When it comes to the best Big Tech brands, Apple, Google, and Microsoft usually top the list (though not always in that order). Below that, the rest usually jockey for position based on a range of product launches and economic factors. However, thanks to the AI boom of 2025, one brand in particular leapt up the charts, and it could clamber even higher if AI growth continues apace. To understand what caused the market shift, let’s look at the top five most valuable Big Tech brands of 2026.

If there were an award for most changed brand of the year, it would go straight to …

Apple at $608 billion

As the first trillion-dollar company on the stock market, Apple regularly occupies the top spot, thanks to its multi-tiered business strategy that covers premium products, cloud services, and entertainment content. This year is no different with the Cupertino giant earning a valuation of $608 billion for 2026, a 6% increase from last year. Apple is expected to make waves with a stacked list of innovative new hardware in 2026, including the long-anticipated foldable iPhone and a more affordable (i.e., financially accessible) base model MacBook alongside multiple new MacBooks Pro, and it will enter the smart home category with a smart home hub that includes an integrated display.

Microsoft at $565 billion

Microsoft has spent several years in the second valuation slot, driven in part by the AI rush of the 2020s. As an early investor in OpenAI, Microsoft was one of the first brands that brought generative AI to market. Although Microsoft’s origin story is all about Windows, its business portfolio today covers a wide range of products and services, including its cloud platform Azure, office applications under Microsoft 365, AI endeavors built on the back of Copilot, and the gaming division under Microsoft Gaming and Xbox. All these together helped the brand grow 23% year over year, maintaining its spot on the chart.

RELATED: US officials tell Nvidia not to send top AI chips to China, prompting backlash

CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Google at $433 billion

Also unchanged this year, Google maintains its third-place ranking due to its diverse portfolio driven largely by Google Cloud services, Google Ads, and revenue from Search. While these categories have long been value makers for Google’s brand, the company also built a robust AI platform known as Gemini. Last year, Google released Gemini 3, a generative AI solution so powerful that it made OpenAI sweat. This year, Google is partnering with Apple to build a custom version of Gemini 3 for Apple Intelligence in a deal worth $5 billion, further adding to Google’s 2026 valuation, which is 5% higher than last year.

Amazon at $370 billion

You know Amazon as the world’s largest online retailer, but it also runs the most popular cloud service provider known as AWS. With a leading 30% market share over Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, Amazon’s steady sales performance and cloud market dominance led to a valuation increase of 4% from last year, helping the e-commerce giant maintain its 4th place slot for the third year in a row.

Nvidia at $184 billion

If there were an award for most changed brand of the year, it would go straight to Nvidia.

As a recent newcomer to the top 10 most valuable tech brands in the world, GPU maker Nvidia blew the market away, jumping four spots from number nine to number five. With rapid growth exceeding 110% of its market value since 2025, Nvidia rode the AI wave to grand success. Today its high-powered GPUs are used in data centers to train and maintain the LLM models for the biggest generative AI companies on the planet, including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. Nvidia is also a strategic partner in President Trump’s Stargate AI initiative.

Nvidia’s meteoric leap up the charts highlights how important AI is for the brand, and it also shows that the company has a lot to lose if the AI bubble bursts. This may be why Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang is so adamant about pushing AI into society, adding AI agents into the workforce, and proclaiming AI as our digital manifest destiny.

What happens next?

This year marks the first time Nvidia has cracked the top five valuation list. Last year, it was barely in the top 10, and before that, it didn’t rank at all. Needless to say, the AI boom has been a huge boon to Nvidia’s business, catapulting it from a gaming GPU company to a vital AI hardware powerhouse. As for what will happen to the company next, that all depends on the future of AI itself.

If generative AI continues to expand throughout our apps, work, and daily life, Nvidia’s valuation will inevitably grow with it, potentially overtaking Amazon as it rises up the chart with ever-evolving hardware for the next block of data centers. Still there is a wide value gap between fifth and fourth place and an even greater gap between Nvidia at the bottom and Apple perched on top. It’s hard to believe that Nvidia will ever crack the big three tech brands that power the U.S. economy, much less overtake the top spot entirely, but it’s fun to watch it try.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was hospitalized Monday night after experiencing “flu-like symptoms,” raising more concerns about the 83-year-old’s health.

The Kentucky Republican is poised to retire at the end of his term early next year, but has been under scrutiny over the several medical episodes he has had in recent years. McConnell’s spokesman David Popp said the former Senate leader checked himself into the hospital out of “an abundance of caution,” noting that his “prognosis is positive.”

This is just the latest in a string of medical episodes McConnell has suffered.

“In an abundance of caution, after experiencing flu-like symptoms over the weekend, Senator McConnell checked himself into a local hospital for evaluation last night,” Popp said in a statement Tuesday.

“He is grateful for the excellent care he is receiving. He is in regular contact with his staff and looks forward to returning to Senate business,” Popp added.

RELATED: Mitch McConnell falls following Senate vote: Report

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

This is just the latest in a string of medical episodes McConnell has suffered. On multiple occasions, McConnell has been seen “freezing” on camera and made use of a wheelchair. In recent months, McConnell has been increasingly seen holding on to staff to walk up stairs and through corridors on Capitol Hill.

McConnell sprained his wrist and cut his face after falling at a GOP staff lunch in 2024; took a fall at a D.C. hotel and was treated for a concussion in 2023; and fractured his shoulder when he fell in his home in Kentucky in 2019.

RELATED: Mitch McConnell receives medical attention after fall

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After several medical episodes, McConnell stepped down from his Senate leadership position in 2024. Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) succeeding him.

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Police have revealed a new detail about what led to a wild brawl between an adult male with a MAGA hat and apparent high school students at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest in Texas earlier this week.

Buda Police said 45-year-old Chad Michael Watts of Kyle was charged Tuesday with two counts of assault causing bodily injury, which are Class A misdemeanors.

‘We want to be thorough in this investigation to make sure that everybody is held accountable that needs to be held accountable.’

Police previously said students from Moe and Gene Johnson High School in Buda were conducting a “walkout” protest Monday — then officers were dispatched for a fight in progress just before 3 p.m. Buda is about 20 minutes southwest of Austin.

Arriving officers were notified that a juvenile female on the sidewalk and an adult male in a vehicle were engaged in a verbal argument, police said, adding that the argument escalated into a physical altercation involving multiple people.

Police said further investigation determined that Watts was the primary aggressor in the physical altercation.

However Officer Matt Schima with the Buda Police Department told KEYE-TV that “I think mistakes were made on both sides.”

Schima added to the station that “it was clearly a difference of opinion on the immigration issue. And that’s what started the verbal altercation between the two primary parties. And then the juvenile ended up kicking the adult’s truck. He got out of the truck and then that’s when that physical altercation started.”

Schima told KEYE in a video interview that police also are looking into possible charges against the juveniles involved in the brawl and that “we want to be thorough in this investigation to make sure that everybody is held accountable that needs to be held accountable.”

Hays County Jail records indicate Watts was booked into jail Tuesday and released Wednesday on two surety bonds of $2,500 each. Police told KEYE that Watts has no previous record of violent offenses.

RELATED: 45-year-old ‘primary aggressor’ charged after wild brawl caught on video involving apparent HS students at ICE protest

While apparently no videos have surfaced yet showing what went down before things got physical between the adult male in the vehicle and the juvenile female arguing with him, one clip recorded from a distance shows what appears to be the adult male on the street swinging at a female as they move from the street to the sidewalk and to the grass.

A second clip recorded very close to the fight shows what appears to be the adult male holding a MAGA hat while swinging at a female and pushing her backward as she fights back; she momentarily grabs the MAGA hat before she falls to the grass.

A third clip shows the bulk of the brawl, and the adult male is outnumbered. At least a dozen apparent high schoolers punch and kick him, knock him to the ground, and even put him in a headlock until he’s able to get up and retreat to his vehicle. Those fighting and watching the brawl are heard yelling, “What the f**k?” and “Get him!” and “F**k ICE! You’re a bitch!” and “F**kin’ kill yourself!”

Once the adult male is back in his vehicle, one individual from the crowd is heard yelling at him, “Hey, you want another ass-beating, come on out!” The adult male eventually puts the MAGA hat on his head.

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American liberals are notorious for capriciously changing their supposedly deeply held views when doing so might help them better meet the political moment.

For example, liberals — who seemingly still can’t figure out what a woman is — used “believe all women” as a cudgel against Republicans but rushed to add an asterisk to the slogan when believing all women threatened their presidential candidate’s chances in 2020.

‘Irony meters have been melted.’

After long characterizing babies in the womb as clumps of cells whose death from abortion should be celebrated, liberals terrified over the potential repeal of birthright citizenship decided last year that unborn children actually deserve some legal protection.

Liberals have once again unwittingly embraced views at odds with their supposed convictions, this time regarding the importance of borders and knowing who crosses them.

In an apparent effort to prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from capturing more criminal noncitizens, some residents have erected impermissible roadblocks and checkpoints in the streets of Minneapolis where they have pressed passersby for identification and checked license plates.

The anti-ICE activists told WCCO-TV that this initiative was undertaken in the name of “public safety” and to prevent the incursion of interlopers whom they claim are “hurting their communities.”

RELATED: Socialist Minneapolis councilwoman calls Trump a ‘domestic terrorist’ — and proposes rental assistance over ICE surge

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

One middle-aged woman identified as Kelly Piatt told WCCO, “We are literally creating a place that we know who’s coming in and out of our neighborhoods.”

Wade Haynes, a local resident who apparently has the free time to stand guard at the roadside twice a day, suggested that he felt better having his neighbors keep watch for unfamiliar cars.

“I was like, ‘Wow, we got folks out there taking care of us, looking out for us,'” Haynes said without a trace of irony. “It’s good.”

“We need to keep our neighbors safe. We will be doing this again,” Piatt said after their roadblock was cleared by city officials.

Critics noted that what Piatt and her comrades were clumsily attempting to do at the local level resembled the work they have condemned ICE and Border Patrol for legally doing at the national level — namely enforcing America’s borders and ensuring that the country knows precisely who is coming in and going out.

Second Amendment activist and liberal-protest survivor Kyle Rittenhouse noted, “Imagine for a moment, there was a border, with a wall, and everyone in the community had identification cards — so you knew who everyone was, and knew that they belonged!”

“Irony meters have been melted,” wrote the popular X account Western Lensman.

Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project, concluded that “liberal white women have IQs lower than the Somali pirates defrauding them.”

Border czar Tom Homan told reporters on Wednesday, “When I was made aware that the roadblocks exist, I called the chief of police, and he went and disbanded them after I got off the phone with him. He has promised to take enforcement action.”

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Somali fraudsters apparently have some competition from other migrant communities.

A pair of Venezuelan nationals were charged along with two other migrants this week for allegedly stealing and using the identities of over 100 individuals to obtain millions of dollars in federal welfare.

The Venezuelans, both of whom previously enjoyed Temporary Protected Status — Roman Vequiz Fernandez, 32, and Coralba Albarracin Siniva, 24 — and Joel Vicioso Fernandez, a 42-year-old Dominican national and permanent resident of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, were arrested and charged with conspiracy to use, transfer, acquire, and possess Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

‘It is not particularly hard to identify these scams.’

Joel Fernandez’s brother, Raul Fernandez Vicioso — a 37-year-old Dominican national and naturalized U.S. citizen who also lives in Fitchburg — was charged with conspiracy to commit SNAP fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, SNAP benefit fraud, aiding and abetting, and money laundering.

Charging documents allege that the men and their co-conspirators used 117 stolen identities from individuals in six states and Puerto Rico to create 24 “households” in SNAP applications. The “households” were said on average to contain four to five people, and all of the fraudulent “households” were listed as living in two single-family apartments in Providence, Rhode Island.

While there was already ample cause for the Rhode Island Office of Internal Audit to suspect something was off, the alleged fraudsters also used the same bogus lease agreement in support of 17 of the 24 applications and routinely submitted and accessed the online applications using the same out-of-state IP address.

RELATED: Mike Lee reveals the real victims of Somali fraud: ‘It is not the rich people who suffer’

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The charging document noted that Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance records identified the theft of approximately $115,000 in SNAP funds in relation to this scheme; however, the state agency did not appear to bother informing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General or any other law enforcement agency.

U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley hammered this point again during a press conference on Tuesday, stating that the USDA OIG “is not aware of the Massachusetts DTA making any referral report to the USDA concerning this theft.”

Apparently eager to steal even more, the Dominican nationals allegedly used their own personal information to create additional fraudulent SNAP benefit accounts, which involved the alleged use of fake passports and passport cards.

Investigators found that metadata from images of the counterfeit documents indicated they were taken in Leominster, Massachusetts, at the site of El Primo Restaurant, an establishment operated by the younger brother.

The suspected fraudsters had allegedly been using the stolen welfare benefits to purchase bulk food items for retail sale at the restaurant.

Federal agents raided the restaurant and Vicioso’s residence on Sept. 24, 2025, and found approximately 20 fraudulently obtained Rhode Island and Massachusetts EBT cards, fraudulent documents, a handwritten list of identities, SNAP-related mailings, and a machine that enables stolen EBT card information to be loaded on a physical payment card, alleged the charging documents.

The Justice Department noted that in addition to allegedly fraudulently obtaining at least $440,000 in SNAP benefits from Massachusetts and Rhode Island between December 2023 and September 2025, the defendants allegedly also fraudulently secured over $700,000 by submitting bogus applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits in Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington from 2020 to 2021.

For the alleged PUA fraud, at least 29 different identities were used on the applications, not including Vicioso and Fernandez, who also allegedly issued applications in their own names.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Foley told reporters on Friday. “We are investigating many more benefit fraud cases in my office, and today is just the beginning.”

In December, Foley’s office announced the arrests of two men — Antonio Bonheur, a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Saul Alisme, a Haitian national — who allegedly engaged in a scheme to obtain millions of dollars’ worth of SNAP benefits through small retail stores they ran in Boston.

The duo are also accused of selling donated food product intended for starving children overseas.

“It is not particularly hard to identify these scams, but if you don’t even care to look or prosecute those involved, essentially allowing criminals to steal vast amounts of taxpayer money with impunity, the scams will continue to proliferate unabated,” added Foley.

The U.S Government Accountability Office noted in a September 2024 report that an estimated 11.7% or $10.5 billion of SNAP benefits paid out by the USDA in fiscal year 2023 “were the wrong amount or otherwise should not have been made.”

Last year, the USDA indicated that the national payment error rate for fiscal year 2024 was 10.93%.

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Court-packing — the act of adding judges to get favorable outcomes — is a no-go for anyone who cares about protecting a republic from backsliding into totalitarianism. Venezuela, Cuba, Poland, Hungary, and El Salvador, among other nations, are cautionary tales of what happens to countries who cheat the system by filling the courts with loyalists.

And yet, Utah has just done exactly that. On January 31, Republican Governor Spencer Cox signed Senate Bill 134 into law, increasing the Supreme Court from five to seven justices.

Glenn Beck is enraged that it was Republicans — who have historically rejected court-packing as a dangerous, anti-democratic move — who pushed this through.

“Any country that has ever done this, they fall into totalitarianism because they realize they can just change the referees. They’ll just add more referees, and they’ll add the referees they like,” he says, dismissing the Utah Republicans behind this judicial move as “hypocrites.”

Utah has been having problems with its judges legislating, instead of just interpreting existing laws, as is their designated role, he explains. This issue largely stems from the fact that Utah has adopted the Missouri Plan, in which a list of suitable judicial candidates is compiled by legal experts before the governor makes his or her selection.

“Can we stop being a country run by experts? We see exactly what the experts have done in every category. Stop it,” Glenn pleads.

The real issue, he says, is massive delays and overload in lower state courts. For years, Utahns have begged for reform but to no avail. Some may perceive the state government’s decision to add judges to the Supreme Court — which “wasn’t overrun” — as a solution to their woes, but it’s really just a power grab.

“This is not about efficiency. This is all about control,” Glenn says, “and I understand you have bad judges and they’ve been legislating, but you don’t do this, Utah.”

Republicans, accustomed to controlling Utah, have grown “soft,” “mushy,” and “embarrassed that they actually believe in the Constitution,” he explains, and now that they’ve “made all these mistakes, all these compromises,” they’re doing damage control by packing the Supreme Court.

“Republicans, you don’t get a pass here because Democrats would do it too. That argument damns the republic. … A legislature that expands a court after losing cases is not defending a republic. It’s announcing, constitutional limits only apply, you know, unless they’re inconvenient,” Glenn criticizes.

The root issue of Utah’s hypocritical compromising, he argues, can be found in America’s universities, which “despise the Constitution” and are teaching America’s future judges, journalists, lawyers, and bureaucrats that Marxism is morality.

“In a state that was raised on the Constitution, you know better than this,” Glenn says to Utah Republicans.

“Why are you shrinking from conflict, as if defending principles is somehow impolite?” he asks. “It is not impolite. It is required of you to stand. A republic cannot survive this kind of shyness. … You must stand, or you will lose everything.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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