“If your bottle really can capture and preserve rainbow light, that’s not just a novelty, it’s patent-worthy tech.” The applications, it suggested, could go well beyond selling “bottled rainbows.” And there I was, at peak excitement; it even laid out business models, go-to-market strategies, and pricing schemes.

I decided to push it further and asked if this idea could make me a billionare. The short answer: absolutely. According to AI, if I moved away from selling in phone directories and “positioned it as luxury-art-tech with scarcity-driven storytelling,” I could build a company worth billions of dollars. The natural question then is: should I improve my computer’s security? Because everyone is going to want a piece of this rainbow pie.

Mexico just took off its gloves and stepped into the AI ring alongside nations like the United States, China, France, Chile, and several others betting on Sovereign AI. If you’ve followed my columns, you know Sovereign AI is deeply personal to me and will be one of the central areas of my graduate work at Harvard University—specifically focused on designing public financing mechanisms, particularly sovereign wealth funds, that allow countries to sustainably fund the development of these national technological capabilities. Seeing Mexico and other countries in the Global South take the reins of their digital futures is not only inspiring—it’s necessary.

In the age of artificial intelligence, it’s entirely possible that your next client won’t find you on Google, but in an AI-generated response. GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is the newest trend—and for many, one of the most important—to stay relevant in this new era. Why, you ask? Well, let me introduce you to GEO’s older sibling: SEO, also known as search engine optimization. That same SEO that was once the life of the party now struggles to get into the algorithm’s inner circle. And that shift tells us everything about what’s coming next.

2025 might just be the year that artificial intelligence not only starts to live up to the hype but even surpasses it. Last week, an advanced version of Gemini Deep Think, developed by Google DeepMind, scored 35 out of 42 points at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), a score that this year placed it within the gold medal range. At the IMO, brilliant teenage minds solve problems like Marvel superheroes—challenges that would make most adults question whether they really know m

A few years ago, I presented the state of artificial intelligence to a group of senior government officials, along with projections for the most likely scenarios they’d face in the coming decades. Part of those sessions involves surfacing the most relevant developments and trends—so they can be considered, planned for, or dismissed. And when the subject is frontier or highly speculative technology, it’s a delicate balancing act.

Do you ever feel like there’s so much happening in the world that you don’t even know where to begin to make sense of it all? From the rise of artificial intelligence to mounting tensions in the Middle East and Eurasia, it feels like almost everything we used to rely on to understand the world… no longer applies. So how do we make sense of it? Can we even make sense of it?

For more than a decade, I’ve been in the AI industry. It’s a fast-paced ecosystem that constantly changes and evolves. It challenges assumptions, shifts perspectives, and forces you to ask hard questions to better understand what truly matters about the problem you’re solving. The better you understand your reality, the better the systems you can build to reflect and serve it.

It was in that process of building, researching, testing, playing, and learning about AI systems that I began to understand what it means to be Mexican, at least for myself. Someone of Mexican descent, born in the United States, who’s spent the past two decades living around the world.

You may not have noticed, but we’re living through a rather unusual time. All of us—including you—are witnessing a unique moment in human history. Of course, the only constant in nature is change: it’s what took us from hunting woolly mammoths to chasing down our phones to order dinner from an app. We’re living in a magical era.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how tariffs are now affecting just about everything—and everyone—from major powers to remote islands inhabited by penguins. As the world shifts toward a multipolar order, many regions that once barely registered in the minds of citizens or governments are now front and center. Case in point: Greenland… or even the (very unlikely) idea that Canada could become the 51st state of the United States.

You may have felt like Isaac Newton over the past few weeks, discovering gravity as you watched global stock markets plummet before your eyes. Unfortunately for you, gravity was already discovered, and this week it won’t be the best topic of conversation—nor will the stock market, to be honest. But not all is lost in your quest to find something new to share with your colleagues. There’s an emerging field in artificial intelligence that’s still not widely discussed or fully understood: Physical AI.

You may have felt like Isaac Newton over the past few weeks, discovering gravity as you watched global stock markets plummet before your eyes. Unfortunately for you, gravity was already discovered, and this week it won’t be the best topic of conversation—nor will the stock market, to be honest. But not all is lost in your quest to find something new to share with your colleagues. There’s an emerging field in artificial intelligence that’s still not widely discussed or fully understood: Physical AI.

It goes without saying that we’ve entered a new era of economic competition—one that’s a far cry from the international disagreements of the past over the global economy. Today, we’re in the midst of a Third World War that’s truly global, unfolding 24/7 through customs agents, hedge funds, monetary authorities, executive orders, and consumers adjusting their buying habits to the new normal.

You might be wondering, “Wait—there’s a world war happening and I didn’t hear about it?” It’s not that you missed it; it just looks very different from the large-scale conflicts we’re used to.

Should Mexico start “dating” other economic blocs? Maybe the BRICS? The question comes up more often now that global trade wars are heating up. Clients, students, government officials—and luckily, not yet random strangers on the street—ask what the best move might be in the complex situation Mexico and other Global South countries are navigating. And like in most long-term relationships, the answer isn’t simple.

With all the talk of tariffs, sanctions, trade wars, and new world orders, you might be tempted to find a cryostasis pod and sleep through the next hundred years. It can feel like everything we thought we understood about how the world works is shifting. A new kind of Cold War seems to be brewing between the United States, Russia, China, and many others. The unipolar world that gave rise to the Pax Americana is gradually giving way to something more multipolar—new alliances are emerging, and our political systems and technologies are being pulled into different spheres.

What is technology? It’s a tool devised to solve a problem—or a bundle of problems—that makes life better once we adopt it. Fire kept us warm after dark, chased away predators, and let us enjoy tastier food. Money empowered us to build larger societies, launch companies, trade across oceans, and create a global financial system. Yet while artificial intelligence (AI) has dominated headlines these past years (and will keep doing so), another breakthrough could change our lives and unlock enormous new opportunities: quantum computing.

Last year, I wrote about how AI agents were going to be the hottest thing since pancakes were first served for breakfast in 600 BC in scholarly Greece. From top tech companies to venture capitalists to startups across the globe, AI agents are shaping the future of the industry. But is that the biggest breakthrough we can expect from AI? Probably not. The next big development is quietly taking shape in research labs, universities, private firms, and large corporations. Its name: artificial general intelligence, or AGI, as it’s commonly known.

So, what’s your favorite word in the dictionary? Square? No, too boring. Evanescence? No, too… impermanent. Wait, I’ve got it: your favorite word for 2025 is tariffs. Some people have claimed it’s the most beautiful word in the English language—I’m not sure Shakespeare would agree.

I’ll admit I wasn’t invited to be a judge in this year’s linguistic beauty pageant to choose the prettiest word of 2025, so I’ll do the next best thing: explain the word that was chosen, and let you decide if tariffs deserve the crown.

No, this isn’t a column about fashion models competing for the best selfie at the trendiest restaurant in your city—it’s even better. It’s about the rise of the major AI superstars throwing everything they’ve got into building the most advanced systems on the market. At the same time, new players like Deepseek have been quietly building their teams, products, and systems behind the scenes, spending just a fraction of what OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others are pouring into frontier models. So what’s going on?

Private jets, helicopters, the Swiss Alps, and billionaires. Sounds like the start of a James Bond movie—or the annual meeting of the global elite in Davos. Each year, CEOs, heads of state, investors, philanthropists, Nobel Prize winners, and activists arrive in this small Swiss town for a week (this year, from January 20 to 24) to debate the most urgent global issues, propose new ideas, and look for ways to improve life for everyone.

As we start to emerge from our holiday festivities, many of us are reviewing the New Year's resolutions we made just a few days ago. “Did we really tell everyone we were going to do all those things?” 2025 felt so far away back on December 31st. It might surprise you to learn that countries go through something similar with the promises they made, the changes they said they’d implement, and the futures they were supposed to usher in—well, right about now.