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by Vista Partners LLC December 4, 2025

Insulin Pump Innovation: How Beta Bionics and Modular Medical Plan to Win the Diabetes Tech Race -( $BBNX $MODD )

Beta Bionics’ (BBNX) latest quarter reads like a reminder that in diabetes tech, algorithms can move revenue almost as quickly as they move insulin, while upstart Modular Medical (MODD) is quietly assembling a patch-pump beachhead a few exits earlier on the growth curve. One is already fine‑tuning a commercial bionic pancreas; the other is racing to make sure the ~$3 Billion “almost‑pumpers” market finally have a device that doesn’t require an engineering degree or a private equity stipend.

Beta Bionics steps on the gas

Beta Bionics turned in a robust third quarter, with revenue jumping as the iLet Bionic Pancreas rollout continued to scale and drove a sizable chunk of sales growth. The company reported thousands of new patient starts and a rapidly expanding installed base, enough to boost confidence and support raised full‑year guidance, even as profitability lagged the top‑line fireworks.

Behind the numbers sits the iLet, billed as the first FDA‑cleared insulin delivery system that autonomously calculates every dose using adaptive closed‑loop algorithms tied to continuous glucose monitoring. In practical terms, that means Beta Bionics is selling relief from carb counting and micromanagement—an attractive pitch in a market where mental bandwidth is as scarce as reimbursement dollars.

From lab vision to installed base

A decade ago, the iLet concept lived mostly in academic papers and conference posters; today it is a commercial system with tens of thousands of users and real‑world data to match. The company positions itself as a mission‑driven public benefit corporation, an origin story rooted in parents and patients that conveniently doubles as a moat when bidding for clinician mindshare.

Recent regulatory tweaks have been more evolutionary than revolutionary, including a Special 510(k) clearance that smoothed cartridge changes and pared back redundant low‑glucose alerts—small quality‑of‑life improvements that matter when devices are on 24/7. At the same time, Beta Bionics completed a glucagon pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic study in Canada and is planning a bihormonal feasibility trial in New Zealand, signaling that dual‑hormone automation remains part of the long‑term roadmap.

Modular Medical lines up its shot

While Beta Bionics optimizes autonomy, San Diego–based Modular Medical (MODD) is going after a different friction point: people with diabetes who would like a pump, but not an ecosystem. Its first‑generation MODD1 patch pump already has FDA clearance, and the company has now validated its production line and submitted its next‑generation Pivot tubeless patch pump for 510(k) review.

Pivot is designed as a two‑part, removable, 3‑milliliter patch pump that targets adults who want simplicity—wear it, take it off for a shower or a workout, and bolus without juggling a separate controller, while still retaining the data and connectivity expected of a modern electronic pump. Modular Medical has also secured Institutional Review Board approval to run an in‑house feasibility study using saline, an incremental but important step toward demonstrating extended wear and reliability before broad commercialization.

Different roads, same destination

The two companies are not exactly direct competitors so much as co‑authors of the same macro story: automated and wearable insulin delivery is carving out ever more of the $3‑plus billion patch‑pump and broader diabetes technology market. Beta Bionics is leaning into fully automated dose decisions and sophisticated algorithms for people ready to hand over the steering wheel, while Modular Medical is building a lower‑complexity, potentially lower‑cost tubeless patch pump for those still easing onto the on‑ramp.

If regulators cooperate, Modular Medical expects to be launch‑ready for Pivot in early 2026, just as Beta Bionics is broadening its installed base and advancing toward bihormonal capabilities—setting up a landscape where payers, clinicians, and patients will have to choose their flavor of “hands‑off” diabetes care. For investors, it is an industry where both fully autonomous bionic pancreases and minimalist patch pumps can win, provided they can convert clinical nuance into something Wall Street understands best: recurring revenue, subscription‑like supply sales, and a user base that would rather not go back to injections.

Modular Medical CEO Presenting at RSVP-Only Tribe Public CEO Dinner Event, Tuesday, Dec. 9 in Atlanta (Buckhead) – Seating Available..

Join an evening of candid diabetes innovation talk, great food, and high‑impact community building in Atlanta on Tuesday, December 9, from 6pm–8pm at The Capital Grille – Buckhead (private room), 255 East Paces Ferry Rd., 8th Floor, Atlanta, GA 30305. Tribe Public is hosting a corporate‑sponsored CEO Presentation and Q&A Dinner featuring James (“Jeb”) Besser, CEO of Modular Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ: MODD), to discuss “Pivot Patch Pump: Modular Medical’s Bid To Capture the $3B ‘Almost Pumper’ Diabetes Market.”

Seats are limited; if you would like to attend—or bring a friend, colleague, or family member with an interest in diabetes care innovation or medtech investing—please RSVP by emailing Events@TribePublic.com, and the team will do their best to accommodate. For more on Modular Medical, visit modular-medical.com, and to learn about future Tribe events or add to the “Wish List,” visit www.TribePublic.com.

About Tribe Public events

Tribe Public’s RSVP‑only, corporate‑sponsored CEO events are designed to give family offices, portfolio managers, accredited investors, business owners, and media direct access to company leadership in an intimate, community‑building setting over a complimentary dinner. These events are curated from the Tribe “Wish List” process, ensuring discussions focus on companies and themes investors and consumers have specifically requested

The Sources…

by Vista Partners LLC December 4, 2025

iRobot Stock Explodes Higher as Traders Bet on New U.S. Robotics Agenda & Shorts Get Squeezed -( $AMZN $IRBT )

iRobot (IRBT, $3.39, +73.85%) ripped higher today reportedly on a speculative macro catalyst: reports that the Trump administration is preparing an executive order and broader policy push to supercharge the U.S. robotics industry, which sparked a violent short-covering and momentum move in beaten-down robotics names.

Policy buzz around robotics

News outlets reported that the White House is considering sweeping initiatives and a potential executive order aimed at accelerating domestic robotics development, including meetings between Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and robotics executives. This headline flow triggered broad buying across small-cap robotics plays such as iRobot and Richtech Robotics as traders bet on future subsidies, contracts, or regulatory tailwinds for the space.

Short squeeze and penny-stock dynamics

IRBT has been heavily shorted and trading under 5 dollars, which makes it prone to extreme percentage swings when incremental buyers show up. As the robotics policy story hit, a wave of momentum and options-driven activity forced shorts to cover, pushing intraday gains into the 60–70%+ range and briefly taking the stock above 3 dollars.

Context: still a distressed story

Despite today’s spike, recent coverage highlights that iRobot remains financially stressed, with high debt, prior Amazon (AMZN) deal collapse, and questions about its long‑term viability. Commentaries noted that even after the move the stock is still at penny‑stock levels and below key moving averages, underscoring that today’s action looks more like a speculative squeeze than a fundamental rerate.

The Sources

by Vista Partners LLC December 3, 2025

From Handsets to Hyperscalers: How Nokia Is Rewiring Its Future Around AI -( $NOK $NVDA )

Nokia’s (NOK) latest press run reads like a company determined to reinvent itself as the quiet power behind the AI and 6G boom—while making sure Wall Street notices the transformation. The last several releases sketch out a telecom veteran recasting its balance sheet, its strategy, and even its cap table to ride the “AI supercycle” rather than be run over by it.

The new AI-first Nokia

Nokia’s November strategy announcement effectively rewrites the company’s playbook, positioning it as an infrastructure arms dealer to the AI era rather than a cyclical base-station vendor. Management laid out a plan to simplify into two primary operating segments—Network Infrastructure and Mobile Infrastructure—aimed at capturing data center build‑out, AI networking demand, and the long march to 6G.

The company also set an ambitious new long‑term profit target, aiming to lift comparable operating profit to a 2.7–3.2 billion euro range by 2028, up from about 2.0 billion euros over the prior 12 months, which puts a concrete yardstick under all the AI rhetoric. Investors also received a fresh set of strategic KPIs, including mid‑single to high‑single‑digit net sales growth for Network Infrastructure and higher margin targets, signaling that Nokia wants to be judged less like a low‑margin hardware vendor and more like an efficiency‑obsessed infrastructure platform.

NVIDIA muscles onto the cap table

In late October, Nokia added some Silicon Valley gloss by striking a strategic partnership with NVIDIA (NVDA) that comes with a 1.0 billion dollar equity investment. The deal pairs Nokia’s optical and data center switching technologies with NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure ambitions, giving the Finnish company both a marquee customer and a powerful ally in the race to move AI traffic at scale.

That relationship quickly turned tangible in November, when Nokia completed a directed share issuance to NVIDIA, increasing its total share count as the new stock prepared to list on Nasdaq Helsinki. For existing shareholders, the message was clear: some dilution now in exchange for a deeper role in NVIDIA’s future AI architectures, and—if management executes—the prospect of sharing in that growth rather than watching it from the sidelines.

Capital markets day, with numbers attached

The same strategy release doubled as a preview of Nokia’s Capital Markets Day, where management framed the shift around an “AI supercycle” that will reshape networks over the rest of the decade. Nokia highlighted Network Infrastructure as a growth engine, targeting 6–8% annual net sales growth from 2025 to 2028 and double‑digit growth for its optical and IP units, effectively arguing that fiber and routing are the new picks and shovels of AI.

On the cost side, the company pledged to slim down Group Common and Other operating expenses by roughly 200 million euros by 2028, a reminder that the AI story still comes with an old‑fashioned European restructuring. Leadership changes around the new operating model—including a dedicated Chief Customer Officer and a rebranded Technology Standards role—signal that standards and partnerships are now as central to Nokia’s equity story as base‑station counts once were.

5G still pays the bills

Amid the AI fanfare, Nokia’s press flow continues to feature the bread‑and‑butter 5G deals that keep cash flowing while the strategy shifts. One recent headline deal showcased an “industry first” autonomous network slicing deployment with Middle Eastern operator du, an attempt to turn 5G from a marketing slogan into a programmable, revenue‑generating asset. Another highlighted work with KPN in the Netherlands to build an 800G‑ready core and transport network, a reminder that hyperscalers are not the only ones hungry for bandwidth.

These contracts may not move the stock on their own, but they serve a useful narrative purpose: they show that operators are still writing checks for high‑performance networks, and that Nokia is selling more software‑driven, automation‑heavy solutions rather than merely boxes with antennas. In a market where investors have heard a decade of 5G promises, the company is now trying to show that the standard can be sliced, automated, and monetized in ways that look suspiciously like cloud economics.

From turnaround to test case

The most recent Nokia storyline, then, is less about survival and more about whether an old‑line telecom supplier can graduate into a core enabler of AI infrastructure without losing its cost discipline. With a fresh operating model, tighter financial targets, and a Silicon Valley heavyweight on the shareholder register, the company has given investors several new ways to measure progress—and excuses will be harder to come by if the numbers miss.

For now, Nokia looks like a case study in late‑career reinvention: a former handset icon that sold its phones, hunkered down in networks, and is now trying to become indispensable to the world’s AI data plumbing. If the AI supercycle delivers as promised, the company’s recent press releases may be remembered as the moment when a once‑familiar brand quietly re‑entered the growth conversation—this time from the server room instead of the store shelf.

The Sources

by Vista Partners LLC December 3, 2025

Wall Street Tiptoed Toward Euphoria on Wednesday – Dec. 3, 2025 -( $BTC $COST $DV $EPRX $GOVX $INTC $MCD $MODD $MTWO $NOK $OKLO $ORCL $PLTR $RIO $SOAR $TSLA $TSM Rise!)

Wall Street tiptoed toward euphoria on Wednesday as weak jobs data rekindled rate‑cut hopes, sending the Dow to another record while tech leaders mostly took a breather and hard assets reminded everyone who really owns the inflation narrative.

Indexes and macro backdrop

The S&P 500 added about 0.3% to finish near 6,850, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up roughly 0.9% (about 400 points) to just under 47,900, while the Nasdaq managed only a modest 0.2% gain as some heavyweight tech names lagged; the small‑cap Russell 2000 stole the spotlight with a rally of about 1.91% as investors rotated into domestically focused cyclicals and the growth investment became attractive. Fresh ADP data showed the private sector shed roughly 30,000–35,000 jobs in November, a “bad news is good news” print that strengthened market conviction that the Federal Reserve will deliver another rate cut at next week’s meeting. The 10‑year Treasury yield hovered just above 4.0%, easing slightly on the day as di the 2-yr which came in at 3.494% and reinforcing the view that the tightening cycle has definitively rolled over even as the Fed remains publicly non‑committal.

Fed, tariffs and Washington

Attention is now firmly fixed on the December 10 FOMC decision, with futures markets pricing high odds of a 25‑basis‑point cut and Chair Jerome Powell slated to explain the committee’s thinking in a 2:30 p.m. ET press conference that could set the tone for early 2026. The backdrop is increasingly political: President Donald Trump continues to champion tariffs as a revenue engine even as economists question whether customs duties can meaningfully replace income taxes, and legal challenges to the latest tariff architecture are heading toward a Supreme Court test. Businesses are not waiting for the verdict, with firms such as Costco (COST, $922.26, +.02%) moving to secure potential tariff refunds and a separate U.S.–China understanding outlining mutual steps to trim some agricultural and “fentanyl‑related” levies, offering a narrow but notable de‑escalation in a broader tariff regime that still weighs on supply chains. On fiscal policy, markets continue to digest the economic scars from the recently ended 43‑day government shutdown, which federal agencies and airlines now quantify in the hundreds of millions of dollars in lost activity even as appropriations talks lurch into the next round.

Metals, oil and crypto

Gold continued to loiter around the low‑$4,200s per ounce, with spot and futures pricing implying only fractional day‑to‑day moves but a roughly 60% surge over the past year as investors hedge both tariffs‑driven inflation and policy uncertainty. Silver, having stolen the crown in percentage‑gain terms, traded around the high‑$58s per ounce after recently punching through a record near $59.70, as a combination of tight physical supply and speculative enthusiasm turned the market into a late‑cycle hero. Oil remained the designated wallflower: Crude settled near $59.10 a barrel, up .78% on the day and down more than 15% from a year ago as persistent oversupply and a subdued demand outlook offset any geopolitical risk premium. Bitcoin (BTC), by contrast, resumed its role as macro mood ring, moving up nearly to %94k again after a multi‑day rebound that crypto advocates are happily attributing to the prospect of looser Fed policy and growing institutional participation.

Big tech, chips and AI

Among the market’s celebrity names, the mood was more mixed than the indexes suggested, with investors quietly rebalancing away from the AI darlings that have led all year. Nvidia (NVDA, $179.59, -1.03%), Apple (AAPL, $284.15, -.71%), Tesla (TSLA, $446.74, +4.08%), Broadcom (AVGO, $389.61, -.25%), Meta Platforms (META, $639.60, -1.16%) and Intel (INTC, $43.76, +.67%)all spent the session trading against a backdrop of earlier analyst enthusiasm for AI infrastructure spending, EV normalization and premium handset demand, but the day’s leadership came from smaller cyclicals rather than the Large‑cap cohort. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM, $295.45, +1.15%) remained in focus as recent results showing more than 40% year‑over‑year revenue growth and nearly 60% gross margins on the strength of its 3‑ and 5‑nanometer nodes kept it at the center of every AI supply‑chain discussion, even as the stock still trades at what some houses describe as a “discount” to its growth profile. Oracle (ORCL, $207.73, +3.30%) , a later‑cycle AI infrastructure story, continued to wrestle with a narrative reset after a sharp autumn drawdown that left investors questioning how much of its cloud backlog reflects durable demand versus one‑off mega‑deals with partners such as OpenAI. Oracle reportedly received an “Overweight Rating” from at least Wall Street analyst today.

Health care, consumer and the rest of the tape

In health care, Eli Lilly (LLY, $1,033.56, -1.20%) remained the market’s quietly unstoppable compounder, supported by a still‑crowded bull camp that points to surging GLP‑1 demand, raised full‑year guidance and improving 2025–2026 earnings estimates as reasons the stock’s premium multiple has, so far, refused to mean‑revert. McDonald’s (MCD, $307.71, +2.32%) traded against the familiar “fortress consumer” theme as investors continued to treat the chain as a defensive winner in a higher‑price, higher‑wage world, even while government shutdown fallout and tariffs complicate the broader restaurant and retail cost picture. At the more speculative end of the spectrum, Opendoor (OPEN, $6.94,-.72%), nuclear micro‑reactor developer Oklo (OKLO, $96.59, +5.17%) and data‑analytics mainstay Palantir (PLTR, $176.08, +3.16%) stayed in the conversation as vehicles for housing‑cycle leverage, next‑gen energy and defense‑tech spending respectively, with Palantir in particular drawing interest from investors tracking its multi‑year total‑return profile through early December. Nokia (NOK, $6.26, +1.13%) and Rio Tinto (RIO, $74.28, +2.68%) gave international flavor to the tape, with the former still battling for relevance in a crowded 5G and network‑equipment landscape and the latter positioned as a bellwether for how tariffs and China‑related policy shifts filter into global demand for iron ore and industrial metals.

Deals, IPOs and corporate activity

The day’s deal flow leaned heavily toward the blank‑check end of the spectrum, as General Purpose Acquisition Corp. began trading units on Nasdaq under the symbol GPACU after pricing a $200 million SPAC IPO, adding yet another vehicle to an already busy late‑year new‑issue calendar. The broader U.S. IPO docket for the week included additional SPACs and smaller operating companies across energy, dental services, de‑SPAC‑type acquisition vehicles and international growth stories, underscoring that while traditional large‑cap IPOs remain selective, the market for specialized and financial‑engineering‑heavy listings is very much open. In SPAC‑adjacent housekeeping, holders of Drugs Made In America Acquisition II units gained the ability to separately trade common shares and rights on Nasdaq starting today, a reminder that even in a rate‑cut countdown, there is always room on Wall Street’s stage for one more capital‑raising structure.

VP Watchlist Updates

Modular Medical, Inc. (Nasdaq: MODD., $.4211, +6.88%, a leader in innovative insulin delivery technology targeting the $3 billion adult “almost-pumpers” diabetes market with user-friendly, affordable patch pumps, today (Nov. 17) announced Institutional Review Board (“IRB”) approval to conduct an in-house study of its next-generation Pivot™ insulin delivery system using insulin on people with diabetes (the “Study”). Pursuant to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) regulations, an IRB is a group that has been formally designated to review and monitor biomedical research involving human subjects. The Study will simulate real-world conditions by delivering insulin to adult participants to gather critical data on device function and usability and obtain user feedback. Modular Medical’s Pivot tubeless patch pump aims to enhance accessibility for underserved patients with diabetes and drive market penetration and expansion. On Nov. 14, Modular Medical announced the 510(k) premarket submission of its next generation Pivot™ tubeless patch pump to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (the “FDA”). The Company expects to commence the commercial launch of its Pivot pump in Q1 2026. On Nov. 3, Modular Medical the successful validation of its Pivot controller line, a critical milestone in preparing for the commercial launch of its Pivot patch pump targeted for Q1 2026. The Pivot controller line validation further demonstrates manufacturing readiness for high-volume production, positioning Modular Medical to meet the growing demand in the diabetes treatment market for advanced technology.

Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: EPRX, $5.96, +2.14%), a clinical-stage biotechnology company leveraging its proprietary Diffusphere™ technology to optimize local, controlled drug delivery for diseases with significant unmet need, announced (Nov. 13) the second set of 52-week follow up data from its ongoing Phase 1b/2a RESOLVE trial evaluating a single administration EP-104GI for the treatment of eosinophilic esophagitis (“EoE”). James A. Helliwell, Chief Executive Officer of Eupraxia stated,“These data further highlight the strong durability and tolerability profile of EP-104GI, reinforcing its potential to become a convenient, once-a-year treatment that fits seamlessly into routine disease management by aligning with annual patient endoscopies. The Cohorts 5 & 6 patients – the only groups to have reached 52 weeks in the trial – are demonstrating levels of symptom relief that is durable and clinically meaningful – we are very encouraged by this outcome. We’re also pleased that our previously announced 52-week data were presented as a late-breaking presentation at the American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting (ACG). These new results build on that momentum. Given that current EoE therapies often struggle with long-term adherence, we believe a durable, once-yearly treatment could meaningfully improve patient outcomes and establish EP-104GI as a preferred option for both physicians and their patients.”

GeoVax Labs, Inc. (Nasdaq: GOVX, $.4007, +7.77%, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing multi-antigen vaccines and immunotherapies for infectious diseases and cancer, reported (Nov. 13) its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2025, and provided a business update highlighting key corporate and clinical advancements across its vaccine and oncology programs. David Dodd, CEO of Geovax stated, “As highlighted in this report, during the third quarter GeoVax continued making important progress, advancing innovative vaccines and immunotherapies that address urgent and underserved medical needs. With continued global Mpox spread and constrained vaccine supply, our GEO-MVA program represents a U.S.-based, scalable, next-generation MVA platform. Our EMA and BARDA-aligned program position GeoVax to accelerate regulatory readiness and commercial entry. For our GEO-CM04S1 COVID-19 vaccine program, recent clinical presentations validate our belief that multi-antigen vaccines – expressing both spike and nucleocapsid – are essential for breadth and durability in vulnerable immunocompromised populations. In particular, the robust immune responses demonstrated in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) patients represents a meaningful step forward in addressing the unmet needs of over 40 million immunocompromised Americans. In our Gedeptin(R) oncology program, the expansion into multiple solid tumor indications builds upon a growing recognition that tumor-targeted immune priming can dramatically improve checkpoint outcomes. We are executing a clear path to clinical and commercial value creation. GeoVax continues to execute with purpose and discipline. Our multi-antigen vaccine and immunotherapy platforms position the Company squarely within the national call to strengthen America’s health security, expand domestic manufacturing, and deliver equitable global solutions.”

Volato Group, Inc. (NYSE American: SOAR, $1.26, +.80%%) and M2i Global, Inc. (MTWO, $.0973, +353%), a company specializing in the development and execution of a complete global value supply chain for critical minerals, announced on Nov. 19 that Nimy Resources (“Nimy”) and M2i will collaborate with the aim of forming commercially binding contract terms for the respective sale and purchase of gallium production. They also announced (Oct. 16) the next phase of development of the digital and commercial infrastructure underpinning the U.S. Strategic Mineral Reserve (SMR). M2i initiated the SMR framework and technical specifications earlier this year. Volato is now applying its proven enterprise-software expertise to build and operationalize the secure technology backbone that will support critical mineral traceability, contracting, and compliance across the United States and allied nations. This infrastructure is being developed to serve as the market-facing layer of the U.S. Strategic Mineral Reserve initiative, providing miners, refiners, recyclers, manufacturers, and government entities with a trusted environment for physical critical mineral transactions—with verified provenance, end-to-end custody visibility, and regulatory compliance at its core.

Serina Therapeutics (NYSE American: SER, $3.48) stands at a pivotal juncture as it harnesses fresh capital, regulatory momentum, and a sharpened communications strategy to propel its lead program, SER-252, into late-stage clinical testing for advanced Parkinson’s diseas. The Alabama-based biotech is betting its proprietary POZ platform and reimagined approach to apomorphine delivery may redefine the treatment paradigm for patients who have e96xhausted standard oral therapies.

The InterGroup Corporation (NASDAQ: INTG, $32.25) reported (Nov. 17) results for the three months ended September 30, 2025. John V. Winfield, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said: “We continue to observe signs of stabilization and recovery across the San Francisco hospitality market, including improving convention calendars, tourism indicators, and business travel activity. On the investment side, our marketable securities activity remained modest with a small net gain, consistent with our emphasis on liquidity and risk discipline.”

Nokia (NOK, $6.26, +1.13%) is promising investors a sleeker, AI‑age version of itself by 2028, aiming to lift profits by as much as 60% while quietly admitting that the road there runs through a restructuring zone. Nokia today announced it has been selected by KPN, a Dutch telecommunications company, to help transform the Netherlands’ core digital infrastructure through the deployment of an 800G-capable IP and optical network. This nationwide initiative, known as FabriQ, forms the ‘digital aorta’ for all fixed and mobile services delivered by KPN to millions of consumer, business and wholesale users across a range of enterprise sectors, supporting increased speed, greater resilience and supporting KPN’s focus on reduced energy use. KPN is the leading telecom provider in the Netherlands, offering mobile, fixed-line, IT and wholesale services. The company has been rapidly expanding its fiber-optic network, aiming to make high-speed broadband widely available across the Netherlands.

Opendoor Technologies Inc. (OPEN, $6.94) a digital red estate disruptor, jumped higher as the belief that interest rates would be cut in December rose significantly.

DoubleVerify Holdings Inc. (DV) closed at $10.82, +.65%. DoubleVerify Holdings is a software company that helps advertisers verify and improve the quality and performance of their digital ads across the web, apps, social platforms, and connected TV. DoubleVerify provides a digital media measurement and analytics platform that checks whether ads are viewable, shown to real people (not bots), served in brand‑safe environments, and delivered in the right geography. Its tools give advertisers independent, third‑party data so they can reduce ad fraud, avoid unsafe content, and get better return on their digital ad spend. DoubleVerify primarily earns revenue by charging advertisers, agencies, and platforms based on the volume of media it measures (such as impressions or transactions). Its technology is integrated with major ad platforms and programmatic exchanges, and is used globally by brands, marketplaces, and publishers to monitor and optimize campaigns.

Sources

by Vista Partners LLC December 3, 2025

Holiday Shopping Hits Records Online, but Consumer Confidence Stays on the Naughty List ( $ADBE $SPY )

U.S. consumers just delivered a record-setting opening act to the online holiday shopping season, but behind the glittering sales totals is a cast of shoppers that looks more fragile than festive.

Record sales, nervous wallets

Adobe Analytics estimates Americans spent about $44.2 billion dollars online over Cyber Week, the period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, setting fresh records for digital holiday spending. Black Friday alone saw roughly $11.8 billion dollars in U.S. online sales, up around 9% from last year, while Cyber Monday climbed to roughly $14.25billion dollars, also a new high. Yet consumer confidence has continued to drift lower into November, suggesting shoppers are charging ahead with holiday purchases even as they grow less certain about their own finances.

Discounts do the heavy lifting

Retailers helped pry open wallets the old-fashioned way: with bigger markdowns and a wider net. Deep promotions stretched well beyond the usual TVs-and-tablets playbook, pulling everyday staples like batteries, detergent, and cleaning products into the discount bin, a sign that deal-hunters are focused as much on keeping the household running as stuffing stockings. Mastercard data show online Black Friday sales jumping more than 10% year over year, far outpacing the low single-digit growth at physical stores, as shoppers opted to let the discounts come to their screens instead of their feet.

Buy now, worry later

If holiday sales are the headline, the subtext is how consumers are paying for them. Use of buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) plans surged again, with BNPL driving over 1 billion dollars of Cyber Monday online spending and expected to account for more than 20 billion dollars across the full season. That installment-fueled enthusiasm has helped stretch budgets in the near term, but it also suggests more households are leaning on short-term credit to bridge the gap between what they want to buy and what their paychecks comfortably allow.

The quiet squeeze on households

Beneath the robust sales charts, several warning lights are blinking. Shopper surveys cited by retail consultants show a declining share of households confident they have enough savings to handle an emergency, an erosion that points to gradually weakening financial cushions even before the holiday bills arrive. Analysts note signs of fatigue among middle- and lower-income consumers, including softer discretionary spending outside marquee sales days and heavier reliance on promotions to trigger purchases. Retailers, for their part, are planning a leaner season for temporary hiring, underscoring expectations that demand will be concentrated and uneven rather than buoyant across the board.

Spend now, pull back later?

Economists stop short of reading the Cyber Week splurge as a prelude to an outright recession, but many describe a “burst and brake” pattern: shoppers rush into big promotional windows, then slam on the brakes to rebalance strained budgets. Tariff-related price pressures, the fading boost from prior government support, and rising anxieties over job security all hang over 2026, raising the risk that today’s record receipts could be followed by a chilly retail winter once the holiday lights come down. For now, though, the U.S. consumer remains the unlikely holiday hero—delivering blockbuster online sales while quietly hoping the credits on their BNPL apps roll slower than the credits on their favorite Christmas movies.

The Sources…

[1] Analysis: Strong start to online holiday shopping masks signs of a fragile U.S. consumer https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysis-strong-start-online-holiday-194029157.html
[2] US Thanksgiving 2025 online sales forecast to climb 6% despite tariffs https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-thanksgiving-2025-online-sales-133117205.html
[3] U.S. consumers spent a record $11.8 billion online during Black Friday sales https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-consumers-spent-a-record-11-8-billion-online-during-black-friday-sales/
[4] Adobe: Cyber Monday Hits Record $14.25 Billion in Online Spending with Over $1 Billion Driven by Buy Now Pay Later https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/12/adobe-cyber-monday-hits-record
[5] Holiday Shopping Gets Off to a Good Start https://finance.yahoo.com/news/holiday-shopping-gets-off-good-152000184.html
[6] Shoppers scoured for deals online on Cyber Monday and delivered strong sales for retailers https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-cyber-monday-could-break-024153170.html
[7] Mastercard SpendingPulse: US Black Friday retail sales up +4.1 … https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2025/november/mastercard-spendingpulse–us-black-friday-retail-sales-up–4-1–.html
[8] Holiday shopping runs on value as e-commerce leads gains https://finance.yahoo.com/video/holiday-shopping-runs-value-e-215416133.html
[9] E-commerce growth surpasses stores on Black Friday, with sales up over 10% https://www.retaildive.com/news/black-friday-ecommerce-sales-outpace-stores-apparel-athletics/806641/
[10] 2025 Holiday Shopping Statistics, Trends & Insights | Adobe https://business.adobe.com/resources/holiday-shopping-report.html
[11] Economic warning sign: Holiday jobs are tougher to find https://www.aol.com/articles/economic-warning-sign-holiday-jobs-135738772.html
[12] Holiday jobs: Why there may be fewer of them this year https://finance.yahoo.com/video/holiday-jobs-why-may-fewer-183014987.html
[13] US holiday shoppers shake off economic blues for online spending spree https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/cyber-monday-spending-us-hit-142-billion-adobe-analytics-forecasts-2025-12-01/
[14] 2025 holiday shopping insights: Retail and online spending https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/stories/2025/mei-holiday-report-2025.html
[15] Shoppers spend billions on Black Friday to snag holiday deals, despite wider economic uncertainty https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shoppers-spend-billions-black-friday-170126077.html
[16] Busy holiday shopping season expected; shop local encouraged https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/busy-holiday-shopping-season-expected-045900690.html
[17] Black Friday Statistics 2025 – $11.8 Billion Online Sales (New … https://statistics.blackfriday
[18] 4 retailers set to ‘win’ the holiday shopping season – Yahoo Finance https://finance.yahoo.com/video/4-retailers-set-win-holiday-190036834.html
[19] Adobe: U.S. Online Spending Hits $88.7B in Oct 2025, Up 8.2% YoY https://business.adobe.com/blog/adi-october-2025-holiday-shopping-actuals
[20] Black Friday 2025: Digital Dominates, And AI Takes Deeper Root https://www.theinterline.com/2025/12/02/black-friday-2025-digital-dominates-and-ai-takes-deeper-root/amp/

by Vista Partners LLC December 2, 2025

Can Amazon’s Trainium3 Finally Challenge Nvidia’s AI Dominance? -( $AMD $AMZN $GOOG $INTC $NVDA )

Amazon (AMZN) is rolling out a new house chip, and this one is aimed squarely at the silicon royalty that has been renting out its throne. Trainium3, unveiled this week at AWS re:Invent 2025 in Las Vegas, is Amazon Web Services’ first 3‑nanometer AI accelerator and the company’s boldest attempt yet to loosen Nvidia’s grip and crowd into the same frame as Google’s custom tensor silicon.

A 3‑Nanometer Shot at the Throne

Trainium3 is built on a 3‑nanometer process, shrinking transistors and swelling Amazon’s ambitions in one go. AWS says the chip delivers up to 4.4 times higher performance, nearly four times the memory bandwidth, and roughly four times better performance per watt than its Trainium2 predecessor, the sort of generational leap that suggests the marketing department did not have to strain for superlatives. Each chip can deliver several petaflops of FP8 compute and connect into large clusters, targeting the trillion‑parameter models that have become table stakes in modern AI.

The energy story is pitched almost as aggressively as the speed story. Trainium3 UltraServer systems are said to be roughly 40% more energy efficient than the prior generation, translating into more output tokens per megawatt and giving CIOs something to say in both the earnings call and the sustainability report. In practice, AWS is advertising up to 50% lower costs for training and inference versus older setups, hoping that cloud bills, not spec sheets, will ultimately win the argument.

UltraServers: Racks as Status Symbols

The new silicon arrives pre‑packaged in Amazon EC2 Trn3 UltraServers, dense AI boxes that are quickly becoming the new status symbol of hyperscale computing. A fully configured UltraServer can stitch together up to 144 Trainium3 chips, adding up to more than 360 petaflops of FP8 compute and over 20 terabytes of HBM3e memory in a single integrated system—enough horsepower to train frontier‑scale models or, at minimum, to impress the procurement committee.

For customers with ambitions that do not fit neatly inside one rack, AWS is extending things to UltraClusters 3.0, which can connect thousands of these UltraServers and, in theory, scale to on the order of a million Trainium‑class chips. That kind of bigness is aimed at customers training multimodal, trillion‑token models or serving real‑time inference to millions of users, but it also conveniently reinforces the idea that the only real limit to AI scale is how much of it a customer is willing to rent.

Pointed at Nvidia, Smiling at Google

Publicly, AWS insists it is still the Switzerland of accelerators, promising to keep buying “very significant” quantities of chips from Nvidia (NVDA), AMD, and Intel (INTC). Privately—and increasingly, not so privately—Trainium3 is clearly designed to be the in‑house alternative when customers start asking whether they really need to pay top‑shelf prices for every last GPU in the rack. On Amazon Bedrock, the company’s managed foundation model service, Trainium3 is already billed as the fastest accelerator, delivering up to three times the performance of Trainium2 and over five times the output tokens per megawatt, an efficiency pitch that lands squarely in Nvidia territory,

Google (GOOG), with its TPU line, gets pulled into the same comparison set, whether it likes it or not. Where Google positions TPUs as the in‑house muscle of its own cloud, Amazon is effectively arguing that it can do the same—with chips tuned for its own stack from Neuron to Bedrock, but sold as neutral ground for everyone else’s models. In this framing, customers are invited to think less about whose logo is stamped on the die and more about the price‑performance curve of training their next conversational agent or video generator.

From Frontier Labs to Regular IT

AWS is careful to point out that Trainium has already graduated from curiosity to revenue line, with Trainium2 described as a multibillion‑dollar business largely driven by a small set of very large customers. Trainium3 is supposed to broaden that base, moving from a handful of headline accounts—think frontier‑model labs and deep‑pocketed platforms—into a wider population of enterprises looking to run generative AI without handing over their entire capital budget to GPUs.

To smooth that path, Amazon is pitching Trainium3 not just as a cloud instance but as a building block for “AI factories,” dedicated infrastructure that can be dropped into customers’ existing data centers and wired back into AWS services. The result is a narrative in which AI hardware, once a specialized toy for research labs, becomes a configurable line item that IT departments can choose much like storage tiers or database engines—albeit with more petaflops and fewer refunds.

The Quiet Hedge on the Future

The long game is visible in the fine print. On the software side, AWS Neuron is expanding support for Trainium3, with deeper integration into popular frameworks like PyTorch, a bid to ensure developers are not locked out by the learning curve. On the hardware side, AWS is already previewing a Trainium4 roadmap, including plans to support Nvidia’s own NVLink Fusion interconnect, a reminder that in the cloud business, hedging is not just prudent—it is policy.

Whether Trainium3 can “crack” Nvidia’s grip on AI compute is an open question, but that may not be the only test that matters. If Amazon can persuade enough customers that custom silicon, wrapped in UltraServers and wired into Bedrock, delivers materially better economics than a wall of third‑party GPUs, it will have quietly shifted one of the most profitable parts of the AI stack back under its own roof—one 3‑nanometer sliver at a time.

The Sources…

by Vista Partners LLC December 2, 2025

Marvell Bets Billions on Celestial AI in Race to Speed Up Data Centers – ( $AVGO $BLK $MRVL $NVDA )

Marvell Technology (MRVL) has decided that if artificial intelligence is going to eat the world, it might as well own more of the cutlery. The chipmaker is buying optical‑interconnect startup Celestial AI in a cash‑and‑stock deal valued at about 3.253.25 billion dollars upfront, with performance sweeteners that could push the tab to roughly 5.55.5 billion dollars over time. For a four‑year‑old company that has raised just over half a billion dollars in venture capital, that is a celestial outcome indeed.

The deal, in Wall Street numbers

Under the terms announced, Celestial AI investors will receive 11 billion dollars in cash and Marvell shares initially valued at about 2.25 billion dollars, plus the prospect of up to roughly another 2.25 billion dollars in stock if the startup hits ambitious revenue goals through the end of Marvell’s fiscal 2029. In other words, Marvell is paying today as if Celestial is a proven growth engine, and then paying again if the engine actually turns over.

Marvell says Celestial’s photonics‑based connectivity could support a revenue run‑rate of around 500 million dollars in the back half of fiscal 2028, with a path toward 1 billion dollars annualized not long after. Even in a market drunk on AI multiples, that implies Marvell is valuing the company at several times projected sales that are still a few fiscal calendars away, a reminder that in AI infrastructure, story often arrives well ahead of earnings.

Why Marvell is buying light

Celestial AI’s calling card is “Photonic Fabric,” a platform that uses light instead of electrons to shuttle data between processors and memory, promising more bandwidth, lower latency and less power per bit in data‑center scale AI systems. That kind of optical plumbing is increasingly essential as AI clusters grow from a handful of accelerators in a box to thousands of chips stitched across rows of racks.

For Marvell, which already sells networking silicon, custom chips and optical components into cloud and AI data centers, the attraction is obvious: lock up a differentiated interconnect technology before a rival—or worse, a customer—does. Chief Executive Matt Murphy has cast the deal as a way to offer a “comprehensive connectivity platform” for AI and cloud clients, corporate for “please keep buying from us instead of Broadcom (AVGO) or Nvidia (NVDA).”

A pricey hedge against Nvidia envy

The timing also reflects a familiar form of Silicon Valley FOMO. Hyperscale operators are pledging hundreds of billions of dollars for AI infrastructure over the next several years, and each vendor with a pulse wants to be thought of as “critical path.” By owning an optical interconnect that can be embedded both in stand‑alone systems and custom AI silicon, Marvell is trying to ensure that, if Nvidia’s GPU complexes are the party, its chips are at least the valet, the bartender and possibly the DJ.

Public‑market investors, however, responded like accountants reading a poetry slam. Marvell shares fell about 5–6% in after‑hours trading as the company unveiled the deal alongside quarterly results, suggesting some concern that management is paying peak‑cycle prices for next‑cycle promises. In fairness, venture backers who funded Celestial at a roughly 2.5‑billion‑dollar valuation earlier this year can hardly be blamed for embracing such concerns from the comfort of their exit. However, MRVL shares are now trading up ~12% to there $104 level.

Startups in the age of earn‑outs

For Celestial AI, founded in 2020 and backed by the likes of AMD Ventures, Koch Disruptive Technologies, BlackRock (BLK) and Fidelity, the sale is a swift graduation from promising photonics outfit to line item on a large‑cap’s balance sheet. The company has raised more than 500 million dollars in equity across recent rounds, using the capital to acquire silicon‑photonics IP and scale manufacturing and foundry partnerships.

The heavy use of earn‑out stock tied to future revenue underlines a broader theme in AI hardware: buyers are willing to pay venture‑style valuations, but increasingly prefer to do it with options on performance rather than blind faith. If Celestial’s optical fabric becomes the de facto standard for wiring up the next wave of reasoning‑hungry AI models, Marvell will look prescient; if not, it will at least own a reminder that, in this market, even connectivity can come with a very expensive connection fee.

The Sources…

by Vista Partners LLC December 2, 2025

Large Cap U.S. Stocks Stage Measured Rebound Amid Shutdown Shadows – Dec. 2, 2025 -( $AAPL $BTC $DV $INTC $INTG $MTWO $NOK $NVDA $OKLO $QCOM $PLTR $RIO $SOAR $SPY $TSM Rise!)

U.S. stocks staged a measured rebound on Tuesday, with the major averages dusting themselves off after Monday’s wobble and heading modestly higher while small caps sat out the party. The S&P 500 edged up about 0.25% to 6,829.37, the Dow added roughly 0.39% to finish near 47,474.46, and the tech‑heavy Nasdaq climbed 0.59%, helped by renewed risk appetite as Bitcoin (BTC) stabilized over $91k, while the Russell 2000 slipped 0.17% to 2,464.98, reminding investors that not every corner of the market is invited to the large cap‑tech afterparty.

Macro Data Thin, Shutdown Delays Persist

Macroeconomic data remained thin thanks to the lingering effects of the record U.S. government shutdown, which has delayed several “official” reports and forced traders to lean more on private and survey‑based gauges. Recent commentary has underscored that key labor metrics like JOLTS are being pushed back or skipped, keeping the Fed and markets partially in the dark even as earlier business surveys had already been tilting the debate toward eventual rate cuts. On trade policy, tariff headlines were relatively quiet today, with prior reports still framing an environment of targeted, “strategic” tariffs that continue to loom over manufacturing and consumer‑sensitive regions rather than driving a fresh global shock.

Yields Steady, FOMC Looms Next Week

In fixed income, the yield curve stayed upward‑sloping on the long end, a notable break from the deeply inverted configuration of the last cycle: the 10‑year Treasury yield hovered just above 4.09%, with the 2-yr moving lower to 3.52%, suggesting the market still buys into a soft‑landing or at least a “not‑crashing” narrative. With the next Federal Open Market Committee gathering set for December 10 on the official calendar, traders continue to price in a high probability of a quarter‑point cut, turning each incremental data release—when it finally arrives—into a referendum on how quickly Chair Powell & Co. can move without re‑inflating the very bubbles they spent two years deflating. The long government shutdown, now in the rear‑view mirror but still leaving statistical potholes, remains a talking point in Washington and on Wall Street as analysts tally up lost output and the reputational cost of repeatedly weaponized funding deadlines.

Commodities Dip, Bitcoin Bounces Back

In commodities and crypto, gold futures opened around $4,241.60 an ounce, off roughly .78% from Monday’s close and a few percent below October’s highs, as the metal digested its spectacular run in an environment where real yields no longer look quite as menacing. Silver traded .08% higher to $59.175 per ounce and was modestly softer intraday, still within a broader bullish channel, while WTI crude moved 1.18% lower to $58.62 a barrel after OPEC+ stuck with its plan to pause production increases in the first quarter of next year, a stance that has capped downside but not yet restored the market’s swagger. Bitcoin, meanwhile, recovered from Monday’s cryptocurrency swoon, with recent prints showing it oscillating in the high‑80,000s to low‑90,000s range, enough of a rebound to keep digital‑asset enthusiasts optimistic and macro strategists mildly concerned about what it says regarding residual risk appetite.

Lilly Shines on Analyst Upgrades

On the corporate front, Eli Lilly (LLY) remained a market darling as analysts continued to race each other to higher price targets bur still fell 1.11% to $1046.12: Bank of America reiterated its buy rating and lifted its target to $1,286, touting the company’s dominance in obesity and diabetes with its GLP‑1 franchise, while BMO stuck with an Outperform and a $1,100 target as the stock trades near record highs. The story in Lilly’s pipeline and guidance—robust revenue growth expectations into 2025 and the prospect of an oral obesity therapy in 2026—has effectively turned every minor pullback into a scramble for entry, giving LLY an air of blue‑chip growth royalty rather than old‑line pharma plodder.

AI Chips and Large caps Lead the Charge

Chip and AI bellwethers continued to dominate conversations even on a relatively calm tape. Nvidia (NVDA, $181.46, +.86%) and Broadcom (AVGO, $381.57, -1.17%) remain at the center of the AI trade, with Morgan Stanley recently lifting price targets on both while highlighting broad‑based AI strength, even as some rivals warn that Nvidia’s competitive moat will be tested by new data‑center offerings from challengers like Qualcomm (QCOM, $170.70, +1.58%). Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM, $292.09, +1.53%) likewise stays cast as the essential arms dealer in the AI and advanced‑node saga, with recent analysis grouping it alongside Nvidia as one of the biggest long‑term beneficiaries of the compute boom, leaving its share price trading as much on multi‑year capex plans as on next quarter’s earnings line. Among the large cap tech plays, Apple’s (AAPL, $286.19, +1.09%) persistent strength has been underpinned by checks showing firm iPhone demand and lengthening lead times into the holiday season, reinforcing a string of analyst calls that keep the stock firmly in the market’s “security blanket” bucket. Tesla (TSLA, $429.24, -.21%) , by contrast, continues to trade more like a macro‑linked momentum barometer than a car company, with recent sessions swinging on shifting expectations around EV demand, margin resilience, and the broader risk‑asset mood rather than any single headline. Meta Platforms (META, $647.10, +.97%) remains tightly bound to the AI‑in‑advertising narrative, where the key question is not whether the company can monetize AI, but how much of that windfall shareholders can capture after spending and regulation take their cut.

Infrastructure AI Plays Draw Capital

The broader “AI‑plus‑infrastructure” cohort kept drawing in capital, with Oracle (ORCL, $201.10, +.08%), Broadcom, and Palantir (PLTR, $170.69, +1.91%) increasingly discussed as a kind of next‑generation “Magnificent” subset for investors who feel late to the original party but still want exposure to data‑center spending, custom silicon, and high‑end analytics. Oracle’s high‑profile cloud partnership in AI, Broadcom’s custom chip work for hyperscalers, and Palantir’s dual franchise in defense and enterprise AI have all been held up as reasons these names could outgrow the traditional large cap pack over the next cycle, even if their day‑to‑day moves remain hostage to the same factor flows driving the Nasdaq.

Traditional Names Hold Steady

In the more traditional consumer and industrial realm, McDonald’s (MCD, $300.72, -.94%) continues to benefit from its role as a quasi‑staple for value‑conscious consumers, a positioning that has historically served it well in late‑cycle environments when diners trade down but still want a reliable french fry. Rio Tinto’s (RIO, $72.34, +.51%) narrative stays tied to the global growth and China‑sensitive commodity complex, where metals have rallied on hopes of better 2025 demand but remain vulnerable to any renewed tariff cross‑fire or slowdown in construction and green‑energy spending. Nokia (NOK, $619, +1.14%) for its part, remains a more tactical play on 5G and telecom capex cycles than a broad tech bellwether, leaving the stock sensitive to periodic shifts in carriers’ spending plans rather than the glamorous AI buzz lifting its larger peers. Back in Silicon Valley‑adjacent territory, Intel’s (INTC, $43.47, +8.65%) attempts to reinvent itself as both a foundry contender and an AI player continue to be judged against the blistering pace set by Nvidia and TSM, leaving the stock in a perpetual “show me” phase where execution on process nodes and external customer wins matter more than the marketing deck. However, today stories flew about a possible win may be surfacing related to Apple and that Intel may begin building Apple’s M series chips for its MacBook Aire and iPad Pro as soon as early 2027.

Emerging Plays in Nuclear and Housing

Oklo (OKLO, $91.84, +5.13%) sitting at the intersection of advanced nuclear and the energy demands of the AI age, remains a speculative but thematically fashionable ticker; its story is increasingly framed around whether micro‑reactors can become a meaningful contributor to the massive power needs of data centers before the current AI cycle matures. Opendoor (OPEN, $6.99, -2.22%) continues to be treated as a leveraged bet on the housing market and mortgage‑rate path, its business model inherently tied to liquidity and volatility in residential real estate rather than to the gentler curves enjoyed by traditional brokers.

IPOs and Deals Stay Selective

Deal‑makers remained selectively active. On the IPO front, calendar data show a steady stream of new listings, including special‑purpose and niche offerings, with New America Acquisition I Corp. among those recently priced and additional names like Cardinal Infrastructure Group and Lumexa Imaging in the pipeline, reflecting a market that is open for business but still discerning about what it will pay up for. Fresh filings at the NYSE include amended documents for issuers such as Lumexa Imaging Holdings and Wealthfront, while Wealthfront separately disclosed plans for a U.S. IPO targeting a valuation north of $2 billion, underscoring how fintech is re‑testing the public markets after an extended lull. Traditional M&A and buyout headlines were relatively subdued today, with investors still digesting earlier deals rather than being handed a new, market‑moving blockbuster.

VP Watchlist Updates

Modular Medical, Inc. (Nasdaq: MODD., $.394), a leader in innovative insulin delivery technology targeting the $3 billion adult “almost-pumpers” diabetes market with user-friendly, affordable patch pumps, today (Nov. 17) announced Institutional Review Board (“IRB”) approval to conduct an in-house study of its next-generation Pivot™ insulin delivery system using insulin on people with diabetes (the “Study”). Pursuant to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) regulations, an IRB is a group that has been formally designated to review and monitor biomedical research involving human subjects. The Study will simulate real-world conditions by delivering insulin to adult participants to gather critical data on device function and usability and obtain user feedback. Modular Medical’s Pivot tubeless patch pump aims to enhance accessibility for underserved patients with diabetes and drive market penetration and expansion. On Nov. 14, Modular Medical announced the 510(k) premarket submission of its next generation Pivot™ tubeless patch pump to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (the “FDA”). The Company expects to commence the commercial launch of its Pivot pump in Q1 2026. On Nov. 3, Modular Medical the successful validation of its Pivot controller line, a critical milestone in preparing for the commercial launch of its Pivot patch pump targeted for Q1 2026. The Pivot controller line validation further demonstrates manufacturing readiness for high-volume production, positioning Modular Medical to meet the growing demand in the diabetes treatment market for advanced technology.

Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: EPRX, $5.83), a clinical-stage biotechnology company leveraging its proprietary Diffusphere™ technology to optimize local, controlled drug delivery for diseases with significant unmet need, announced (Nov. 13) the second set of 52-week follow up data from its ongoing Phase 1b/2a RESOLVE trial evaluating a single administration EP-104GI for the treatment of eosinophilic esophagitis (“EoE”). James A. Helliwell, Chief Executive Officer of Eupraxia stated, “These data further highlight the strong durability and tolerability profile of EP-104GI, reinforcing its potential to become a convenient, once-a-year treatment that fits seamlessly into routine disease management by aligning with annual patient endoscopies. The Cohorts 5 & 6 patients – the only groups to have reached 52 weeks in the trial – are demonstrating levels of symptom relief that is durable and clinically meaningful – we are very encouraged by this outcome. We’re also pleased that our previously announced 52-week data were presented as a late-breaking presentation at the American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting (ACG). These new results build on that momentum. Given that current EoE therapies often struggle with long-term adherence, we believe a durable, once-yearly treatment could meaningfully improve patient outcomes and establish EP-104GI as a preferred option for both physicians and their patients.”

GeoVax Labs, Inc. (Nasdaq: GOVX, $.3718), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing multi-antigen vaccines and immunotherapies for infectious diseases and cancer, reported (Nov. 13) its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2025, and provided a business update highlighting key corporate and clinical advancements across its vaccine and oncology programs. David Dodd, CEO of Geovax stated, “As highlighted in this report, during the third quarter GeoVax continued making important progress, advancing innovative vaccines and immunotherapies that address urgent and underserved medical needs. With continued global Mpox spread and constrained vaccine supply, our GEO-MVA program represents a U.S.-based, scalable, next-generation MVA platform. Our EMA and BARDA-aligned program position GeoVax to accelerate regulatory readiness and commercial entry. For our GEO-CM04S1 COVID-19 vaccine program, recent clinical presentations validate our belief that multi-antigen vaccines – expressing both spike and nucleocapsid – are essential for breadth and durability in vulnerable immunocompromised populations. In particular, the robust immune responses demonstrated in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) patients represents a meaningful step forward in addressing the unmet needs of over 40 million immunocompromised Americans. In our Gedeptin(R) oncology program, the expansion into multiple solid tumor indications builds upon a growing recognition that tumor-targeted immune priming can dramatically improve checkpoint outcomes. We are executing a clear path to clinical and commercial value creation. GeoVax continues to execute with purpose and discipline. Our multi-antigen vaccine and immunotherapy platforms position the Company squarely within the national call to strengthen America’s health security, expand domestic manufacturing, and deliver equitable global solutions.”

Volato Group, Inc. (NYSE American: SOAR, $1.25, +2.46%) and M2i Global, Inc. (MTWO, $.0982, +3.48%), a company specializing in the development and execution of a complete global value supply chain for critical minerals, announced on Nov. 19 that Nimy Resources (“Nimy”) and M2i will collaborate with the aim of forming commercially binding contract terms for the respective sale and purchase of gallium production. They also announced (Oct. 16) the next phase of development of the digital and commercial infrastructure underpinning the U.S. Strategic Mineral Reserve (SMR). M2i initiated the SMR framework and technical specifications earlier this year. Volato is now applying its proven enterprise-software expertise to build and operationalize the secure technology backbone that will support critical mineral traceability, contracting, and compliance across the United States and allied nations. This infrastructure is being developed to serve as the market-facing layer of the U.S. Strategic Mineral Reserve initiative, providing miners, refiners, recyclers, manufacturers, and government entities with a trusted environment for physical critical mineral transactions—with verified provenance, end-to-end custody visibility, and regulatory compliance at its core.

Serina Therapeutics (NYSE American: SER, $3.81) stands at a pivotal juncture as it harnesses fresh capital, regulatory momentum, and a sharpened communications strategy to propel its lead program, SER-252, into late-stage clinical testing for advanced Parkinson’s diseas. The Alabama-based biotech is betting its proprietary POZ platform and reimagined approach to apomorphine delivery may redefine the treatment paradigm for patients who have e96xhausted standard oral therapies.

The InterGroup Corporation (NASDAQ: INTG, $32.55,+3.98%) reported (Nov. 17) results for the three months ended September 30, 2025. John V. Winfield, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said: “We continue to observe signs of stabilization and recovery across the San Francisco hospitality market, including improving convention calendars, tourism indicators, and business travel activity. On the investment side, our marketable securities activity remained modest with a small net gain, consistent with our emphasis on liquidity and risk discipline.”

Nokia (NOK, $6.19, +1.14%) is promising investors a sleeker, AI‑age version of itself by 2028, aiming to lift profits by as much as 60% while quietly admitting that the road there runs through a restructuring zone. Amprius Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: AMPX), a leader in next-generation lithium-ion batteries with its Silicon Anode Platform, today announced (Dec. 2) that Nokia has selected Amprius’ SiCore® cells to power its next-generation drone systems. Following extensive qualification and testing, Amprius’ batteries demonstrated the endurance, power delivery, and safety performance needed to position this drone-in-a-box solution among the most capable UAV platforms on the market.

Opendoor Technologies Inc. (OPEN, $6.99) a digital red estate disruptor, jumped higher as the belief that interest rates would be cut in December rose significantly.

DoubleVerify Holdings Inc. (DV) closed at $10.75, +.84%. DoubleVerify Holdings is a software company that helps advertisers verify and improve the quality and performance of their digital ads across the web, apps, social platforms, and connected TV. DoubleVerify provides a digital media measurement and analytics platform that checks whether ads are viewable, shown to real people (not bots), served in brand‑safe environments, and delivered in the right geography. Its tools give advertisers independent, third‑party data so they can reduce ad fraud, avoid unsafe content, and get better return on their digital ad spend. DoubleVerify primarily earns revenue by charging advertisers, agencies, and platforms based on the volume of media it measures (such as impressions or transactions). Its technology is integrated with major ad platforms and programmatic exchanges, and is used globally by brands, marketplaces, and publishers to monitor and optimize campaigns.

Sources

by Vista Partners LLC December 2, 2025

Are Your Ads Really Safe? DoubleVerify’s 2025 Global Insights on Walled Gardens -( $DV $GOOG $AMZN $WMT $SPY )

DoubleVerify’s (NYSE: DV) latest Global Insights report suggests that the digital ad world now resembles a handful of powerful theme parks: millions of visitors, plenty of thrills, and a nagging suspicion that someone else is controlling the turnstiles. The company’s new deep dive into “walled gardens” argues that advertisers are still happily queueing up for rides on the big social and commerce platforms—but they are increasingly demanding a better map, more safety rails, and a clear view of where their money actually goes.

Walled gardens grow higher

The 2025 Global Insights Report on Walled Gardens homes in on the largest social and commerce platforms and finds that they have become the dominant gateways for advertising, product discovery, and even news consumption. Brands have followed users into these closed ecosystems, concentrating budgets on environments that promise scale and targeting while offering just enough transparency to keep nervous CFOs on board.

Marketers want light, not just scale

Marketers increasingly rank transparency, addressability, and trust alongside reach and performance when judging platforms, a sign that raw impressions are losing their charm. Many are rethinking how they measure success inside walled gardens, pushing for independent verification, granular controls, and a clearer accounting of where ads appear and who is actually seeing them.

Social platforms have evolved into full-fledged commerce hubs, blurring the lines between entertainment, shopping, and news in a way that delights engagement teams and terrifies brand stewards. As consumers scroll from creator content to checkout in a few taps, advertisers are forced to confront the reality that a brand’s “storefront” is now a video feed, an influencer post, or a shoppable livestream that sits squarely inside someone else’s walled domain.

Verification as a passport

DoubleVerify positions its verification, fraud detection, and attention measurement tools as a kind of passport that lets brands move through these gated environments with fewer unpleasant surprises. By layering its measurement and brand-safety controls across social, CTV, and broader omnichannel campaigns, the company pitches itself as the independent referee in a game increasingly officiated by platforms that also keep the score.

An arms race in trust

The broader series of 2025 Global Insights reports—from regional breakdowns to streaming and omnichannel benchmarks—paints a picture of an industry locked in an arms race between scale and scrutiny. Ad fraud, viewability gaps, and uneven attention metrics remain stubborn problems, but the data show incremental improvements where verification and tighter controls are widely adopted, turning brand safety from a compliance box-check into a competitive edge.

The bill comes due for opacity

The quiet punchline to the walled‑garden narrative is that opacity now carries a price premium that fewer marketers are willing to pay. Platforms that cannot convincingly demonstrate real audiences, safe environments, and accountable performance may find that the walls they built to protect their data are also keeping out increasingly skeptical ad budgets.

How Google, Amazon, and Walmart fit in

For Google (GOOG), tighter verification across its properties and networks strengthens the pitch that performance marketing does not have to mean “trust us” marketing, helping the company reassure risk‑averse brands even as it expands inventory and automation. Amazon (AMZN), already sitting on a closed loop between ad exposure and purchase, stands to benefit when independent measurement validates that its shopper‑data advantage translates into real, high‑quality outcomes rather than just higher ad prices. Walmart (WMT), rapidly scaling its own retail media and commerce ecosystem, can use DoubleVerify-style safeguards to convince national advertisers that its growing walled garden offers not only reach among in‑market shoppers but also the same level of third‑party accountability they expect from more mature digital giants—positioning the retailer as a credible, brand‑safe alternative rather than merely a budget line item in the “experimental” column.

The Sources

by Vista Partners LLC December 2, 2025

Royalties, Heritage and Iron Ore: Inside Rio Tinto’s New Nyiyaparli Agreement -( $RIO $SPY )

Rio Tinto (RIO) has inked a fresh version of its Native Title Agreement with the Karlka Nyiyaparli Aboriginal Corporation, giving the mining giant clearer rules of engagement on Nyiyaparli Country while promising stronger protections and longer-term benefits for the traditional owners. In a Pilbara context still haunted by the Juukan Gorge blast, the deal reads as both risk management and reputational rehab—with a side of overdue courtesy to the people whose land actually hosts the ore.

The deal on the table

Under the updated agreement, Karlka Nyiyaparli Aboriginal Corporation (KNAC) and Rio Tinto set out a more structured framework for how mining can proceed across Nyiyaparli Country, including parts of Rio’s Hope Downs operations and the proposed Rhodes Ridge development. In practice, that means Rio gets regulatory and social certainty for future mine plans, and Nyiyaparli people get a clearer say in when, where, and how those plans unfold.

The agreement tightens cultural heritage and environmental protections, brings consultation forward in the project timeline, and promises more transparency in decision-making—three features that amount to a quiet admission that the 2011-era arrangements were built for a different political climate. It also embeds governance structures designed to reflect Nyiyaparli cultural priorities alongside Rio’s corporate protocols, an unusual blend of boardroom and bush law that would have seemed exotic in an earlier iron-ore boom.

From “dig first” to “talk first”

A key selling point is earlier and ongoing consultation, a concept that sounds modest until one recalls that, historically, some Pilbara agreements allowed miners to proceed while traditional owners found out after the bulldozers had developed a first-name relationship with the landscape. The new process is meant to shift engagement from crisis PR to something closer to joint planning, at least on paper.

Heritage advice and on-Country consultations fed into the redraft, giving Nyiyaparli community members a direct role in shaping the terms that govern future disturbance. In a region where past contracts sometimes restricted Aboriginal groups from publicly criticising damage to heritage sites, that consultative choreography is less a flourish than a form of risk containment for both sides.

Royalties, jobs and the long game

Rio, which reported paying about 8.4 billion dollars in global taxes and royalties in 2024—most of it in Australia—has every incentive to ensure the iron ore underpinning those cheques is not stranded by social or legal disputes. For Nyiyaparli, the updated agreement is framed as a path to “enduring benefits,” code for turning one-off payments into something closer to an intergenerational revenue stream.

Beyond royalties, the deal highlights employment, training, and business development opportunities for Nyiyaparli people, an increasingly standard—but still unevenly delivered—promise in Pilbara mining pacts. The test, as ever, will be whether local businesses and workers see contracts and careers, or just more carefully footnoted aspiration.

Life after Juukan

Five years on from the destruction of Juukan Gorge, Rio Tinto remains under close watch from investors, regulators and Aboriginal groups over how it “modernises” legacy agreements across its Pilbara footprint. Some traditional owners say progress has been patchy, with longstanding complaints about underpayment and one-sided terms still surfacing at shareholder meetings.

Against that backdrop, the Nyiyaparli agreement functions as both legal instrument and exhibit A in Rio’s argument that it has learned from past mistakes. In a region where iron ore mines can outlive multiple corporate strategies—and sometimes the fine print that governs them—the real measure will be whether this document still looks fair when today’s executives have long since rotated out of the org chart.

Beta Bionics steps on the gas

From lab vision to installed base

Modular Medical lines up its shot

Different roads, same destination

Modular Medical CEO Presenting at RSVP-Only Tribe Public CEO Dinner Event, Tuesday, Dec. 9 in Atlanta (Buckhead) – Seating Available..

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Policy buzz around robotics

Short squeeze and penny-stock dynamics

Context: still a distressed story

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The new AI-first Nokia

NVIDIA muscles onto the cap table

Capital markets day, with numbers attached

5G still pays the bills

From turnaround to test case

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Indexes and macro backdrop

Fed, tariffs and Washington

Metals, oil and crypto

Big tech, chips and AI

Health care, consumer and the rest of the tape

Deals, IPOs and corporate activity

VP Watchlist Updates

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Record sales, nervous wallets

Discounts do the heavy lifting

Buy now, worry later

The quiet squeeze on households

Spend now, pull back later?

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A 3‑Nanometer Shot at the Throne

UltraServers: Racks as Status Symbols

Pointed at Nvidia, Smiling at Google

From Frontier Labs to Regular IT

The Quiet Hedge on the Future

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The deal, in Wall Street numbers

Why Marvell is buying light

A pricey hedge against Nvidia envy

Startups in the age of earn‑outs

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Macro Data Thin, Shutdown Delays Persist

Yields Steady, FOMC Looms Next Week

Commodities Dip, Bitcoin Bounces Back

Lilly Shines on Analyst Upgrades

AI Chips and Large caps Lead the Charge

Infrastructure AI Plays Draw Capital

Traditional Names Hold Steady

Emerging Plays in Nuclear and Housing

IPOs and Deals Stay Selective

VP Watchlist Updates

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Walled gardens grow higher

Marketers want light, not just scale

Social platforms as shopping malls

Verification as a passport

An arms race in trust

The bill comes due for opacity

How Google, Amazon, and Walmart fit in

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The deal on the table

From “dig first” to “talk first”

Royalties, jobs and the long game

Life after Juukan

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