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Games weren’t the biggest thing on app stores for the first time ever last year

Users spent more in-app on non-game applications than games in 2025.

2/2/26 8:24AM

The mobile app industry has come a long way since early iPhone users would impress their friends by getting their phone out, tilting it at a 45-degree angle near their mouth, and polishing off a virtual pint of frothy beer in seconds on iBeer, an app that reportedly brought its developers $10,000 to $20,000 every day at its peak.

While iBeer may have (understandably) fallen by the wayside in the years since, the business of selling time-consuming content to fill your phone’s home screen and send the temperature of your device soaring has only gotten bigger, with users spending a record $167.4 billion on in-app purchases alone last year, per new Sensor Tower data.

However, according to the same State of Mobile 2026 report, in-app purchases across non-gaming applications actually outweighed those made in games for the first time ever, suggesting that the things many of us use our mobiles for has shifted.

Of course, just like the year before, there are still billions of dollars to be made in mobile games, but worldwide downloads slumped more than 7%, from 54.3 billion in 2024 to 50.4 billion last year, as in-app gaming purchases broadly flatlined. Maybe we are all collectively getting sick of those weird, bad, misleading gaming ads that flood platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

In-app purchases across non-gaming applications surged, conversely, to hit a record $85.6 billion, and — as is becoming a theme for many stories where the amount of cash involved is booming — AI was behind a good chunk of the rise. Indeed, as downloads across generative-AI mobile apps climbed almost 120% last year, so did in-app revenues, with users spending a whopping $5 billion while using apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok.

Jon Keegan9h

FT: Meta considering “tens of billions” in new capital to fund AI

Just days after Google announced a monster $85 billion upsized equity raise, the extremely profitable Meta is seeking to sell “tens of billions of dollars” in stock, according to a new report from the Financial Times.

Meta is planning on spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI capital expenditure this year alone.

Shares dropped more than 5% on the news.

Meta weighs big equity raising after blockbuster Google deal

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Meta is supercharging its subscription businesses

The free-app giant never really cared about recurring revenue. Now, it’s launching paid plans for all sorts of stuff.

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FT: Anthropic staff helping the NSA use Mythos for offensive cyberattacks

Anthropic’s Mythos AI model was deemed too dangerous to release to the public, with the company citing its ability to orchestrate novel cyberattacks.

And that’s just what the National Security Agency is doing, with the help of Anthropic staff embedded at the agency, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Only a small number of companies and US allies have been given access to the advanced model, which means America’s adversaries have not had the chance to shore up their defenses against the AI model’s new offensive capabilities.

The arrangement is especially unusual as the Pentagon has deemed Anthropic’s AI a national security supply chain risk — effectively blacklisting it for defense work — in response to the company’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for any legal application, which could include autonomous killing or mass surveillance. Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the determination.

US National Security Agency using Anthropic’s Mythos for cyber attacks

Rani Molla15h

Longtime Tesla bear JPMorgan upgraded Tesla and raised its price target to $475 from $145

For more than a decade, JPMorgan was Wall Street’s most stubborn Tesla skeptic, anchored by auto analyst Ryan Brinkman’s strict focus on traditional car fundamentals and near-term delivery numbers.

But JPM recently handed coverage of the stock to a new analyst, Rajat Gupta, who is throwing that playbook out the window. In a note Friday, the firm upgraded Tesla to “neutral” from “underweight” and raised its price target 228% to $475 from $145. (The analyst consensus on FactSet is $403.) Instead of focusing on the company’s struggling vehicle business, the new analyst is orienting himself more toward Tesla’s idea of the future, now modeling Tesla’s physical AI and robotaxi fleets all the way out to the year 2040.

Here are the main reasons for the capitulation:

Looking past the car lot: Gupta argues that Tesla “is at the forefront of physical AI, entering uncharted TAMs” and therefore “deserves the benefit of the doubt to be valued on LT earnings potential” rather than near-term speed bumps.
Unmatched vertical integration: Tesla’s control over everything from battery cells to custom silicon gives it a massive moat. JPM notes this starting point advantage is “unmatched at an industrial level scale” and “still somewhat under-appreciated and misunderstood.”
The AWS flywheel effect: Deploying Optimus robots inside its own factories “should not only lower COGS for the base automotive business, but more importantly, help validate the product at an industrial scale.” Gupta called it “a classic flywheel effect, somewhat analogous to AWS and Kiva at AMZN.”

For Tesla bulls who have argued for years that this is an AI company and not a carmaker, JPM’s sudden $3.9 trillion valuation model is the ultimate validation.

Anthropic ponders self-improving AI

Anthropic says Claude already writes 80% of its code. A new post asks what happens when the models can improve themselves — and whether anyone could stop them.

Jon Keegan15h