Meta jumps 15% this week: Wall Street backs its AI spending

Meta rolled out Meta Compute this week, opening up its AI compute and models to outside customers and, at least on paper, giving investors a fresh revenue angle beyond advertising. The catch is that Meta still hasn’t actually sold the service, and it would be walking into a market where Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud already have deep roots.

Investors liked the pitch anyway. Shares rose 6% Friday and 15% for the week in July, Meta’s best stretch since early 2024. Part of the reaction was simple: the market finally had a clearer revenue narrative for Meta’s planned $125 billion to $145 billion in 2026 spending on data centers, chips, and models, after a year when the stock trailed the Nasdaq-100’s 18% gain. Ads still account for 98% of revenue. Meta said Q1 revenue came in at $56.3 billion, up 33%. But the rally was really about cloud compute, the Meta Model API, Muse Spark 1.1, Muse Image, and Muse Video, all priced aggressively.

If you watch Meta as more than an ads business, this update is worth a look. Nothing has been sold yet. Meta has never operated a public cloud at scale. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are firmly entrenched. And if the company builds too much capacity, that could end up looking like overbuilding.

Still, there’s plenty here for the market to latch onto. Meta’s Training and Inference Accelerator chips are meant to reduce its dependence on Nvidia. Iris is set to enter mass production in September 2026. Analysts think data-center costs in 2027 could come down by as much as 35%. Wolfe says each gigawatt at a $25 billion annualized run rate could raise EPS by 20%. Options volume ran more than 3x average, with 78% of the $1.8 billion premium going into calls, and price targets sit between $720 and $869.

The tools themselves will be available through Meta Compute and the Meta Model API.

One Piece Chapter 1188 spoilers are here: Imu crushes Luffy in Gear 5

One Piece Chapter 1188 spoilers have started circulating, and they point to a big loss for Monkey D. Luffy. Imu seemingly overwhelms Gear 5, then ends the clash with a brutal strike.

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If these leaks are accurate, this is more than the usual shonen setback. The spoilers claim Imu shuts down Luffy’s reality-bending power with alarming ease, stabs him with the so-called Void sword, and tells him he can never be Joy Boy because he’s too weak. That makes the defeat land on more than one level. It’s not only physical. It also hits at Luffy’s destiny, the idea of liberation, inherited will, and the hidden history of the world. For anyone following the Final Saga closely, there’s a lot to watch here. It frames Imu as a genuinely frightening endgame threat, echoes Sir Crocodile’s impalement of Luffy in Alabasta by pushing Luffy toward growth through failure, and lands especially hard after Egghead and Monkey D. Luffy’s encounters with Kizaru and Saint Jaygarcia Saturn. It also pushes back on the usual plot armor complaints and suggests that Luffy and his allies may have to fall back, rethink what they’re doing, and come back with new knowledge or greater strength. Fan reaction in spoiler circles is already landing somewhere between shock and excitement.

You can follow the official One Piece release on licensed manga platforms when Chapter 1188 goes live.

Disney’s live-action Moana opens softly: a projected $40M-$45M debut

Disney’s live-action Moana is out now, and the early numbers aren’t great. The remake of the 2016 animated hit is tracking for a $40 million to $45 million domestic opening, based on industry estimates, which makes this an early box-office letdown.

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That start looks weak against the film’s reported $250 million budget. It’s already being compared to softer Disney remake debuts like Snow White. And even though Moana 2 recently crossed $1 billion worldwide in reported box-office totals, some analysts think Disney may have gone back to the franchise too quickly. What should have felt like a big event seems to be landing more as audience fatigue.

For Dwayne Johnson, who returns as Maui after voicing the character in the 2016 hit, it extends a rough run in theaters. That stretch already includes Black Adam ($393.5 million worldwide on a reported $190 million to $260 million budget) and Jungle Cruise ($221 million on a reported $200 million budget).

The reviews haven’t helped much, either. Critics have called Moana unnecessary and thin, said Disney’s live-action Moana is missing the original’s spark, and argued that Johnson’s live-action Maui feels flatter this time around. If you track Dwayne Johnson’s box-office draw, this is one to watch, especially after The Smashing Machine, which reviewed well but didn’t turn into a major commercial success.

You can catch Disney’s live-action Moana in theaters now.

Avowed is still worth playing in 2026: 6 fantasy RPGs to try next

Obsidian Entertainment’s fantasy RPG Avowed launched on Windows and Xbox Series X/S on February 18, 2025, then came to PlayStation 5 on February 17, 2026. And despite a round of recent takes saying it’s time to move on because a sequel now seems unlikely, the game didn’t flop. Reviews were generally favorable, with people singling out the writing, the worldbuilding, the flexibility in combat, and the way it uses large, focused zones instead of stretching everything across one giant open world.

What’s going on with a sequel looks a lot more like internal shuffling at Microsoft Gaming than proof that Avowed failed. Reports said a follow-up had entered early development in 2026, but layoffs put it on hold, and the Avowed team was reportedly moved over to a Fallout project.

If you’re into choice-driven quests, more directed storytelling, and character builds that let you mix melee, magic, guns, or some hybrid of all three, Avowed is still well worth picking up. And if you want something in the same lane, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Dragon’s Dogma 2, The Witcher 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, GreedFall, and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic are your best bets. You can play Avowed right now on Windows, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5.

Motor City hits theaters in under two weeks: Alan Ritchson goes dark

Alan Ritchson’s Motor City reaches theaters on July 24, 2026. It’s an R-rated action thriller, darker and more stylized than the usual studio fare, set in 1970s Detroit, and with the release now less than two weeks out, it stands out as one of the month’s more notable arrivals.

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Ritchson stars as John Miller, a Detroit autoworker who’s framed by a local gangster, sent to prison, and torn away from his girlfriend. When he gets out, he comes back looking for violent revenge. Ben Foster and Shailene Woodley co-star.

Director Potsy Ponciroli reportedly keeps dialogue to a minimum, leaning instead on visual storytelling, atmosphere, and stylized action to carry the film. Jack White curated the soundtrack, which fits the setting and tone pretty well on paper.

Content-wise, expect strong bloody violence, grisly images, drug content, sexuality and nudity, plus plenty of language. Ritchson has also said the third act turns especially brutal.

Motor City premiered at Venice in August 2025 and later screened at TIFF, where the response was generally positive. It currently holds a 70% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

If you know Ritchson from Reacher and want to see him in something that feels more cinematic than a standard shoot-’em-up, this looks like one to keep an eye on. It also arrives at a moment when he’s clearly testing his action-star pull beyond streaming TV, after slimming down for the role and while lining up projects like Runner, The Man with the Bag, a green-lit War Machine sequel, and more Fast & Furious.

You can catch Motor City in theaters starting July 24.

WhatsApp beta could add birthday reminders: alerts for your contacts

Recent WhatsApp beta builds on Android point to a birthday reminder feature that’s still in the works. If it ships, the app would start nudging you about your contacts’ important dates, a bit like the birthday alerts people already know from Facebook. So far, though, there’s still no public release date.

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From the early beta reports, it looks like you’d get a separate Birthdays section with upcoming dates listed in order, plus reminders inside the app when the day actually arrives. It’s a small addition, but on a service Meta says more than 3 billion people use, that kind of feature could land differently, especially in places like India, Brazil, and Indonesia.

Those same reports suggest WhatsApp may draw that information either from birthdays already saved in your phone contacts or from birth dates some people have previously shared for age verification or legal compliance. What’s less clear right now is how accurate that data would be, and what privacy settings people would have over who gets to see it.

For people who use WhatsApp as their default way to talk every day, this one deserves attention. The app keeps picking up more business features, more privacy settings, and work on optional usernames.

Right now, the feature only shows up in recent WhatsApp beta builds on Android, and there’s still no public release date.