. Specifically Trainium, which is the chip used to train some of the company’s models, can “save tens of billions of dollars a year.” But it’s not just about saving money by having the chip made at home and do not depend on NVIDIA prices and market competition: it is about not depend on NVIDIA itself at all. The NVIDIA Garden. We have already explained on more than one occasion how NVIDIA is the engine of the artificial intelligence business. Not only do they have the hardware that powers the data centers of the main AI players, but they have the money to invest in both established companies and, above all, in the startups that can define the future of the sector. And Jassy aims, directly, to become a hardware rival, one that competes with NVIDIA, AMD and even with the reborn Intel. According to the CEO, if Amazon were to sell its chip on the open market, it could represent a market of about $50 billion annually, more than double its current chip market. It would still be well below some of its rivals, but it could sell its hardware in conjunction with its AWS software. It would be by selling that “complete AI package” where Amazon would be strong against its rivals. Amazon’s Starlink. Wanting to step on the hose of the strong hardware trio is not the only field in which Jassy wants to play. We already know that Bezos, founder of Amazon, has its space businessbut in parallel, the own Amazon is deploying its Kuiper project. It is its own constellation of satellites in low orbit for broadband Internet that aims to be direct competition to SpaceX and Elon Musk’s Starlink. The deployment began in 2025 with a modest 27 satellites, but this 2026 They want to launch another 3,200. In the end, as all mega-companies want, Amazon seeks to be ubiquitous and permeate absolutely every millimeter of the business. Now, although its capacity in AWS is indisputable, competing against NVIDIA is a big deal. Jensen Huang’s company is TSMC’s first customer -the great global factory-, has deployed very aggressively and intelligently in the AI segment, creating a network that is difficult to replicate and, in addition, has ensured itself to be the main customer of Samsung and SK Hynixthe companies leading high bandwidth memory without which AI cannot take off. Image | Amazon (edited) In Xataka | If you think the internet was much better before AI, congratulations: they have created an extension for you

‘Avatar’ is one of the most profitable films in history. And yet Disney is considering killing the saga

April 10, 2026 by usatoday24

James Cameron’s trilogy has generated 6.7 billion dollars at the box office. Despite this, the future of the two remaining sequels is up in the air, Disney is considering making the following films cheaper, and the theme park attraction that was announced with all honors a few months ago may never be built. The numbers. The figures for ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’, the third installment of the franchise, are objectively colossal: 404 million grosses in the domestic market, 1,085 million in the rest of the world, third highest-grossing title of 2025. A success for any current Hollywood franchise, but at this point we are all clear that James Cameron’s saga is not a typical product. The low. The first way of reduce enthusiasm is by comparing the collection with its precedents. The first installment, from 2009, is still the highest grossing film in history, with 2,920 million dollars. The second, ‘The Sense of Water’, is the third with 2,340 million. Compared to those figures, ‘Fire and Ashes’ is no less than a billion short. It remains a good business (350 million, plus 150 in marketing), but It’s not even the highest-grossing movie of 2025since it was beaten by ‘Zootopia 2’, also from Disney, and by ‘Ne Zha 2‘. The Wrap has made an in-depth analysis of the topic and highlights the opinion of Paul Dergarabedian, head of market trends at Comscore. The analyst states that “‘Fire and Ashes’ grossed half that of the first film. And the ticket prices in 2009 were not those of 2025.” In March, during the Saturn Awards, Cameron collected trophies for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Science Fiction Film for the third ‘Avatar’ and recognized that “To be perfectly clear, we have not even made a decision to move forward at this time.” Short and cheap. The Wrap is also the medium that I spoke with insiders from Disney who confirm that internal conversations are being held to make the next deliveries “shorter and cheaper.” The release dates of the fourth and fifth films (December 2029 and December 2031), and the answer to how to reduce costs without extirpating the identity of ‘Avatar’ is not easy to elucidate. Why are they so expensive? Some details of the process that illustrate why “cheaper” can be a complication: for example, the production involves at least two complete shoots: one motion capture with actors and another, mostly digital, to define the staging, the camera movements and all the elements of the computer-generated universe. According to Cameron acknowledged.making the fourth and fifth deliveries together (as he did with the second and third) would mean an investment of around 800 million without changes in the method. More expenses: Costume designer Deborah Scott, Oscar-nominated for her work on the third installment, illustrates the scale of the problem. Each suit is designed, manufactured in the physical world, and then digitally “translated” with the help of animators and technicians. This process is multiplied in each film by hundreds of characters, creatures and environments. Cameron has publicly committed to do not use AI and always support the human work behind the film, which also prevents lowering prices in this way. What has gone wrong? Why hasn’t the third ‘Avatar’ reached the 2 billion of the previous installments? Cameron’s team affirms, according to the same medium, that Disney launched the film in a very similar way to ‘The Sense of Water’, three years earlier, but with more margin: there was more time between the trailers and the premiere, which allowed some expectation to be generated. Added to this are commercial obstacles such as the fact that it is the longest film in the saga (197 minutes) and that there has been a certain lack of merchandising and other parallel actions. It all adds up to making it a film that could have performed better. California über alles. The uncertainty extends beyond the movies: Disney had announced the construction of an ‘Avatar’ themed area at Disney California Adventure, designed to complement the popular Pandora land that has existed since 2017 in Animal Kingdom (Florida). Construction was scheduled to begin in 2026 but the scheduled closure of the ‘Monsters Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue’ attraction, necessary to begin work, has been postponed until 2027. One year late, for now. Disney parks expert Jim Shull told The Wrap that the franchise “as a cultural force is exhausted. No one is demanding to see more. If ‘Avatar 3’ had been a massive hit and people were clamoring for the fourth and fifth installments, that would change the equation. But there’s not much demand.” And he proposes a much more obvious alternative: expanding the ‘Zootopia’ areas, in line with the success of the ‘Zootopia: Hot Pursuit’ attraction at Shanghai Disneyland. In addition, there are logistical issues: the ‘Avatar’ water attraction required a complicated and expensive water treatment plant of its own. In Xataka | China saves ‘Avatar 3’: a good part of its billion in revenue comes from the only market that still goes to the movies

The most profitable action of the AI revolution in Spain is not a software company. It is a construction company

March 2, 2026 by usatoday24

We know Florentino Pérez ample by hire galactics and for his business successes, but a priori we would not easily relate him to the rise of AI. And by not doing so we would make a serious mistake, because the manager managed to see before anyone else that this was a huge opportunity… and he is taking advantage of it almost without us realizing it. what has happened. ACS is a construction company that doesn’t seem particularly fascinating. You lay bricks, asphalt and cement, but in 2025 the data tells a fascinating story. The company obtained a net profit of 950 million euros, 15% more than the previous year, and the engine of that growth was its American subsidiary, Turnerwhose contribution to the group’s results grew by 66.6% to 549 million euros. Turner doesn’t build flats or highways. Build data centers. And therein lies the crux of the matter. AI needs big construction companies. The transformation has not happened all at once. ACS has been betting on this niche for years with a simple but powerful thesis: AI requires enormous amounts of hardware, and that hardware needs equally huge buildings with cooling, energy and security. And ACS is dedicated to precisely that: to build large buildings. In Xataka Amazon is building an empire in Aragon: it has just paid 1.5 million to expand the electrical network to its fifth data center Florentino triumphs in the US. Turner arrived earlier and stronger. In 2025, ACS won several large-scale data center contracts, including the construction of a 902-megawatt center in Wisconsin as part of the Stargate program, and a stake in the $10 billion, one-megawatt Meta campus in Indiana. Those are conventional projects. They are cities whose inhabitants are servants for this new era of AI. Go for it all. As they point out in five daysdata centers generated more than 9 billion euros in sales during 2025, and ACS has already delivered more than 9 GW of capacity all over the world. That figure is extraordinary, especially considering that in all of Spain the installed capacity barely reaches 7 GW. The Spanish company that talks the least about AI has been silently one of its great beneficiaries for years. Very much in the style of Florentino Pérez, who usually maintains a relatively low profile and succeeds without making too much noise. Stocks on the rise. The market took a while to see it, but it has reacted forcefully. ACS shares have soared 115% in the last twelve months. Today they are close to 110 euros and mark historical highs while the construction sector advances (“only”) 20%. Group sales they reached 49,848 million euros, with the US and Canada contributing 63% of the total. ACS is in practice more of a North American technological infrastructure company than a Spanish construction company. It is listed on the Ibex and is chaired by one of the great football personalities, yes, but its current driving force is not here, but in the US and in the AI fever. Build and Own. ACS is not limited to executing other people’s contracts: it also wants to be the owner of what it builds. In January 2026, the company completed an alliance with Global Infrastructure Partners, BlackRock subsidiaryto create a 50/50 joint venture to develop a global data center platform with an initial capacity of 1.7 GW. Already before had bought Dornanan Irish engineering company specialized in this type of infrastructure, for 436 million euros. ACS doesn’t just want to build AI data centers: it wants to own a piece of that infrastructure. The dollar as a great risk. One of the big problems with this project is the US currency. With more than 60% of its income in North America, each fall of the dollar against the euro is a setback for the Spanish multinational. The devaluation of the dollar is already greater than 10% after the last twelve months, and that has prevented Turner’s growth from being even greater. According to Renta 4 analysts, the “currency effect” subtracted more than five percentage points from the growth of net profit. And investors warn. Analysts themselves consider that the AI market has already discounted a good part of future growth. At Bloomberg, the consensus is to maintain the stock with an average target price of 88 euros, which would imply a fall of 20% compared to current levels. This is what usually happens with good economic stories: when everyone knows them, they are no longer an opportunity. But at ACS they are optimistic. Although experts are cautious, at ACS they expect that spending on infrastructure quadruples from now to 2034. In fact, they expect that the benefits of 2026 will go even further than those of 2025 and exceed 1,000 million euros. If it achieves this, Florentino’s company will have completed one of the quietest and most profitable industrial transformations in the recent history of our country. {“videoId”:”x86aas4″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”60% of the INTERNET passes through HERE: This is the LARGEST Data Processing Center in SPAIN”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”266″} Turner is ahead. According to Data Center MagazineTurner accumulated a backlog – a portfolio of confirmed orders – of $39 billion as of August 2025. It is the dominant construction company in this segment globally, although of course it has direct competitors such as DPR Construction, Holder, Skanska or AECOM. However, none have achieved the same concentration of contracts with the hyperscalers (Meta, Amazon and Microsoft). Turner has been building its reputation as a builder of this type of facility for more than a decade, and it is very difficult to replicate that advantage quickly. The irony of ACS and Spain. There is a geographical paradox in this success story: Spain and Europe have years debating on digital sovereignty, technological dependence and the need to build own infrastructure for not to be left out of the AI revolution. While this debate is taking place, the Spanish company that is most building this infrastructure is doing so almost exclusively outside of Spain. As … Read more

that working more hours is profitable

February 21, 2026 by usatoday24

Germany gained a reputation for being one of the most efficient labor markets with very high productivity. However, the successive crises of recent years they have shown their seams exposing their weaknesses. The Government of Friedrich Merz wants to change the rules so that people are compensated for working more hours and stop depending on social assistance. Today, many Germans prefer to have a shorter working day, because if they work morethey lose benefits and end up earning the same or less. Work more to earn less. In Germany, if someone with a low income receives a social benefit and accepts more hours of work, the authorities subtract that extra amount from their support salary. For example, someone who collects a subsidy (a Minimum Vital Income, for example), accepts a minijob (a part-time job of up to 600 euros per month that does not contribute to Social Security), the worker is left in a situation similar to the one he would have if he only collected the benefit without working. This discourages the effort to get a full-time job, because the net money at the end of the month barely changes or even goes down. The commission of experts of the Ministry of Labor explains this phenomenon in his latest reportand proposes reducing the impact of income on aid so that working more always pays off financially. Chancellor Merz was pronounced regarding the content of this report highlighting that “this report is the basis for all the additional reforms that we will carry out together in the coming years.” Objective: promote full-time work. The Government proposes several concrete ideas to promote full-time work and reduce the negative impact of mini-jobs, which do not generate sufficient contributions for pensions or insurance and hinder the full-time job creation. One of the proposals is to eliminate the exemptions for this type of precarious employment and raise those for jobs close to full-time to avoid “erroneous incentives.” “We want work to be worth it,” stood out Bärbel Bas, Federal Minister of Labor. Without justified reason, there is no part-time work. The conservatives of the CDU, party of Chancellor Merz, they propose reduce the cases in which companies must accept requests for reduction of working hours. Currently, any employee with more than six months’ seniority in a company with more than 15 workers can request reduced working hours without giving any reason and the company must accept it as long as there are no operational reasons that prevent it. It is what has been called “lifestyle” reduction“. The Government raises the possibility of limiting this reduction only to justifiable cases, such as childcare or training, eliminating free use that slows down productivity. The challenge of family conciliation. According to data According to the Federal Statistical Office and Eurostat, Germany has one of the shortest working hours in Europe and one of the highest rates of part time employment. In 2024, 29% of the active population worked like this, but among womenthis day model reaches 50.3%, compared to 13.4% of men. That is to say, although many mothers would like to work full-time, the lack of daycare or support to care for children forces them to choose mini-jobs of about 18 hours a week on average. This problem aggravates the labor shortage qualified, because it leaves almost half of employed women out of the full-time labor market. The reform aims to facilitate conciliation with more flexibility, but without reducing the pressure for more and more employees to go to work full time. In Xataka | Germany believes it has found the most German possible solution to its productivity problems: work more Image | Unsplash (Maheshkumar Painam, Spencer Davis)

It is proof that “buying to rent” in Spain is today very profitable

February 19, 2026 by usatoday24

For years, renting in Spain represented more than just a quick, flexible and (relatively) commitment-free way to find housing. It was also the springboard for those who wanted to take the leap and become owners of their own home, the ‘anteroom’ through which one passed while gathering the stability and sufficient level of savings to buy an apartment. Not anymore. In the crazy market of 2026 rent has become a kind of limbo from which many families are unable to leavetrapped in an apparent contradiction: renting is much more expensive than getting a mortgage, but also more ‘accessible’. And that makes buying to rent increasingly attractive. What has happened? That the roles that until not so long ago seemed established in the Spanish real estate market are becoming blurred. We mentioned it before. For a long time, renting was more than just a quick and flexible way to find housing. It also served as a springboard for those who wanted to become owners. You rented, you saved and (after visiting the bank) you bought. The problem is that after price escalation of recent years and the deep imbalance between supply and demand, right now renting is much more expensive than mortgage. And there are signs that suggest that gap it is becoming entrenchedmaking it increasingly difficult for those who now live as tenants to take the leap, sign a loan and become owners of their own homes. CCAA Mortgage installment (4th Q 2025) Vari. Quarterly % Salary fee/cost Andalusia €709.5 -1.2% 34.6% Aragon €603.4 -7.6% 27% Asturias €632.3 +10.7% 27.9% Balearics €1,298.3 -7.8% 55% Canary Islands €740.8 +8.1% 38.6% Cantabria €660.3 +5.4% 31.5% Castile-La Mancha €554.8 +0.8% 26.9% Castile and León €540.9 +1.3% 25.7% Catalonia €866.5 +1.4% 34.1% Valencian C. €647.2 +4.3% 30.6% Estremadura €452.5 +2.2% 23.4% Galicia €635.7 +5% 30.6% Madrid €1,250.3 +2.7% 43.7% Murcia Region €504.4 -2.2% 24.8% Navarre €701.8 -0.4% 28% the Basque Country €838.4 +3% 31.8% Rioja €523.1 +1.8% 24.2% SPAIN €796.6 +1.3% 33.8% What does the data say? It is not easy to take a general ‘photograph’ of what is happening in Spain because the real estate market varies greatly from one region to another. Even between nearby cities. All in all, there are some interesting clues. In 2018 it was already possible to find ‘top’ areas in which rents exceeded mortgage payments. Today that is the general trend in most of the country. In 2022 an iAhorro study estimated that the monthly cost of a mortgage loan was 394 euros less than that of renting a home. In the middle of last year the same entity published another report which already placed this gap at €430, the difference between the average of rents (1,153) and loans (722). Those responsible for the study they warned at that time that the burdens of those who live on rent and those who do so with mortgages were following opposite directions. Tenants suffered the consequences of a broken market in which prices do not stop growing. In the second case (that of bank loans), iAhorro detected a decrease in payments, favored by the rate drop. Are there more current indicators? Yes. The SER has just published a new comparison which shows that, with ups and downs, that gap remains unchanged. According to the data it manages, the average cost of a mortgage was €796 per month at the end of 2025, while that of rent is around €1,184. That is, the gap between the two is around 400 euros. If we take as a reference the average for all of 2025 for mortgages (€769), the difference is even greater, €415. What does that mean? That on average people who live in a home they own and pay a mortgage to the bank spend about €4,800 less per year (12 monthly payments) than those who live in rented homes. The difference is even greater in highly stressed markets, such as the Balearic Islands or Catalonia. CCAA Average Rental Price 2025 Balearic Islands €1,643 Madrid €1,584 Catalonia €1,439 the Basque Country €1.1331 Canary Islands €1,113 Valencian C. €1,033 Navarre €1,028 Andalusia €933 Cantabria €811 Asturias €789 Aragon €778 Murcia €775 Galicia €766 Castile and León €734 Rioja €730 Castile-La Mancha €707 Estremadura €582 Spain €1,184 Where do the figures come from? The credit information is provided by the College of Registrars, which in its latest real estate statistics provides data on mortgage payments for the last quarter of 2025. What do your tables show? That at the end of last year the monthly payment in Spain stood at 796.6 euros, 1.3% more than the previous quarter. That is the average indicator at the state level, but things change when we analyze each region of Spain. The cheapest is Murcia, where the fee barely exceeds 500 euros. The most expensive are, by far, the Balearic Islands (1,298.3 euros) and Madrid (1,250.3). Lease data is based on Insurance rental observatorywhich indicates that in 2025 the average house price stood at €1,184. Once again, this is a state indicator that hides deep differences between autonomous communities. For example, the 1,643 euros paid on average by tenants in the Balearic Islands, 1,584 by those from Madrid or 1,439 by Catalans have little to do with the 707 in Castilla-La Mancha or 582 in Extremadura. Why this gap? Because although statistics show that both mortgages and rentals have become more expensive in the last year, the latter have done so more quickly. According to the College of Registrars, credit fees have increased 4.2%. In the case of income, Rental Insurance estimates an increase of almost 6%although there are other reports (this one from Idealista) which ensure that the interannual variation has been greater and exceeds 8%. The result is that tenants are forced to spend more time each time most of your income to housing, surpassing even 40%far above what is recommended. Why don’t they mortgage themselves? Because although right now it is more convenient to pay a bank than a landlord, not everyone … Read more

‘Baby Shark’ is the most successful song in YouTube history. It is also the least profitable of all

November 21, 2025 by usatoday24

It has already gone somewhat out of fashion, at least in terms of omnipresence at children’s parties, birthdays and meetings with children, but in those transition years between the birth of YouTube and the current flood of children’s content generated by AIs and insane algorithms on the platform, ‘Baby Shark‘It was a monumental success. One that, however, did not make its creators millionaires, unlike what many of us came to believe. Baby Shark, the legend. The infectious original song, since its publication on YouTube in June 2016, has accumulated an average of more than 4.7 million daily views. Now it’s at 16.4 billion views. Success transcends borders: available in 25 different languages, the United States leads as the main market in number of views, while Brazil holds the record in number of “likes.” In 2020, it dethroned ‘Despacito’ as the most viewed content on YouTube. And the distance continues to grow: ‘Despacito’ remains at 8.86 billion views, and ‘Baby Shark’ already doubles it. As The Wall Street Journal saysto get an idea of the dimensions of the achievement: the amount is approximately equivalent to the sum of Taylor Swift’s ten most popular music videos on the platform. There is no money. Despite the records, Pinkfong, the South Korean company that created the song, barely generated $67 million in 2024. The reason: child privacy restrictions drastically limit its advertising monetization. In September 2019, Google agreed to pay 170 million dollars to resolve accusations of systematic violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The US Federal Trade Commission determined that the platform had collected cookies and IP addresses from children under 13 years of age to serve you personalized advertisingwithout obtaining parental consent. The sanction (136 million for the FTC, 34 million for the State of New York) represented the largest fine imposed until then for violations of this type. The investigation revealed that YouTube advertised itself among toy brands such as Mattel and Hasbro as a leader in reaching children ages 6 to 11. Changes for Baby Shark. This fine led to YouTube banning personalized advertising in “Made for Kids” content as of January 2020. Additionally, it disabled features such as comments, subscription notifications, playlists, and live chat. The economic impact was notable: Children’s content creators reduced their production by 18% and views fell by 20%. Profits plummeted between 60% and 90% compared to content with personalized advertising. Others affected. Other big names in children’s entertainment also saw stars with YouTube’s decision. Cocomelonwhich has two of the ten videos confirmed significant revenue losses after the removal of personalized advertising. Chris Williams, co-founder of pocket.watch (a digital studio specialized in children’s content), said that the main channels in the sector, such as the Indian ChuChu TV, had experienced drops between 50% and 60% in their advertising revenue since January 2020. To survive. Faced with monetization restrictions, Pinkfong has built a diversified business model where YouTube advertising represents only a fraction of its revenue. According to data from the first half of 202568% of its sales now come from content distribution (YouTube, but also Netflix and live shows), while merchandising contributes 15%, licensing 10%, and the remaining segment corresponds to video games and other digital products. This allowed the company to achieve a profit of approximately 13 million dollars in 2024 on total revenues of 67 million. Of course, its CEO has already spoken of integrating artificial intelligence and data analysis in content creation. No more viral bombs. In Xataka | Baby Shark (doo doo doo doo doo doo): when a children’s song also sweeps the stock market

Disney’s most profitable business for years has been amusement parks. And Netflix is going to follow in their footsteps

November 18, 2025 by usatoday24

In a turn that will not be too surprising to those who closely follow the finances of entertainment giants like Disney, Netflix has made the leap to the physical world. Last Wednesday, the platform inaugurated its first permanent entertainment center in King of Prussia, a town located 25 kilometers from Philadelphia. A real dive into Netflix products that makes it clear that there are no authors or stars here, but a single corporation with things very clear. What does it consist of? Netflix House is a two-story complex with a surface area equivalent to a football stadium and that allows visitors to tour replicas of scenes from series such as ‘Wednesday‘, ‘The squid game‘ either ‘Stranger Things‘. For example, there is a replica of the room that Wednesday shares with Enid at Nevermore Academy, where visitors solve a murder with Thing through their cell phones, or a escape room based on ‘One Piece’. There is also a nine-hole mini golf course with automatic ball tracking technology, whose courses are themed to series such as ‘Bridgerton’ or ‘The Squid Game’. Finally, there are virtual reality rooms. As a culmination, a restaurant with dishes inspired by the series, and the TUDUM theater, with 229 seats for screenings. The company already plans to open a second headquarters in Dallas on December 11 and a third in Las Vegas in 2027. Admission is free, although the experiences have a cost: from $15 for a game of mini golf to $39 for the main immersive attractions. On the go. The flexibility of the model was demonstrated before the inauguration. The success of ‘The K-pop Warriors’ It caught those responsible for the installation by surprise, but its presence was incorporated into the venue on the fly with life-size figures of its protagonists and merchandising exclusive. And of course, more dedicated content is promised in the coming months. It is one of the strong points of the project: that although there is always the presence of timeless hits such as ‘The Paper House’ or ‘The Squid Game’, last-minute audience bombshells can be incorporated to make it an experience that breathes a certain life of its own. British roots. This concept that Netflix exploits does not come from the United States, but from the United Kingdom: for example, Fabien Riggall founded Secret Cinema in 2007 with the idea of making your childhood wish come true of “living inside a movie.” Its first event brought together 400 people in an abandoned railway tunnel to screen a film whose title was kept secret until the last moment, with stages and actors decorated to give the atmosphere. Since then, the company has raised over £130,000 for charitieswith increasingly spectacular and complex installations. A few years before, in 2000, Punchdrunk already existed, immersive theater collective where the public was not limited to passively observing the work, but went on a tour of spaces where the action took place. London has ended up consolidating itself as global epicenter of these interactive experiences. Like a virus. Of course, this idea did not come from Netflix: its rivals have been operating comparable facilities for decades. Disney is the clearest example given its long experience in amusement parkswill allocate 60,000 million dollars to its experiences division over the next decade. Universal invested 7 billion in its recently inaugurated Epic Universe, based on franchises such as Harry Potter or Super Mario. Let us remember that Disney’s parks division contributes 70% of the profits of the company. Of course, be careful with the powerful comparative advantage of the Netflix proposal: entry to Netflix House is free. It’s just the beginning. This is not an isolated experiment or an extra next to Netflix’s main business: the platform’s decision to stop communicating its number of subscribers should give us a clue about how they have peaked in certain aspects, and need to continue expanding their reach. Netflix has reached agreements with cinema chains in the United States and sporting events have become core part of its offer. He has already made it clear that the plan is to open up to 25 of these Netflix Houses around the world and to continue releasing plays like ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow‘. We are going to continue hearing about Netflix for a long time. Header | Netflix In Xataka | The chaos of streaming is causing a phenomenon that we thought was in recession: downloads are increasing

in being profitable

November 11, 2025 by usatoday24

The battle to lead the artificial intelligence sector has many frontsand among its greatest exponents are the startups OpenAI and Anthropic. While the first grabs headlines with ChatGPT and continues to expand its product ecosystem, its rival Anthropic has chosen a different path around its chatbot Claudeone that seems to be leaving him with greater profitability. AND the numbers show that this strategy could prove him right. Figures. According to documents to which The Wall Street Journal has had access, Anthropic plans to reach break-even in 2028, the year in which the company would begin to be profitable. OpenAI, for its part, He does not expect to achieve it until 2030and for that year projects operating losses of about $74 billion, roughly three-quarters of its revenue. Two opposing philosophies. There is a clear strategic difference. OpenAI is betting on massive investment in infrastructure: data centers, chips and reserve computing capacity. In fact, Sam Altman, its CEO, has already announced spending commitments of about 1.4 trillion dollars for the next eight years. Their goal is to turn OpenAI into a multibillion-dollar tech giant, even if that means burning through cash at a breakneck pace for years. Anthropic, founded by Dario Amodei after leaving OpenAI, has opted for a more conservative approach. The company is focusing its efforts on enterprise customers, which They represent 80% of your incomeand has all this time avoided entering into higher cost areas such as image and video generation, which require exponentially greater computing capacity. Efficiency. Just like affirms WSJ, this year, both companies have burned money in similar proportions: OpenAI will spend 9 billion after generating 13 billion in sales, while Anthropic will burn close to 3 billion with revenues of 4.2 billion. In both cases, around 70% of revenue evaporates into costs. But starting in 2026, everything indicates that the trajectories would begin to diverge. Anthropic projects reduce its spending rate to just 9% of its income in 2027, while OpenAI will remain at 57%. The difference is abysmal. The Claude Factor. The Anthropic chatbot has found a gap especially promising among developers and technical teams, thanks to its capabilities in programming and analysis. That they have specialized in this has allowed them to build a solid base of paying customers without needing to compete directly on all the fronts that OpenAI is opening up. Altman’s risk. OpenAI’s bet is risky but consistent with Altman’s personality and his vision of setting the pace of the AI revolution. Recently, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar declared that the company could break even if it wanted to, highlighting the growth of its corporate business. However, the current strategy requires constant funding rounds and could falter if the market cools or investors lose patience. Asymmetrical valuations. Despite their different approaches, the market continues to value OpenAI very highly: 500 billion dollars compared to Anthropic’s 183 billion. Almost all the big investors in Silicon Valley have stakes in one or the other, hoping that both will star in historic IPOs. Cover image | Anthropic and OpenAI In Xataka | DeepSeek has broken its silence after months without appearing: its chief researcher has warned about the impact of AI on employment

The largest Primark store in Spain is a money-making machine. It is so profitable that even Amancio Ortega makes money with it

October 30, 2025 by usatoday24

The Primark flagship store on Madrid’s Gran Vía is not only a place to buy cheap clothes, but it has become a monument in the city, both for its size and for the historic building that houses it. The flagship store of the Irish clothing brand has just completed its tenth anniversary active and leaves us with some really interesting figures and data. One of the most curious facts is who he is. really your home. It’s almost a cosmic joke. A historical and popular monument. According to data Provided by the brand itself, the Primark store on Gran Vía has a total area of 12,500 square meters, making it the largest of the group in Spain and possibly one of the largest in the world. With more than five million visitors a year, it is one of the most visited commercial spaces in Spain and a key point of Madrid commerce. It is located in the Paris Building, an emblematic building designed in 1924, notable not only for its architecture, but for its artistic decoration, represented by its majestic imperial staircase and its impressive glass dome. On their roofs it rages an epic battle between figures from Greek mythology: Diana the Huntress observes from the building opposite the fight to the death between the Phoenix sent by Zeus to punish Endymion, Diana’s lover. He testimony of that fight It is reflected in the form of two lost arrows of Diana, which from the sidewalk welcome visitors at the main entrance of the store. This combination of history, architecture and grandeur makes the store an authentic “monument” on Madrid’s Gran Vía. Official data and operating figures. According to the study data carried out by the consulting firm AFI on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the storearound 1,000 people of 28 nationalities work there, generating 500 indirect jobs through suppliers and additional services. At an economic level, the store contributed 83 million euros in 2024 to the economy as a whole, of which 42 million euros corresponded to taxes and social contributions. To understand the economic dimension of this economic mastodon, it is enough to say that Primark’s enormous space contributes more than 10 million euros annually to the local Gross Domestic Product through its operations alone. The “unofficial data.” Jaime PlaCEO of SUOP, has started a series of videos in the TikTok profile of the teleco, which details data and figures of emblematic buildings such as the Bernabéu, the Madrid airport or, of course, the Primark megastore. Between data and estimates from the video that the businessman dedicates to this location, it is noted that the salaries of the employees who work in the store amount to approximately 2 million euros, while cleaning, security and insurance services represent a monthly expense of 100,000 euros. Added to this are 20,000 euros per month in electricity and water supplies. All this, together with the merchandise on display on its shelves adds up to an approximate cost of 11.7 million per month. The “cosmic joke”: rent. According to the data provided by Pla, among these monthly expenses, 1.8 million euros are allocated to pay the rent for the building. This point is especially striking because the building where the store is located is owned by Amancio Ortega. It is ironic that the founder from Inditex, is collecting rent of the most important store of its main rival in the sector of retail textile. Amancio Ortega, through Pontegadea, bought the Paris Building to Drago Real Estate Partners in 2015, just before the store opened to the public. It is not known exactly how much Pontegadea paid for him, but the starting price of the operation was 400 million euros. Pontegadea: the “premium” landlord. Amancio Ortega founded Pontegadea with the intention of turning into profitable investments the dividends that its founder receives each year for 59.294% of Inditex shares. with those billionaire annual dividendsPontegadea has become Amancio Ortega’s second empire Thanks to your strategic real estate investmentsOrtega has become in the home from companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Spotify and, as if it were a cosmic joke, also from Primark, charging a millionaire rent to the main rival of the company that made him a millionaire. In Xataka | In his efforts to diversify investments, Amancio Ortega takes a new twist: becoming a port authority Image | Primark, GTRES

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