Welcome to Markets Desk, here's what's moving the needle this Monday.
SoftBank has overtaken Toyota to become Japan's largest company by market capitalisation, a seismic shift in the country's corporate landscape driven entirely by the global appetite for artificial intelligence. Masayoshi Son's tech conglomerate has been riding the AI wave hard, and investors are now pricing that vision at a premium over Japan's most iconic industrial name.
Staying with AI, but moving to Washington — Admiral Frank Bradley, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, addressed the tension at the heart of military AI adoption this weekend. While the Trump administration pushes to integrate artificial intelligence into targeting and battlefield decisions, Bradley made clear that human accountability cannot be outsourced — telling a special forces conference that any system must ensure violence lands only where commanders intend it.
And from the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell made his first significant public appearance since leaving office, accepting an award at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Without naming the former president directly, Powell framed the central bank's recent political pressure as a stress test — one it shares with universities, courts, and Congress — and used the moment to make a quiet but pointed case for institutional independence.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
