The 100,000-year plan: As Finland takes bold action toward energy independence with new nuclear reactors and an unfathomable waste-storage strategy, Russia’s energy tendrils are proving hard to untangle.

Thinner and lighter devices are a repairability problem: Tech companies like to talk about how far ahead they are in sustainability, but their products undermine their net-zero aspirations.

Emerging countries looking to upgrade their network infrastructure have become good starting points for expanding Big Tech’s network provider aspirations.

Aspiration. Bank of America. Banking Exchange. Built for Mars. Capital One. Chase. Chime. Citibank. Columbus Business First. Cornerstone Advisors. Current. Fifth Third Bank. Forbes. J.D. Power. Newgen. PNC. Prove. Signicat. TD Bank. The Financial Brand. Truist. U.S. Bank. Varo. Wells Fargo.

The top four US neobanks by user count—Aspiration, Chime, Current, and Varo—will nearly double their users from 17.7 million this year to 34.0 million in 2025, per our forecast; these figures are approximate, given the likely overlap between account holders. While this growth is impressive, it’s not translating into profits.

Banks are progressively competing with each other for the same search terms across the same channels, making it more difficult to achieve conversion, said Ivan Wicksteed, chief growth and revenue officer at environment- and ethics-focused financial firm Aspiration.

Aspiration positions itself as the anti-bank. It will have 3.0 million account holders by the end of 2021, or 1.1% of the US adult population. By 2025, we expect Aspiration to more than double its total customers to 6.4 million (2.4% of US adult consumers).

Although office perks like free food, swag, and ping pong may have been desirable in the past, changed expectations and aspirations have elevated remote work on the perk hierarchy. From Big Tech’s perspective, its real estate spending sprees—including Apple’s $5 billion Apple Park campus—need bodies to justify the expenses.

Citizen Musk: Altruistic free speech aspirations aside, purchasing Twitter gives Musk political leverage similar to Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the New York Post in 1976 as well as his 2007 purchase of The Wall Street Journal. Billionaires buying into the media is nothing new. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013.

Some of the most formidable sustainability competitors banks face include US neobank Aspiration, which markets itself aggressively and offers a wide array of ESG-focused products and services. Even smaller players, such as California-based Joro, present a threat with unique ESG tools that include a real-time, personalized sustainability impact assessment.

Russia previously received AI tech support from China for robotic weapons development, but war sanctions are dealing a blow to Russia’s AI aspirations. China is similarly working on AI-fueled autonomous weapons, possibly surpassing US progress in that arena.

Intel’s European aspirations mirror its $20 billion chip hub in Ohio, as well as a $7 billion facility in Malaysia. The company is looking to take advantage of significant EU subsidies for building chip plants. Europe is aiming to legislate $49 billion into chip funding but with the caveat that governing bodies have a say in which industries companies can prioritize.

However, the MLB is currently in a lockout that could end up canceling the entire season, complicating Apple's aspirations. 2. New iPhone SE, iPad Air models feature the latest mobile processors, 5G connectivity.

Current is set to surpass Aspiration to become No. 2

Revolut India CEO Paroma Chatterjee called it “the first step toward our aspiration to usher in a digital financial revolution in India.”. Revolut also gave an overview of its product plans, stating it intends “to launch bespoke financial products, many of which would be new to the country, reflecting the unique needs of Indian consumers.”.

In shopping, we're not a retailer, and we have no aspirations to be a retailer. In payments, we're not a bank, and we have no aspiration to be a bank. But we can help retailers bring their value propositions to the user’s purchase journeys as they're figuring out where or what to buy.

It’s not enough for CMOs to capture and aggregate customer opinions, ideas, and aspirations. Great CMOs become champions for their customers inside the organization, seeking to influence policy decisions, back-end processes, and even financial decisions.

The whole Windows Phone fiasco should have been enough to distance Microsoft from its mobile aspirations, but the temptation was too strong. Microsoft’s Surface Duo 2, the successor to its poorly received dual-screen Android-powered device, remains an oddity in the smartphone market.