In the fall of 2006, 89 Tower Records stores in the United States simultaneously put up clearance sale signs. CDs, vinyl records, posters, and headphones on the shelves began to be discounted, and employees tore down band promotional materials that had accompanied them for many years. Many people came to the stores, buying not just albums, but seemingly bidding farewell to an era. This company once owned over 200 stores, spanning 18 countries, with annual sales exceeding $1 billion at one point. Its flagship store was a sanctuary for music lovers and a stage where record companies, artists, and pop culture competed for attention. Tower Records even entered the internet early. In 1995, Tower.com was already online. It saw the digital world but still fell before the full arrival of digital music. Music did not disappear. Consumers listened more and more conveniently, and the global music industry later grew again. What was taken away by the times was the retail system that relied on large stores, expensive inventory, and selling entire albums to make money. The music business that started from a drugstore corner The story of Tower Records began in 1941. Russ Solomon, still a teenager, sold second-hand records in his father's Tower Drug Store in Sacramento, California. The drugstore shared a building with the Tower Theatre, and the name "Tower" came from this. At that time, buying records was usually a functional purchase. Records were placed in a corner of department stores or electronics shops, and clerks found goods according to catalogs; the space was hardly

At the end of August 2026, Reuters entered a humanoid robot training facility in China and witnessed a contradictory scene: the robots could punch, kick balls, and perform carefully choreographed movements, but once they actually entered factories, they were still challenged by flexible materials, unfamiliar workstations, and temporary changes. Just a few days ago, SoftBank was reported to be negotiating the acquisition of a majority stake in 1X, with a potential valuation of about $6 billion; the 2025 acquisition price for ABB's robotics business was $5.4 billion. Capital has already regarded humanoid robots as the next-generation platform, but production sites are still asking the most basic questions: can they work continuously, what is the failure rate, and can the hourly cost be lower than that of humans and traditional automation equipment? This gap is exactly the entry point that "The Next Billion-Dollar Ticket" Vol.14 aims to explore. From robotic arms to "general workers" Industrial robots are not a new industry. In 1961, Unimate entered a General Motors factory to handle high-temperature, repetitive, and dangerous die-casting transport; in the following decades, the automotive industry used welding, painting, and assembly robotic arms to establish highly automated production lines. According to the International Federation of Robotics, about 542,000 new industrial robots will be installed globally in 2024, exceeding 500,000 units for the fourth consecutive year, with Asia accounting for 74% of the global new deployments. Mature robotic arms are fast and precise but require fixed workstations, fences, fixtures, and extensive pre-programming. The commercial logic of humanoid robots comes from another route: global factories, warehouses, and tools are originally designed according to human height, hands, aisles, and stairs. If machines have legs, hands, vision, and language understanding capabilities

On October 6, 1993, Michael Jordan announced his retirement for the first time. At that time, he had just led the Chicago Bulls to a three-peat and was at the peak of a basketball player's career, the hardest moment to leave. A few months earlier, his father James Jordan was murdered; continuous games, advertisements, media pursuits, and public expectations had already left his life almost without any gaps. He left the most familiar court in the world and turned to play professional baseball. The following year, he played 127 games for the Birmingham Barons, a Double-A team affiliated with the Chicago White Sox, with a batting average of only 0.202, 3 home runs, but completed 30 stolen bases. In the baseball world, this was an ordinary, even embarrassing, record; in Jordan's life, it revealed a more authentic side: he was willing to temporarily set aside his proven identity and endure failure, ridicule, and long training again. A year later, he returned to the NBA and won three more championships. Decades later, people still buy shoes printed with the Jumpman logo, and young players are still compared to him. Jordan's compound interest started with victories and continued to expand through images, products, business contracts, and collective memory. However, this system also amplified his desire for control, sharp relationships, and management mistakes. Before fame: His competitive spirit had roots in family and era. Jordan grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, in a family that valued discipline and hard work. His father worked at General

In the summer of 2011, Borders bookstores across the United States simultaneously put up clearance sale posters. Novels, magazines, music, coffee mugs, and decorations on the bookshelves were all tagged with discount labels. Customers pushed shopping baskets through familiar aisles; some were looking for the last cheap bestseller, while others just wanted to take one more look at the bookstore that had accompanied them for many years. Decades ago, Borders represented the most advanced future of physical bookstores. It had large stores, a professional book selection system, comfortable reading spaces, and a nationwide supply chain. Readers could spend an entire afternoon in the store, flipping through books, drinking coffee, listening to music, and eventually taking home a few books they hadn't originally planned to buy. At its peak, Borders Group owned more than 1,200 Borders and Waldenbooks locations, making it the second-largest bookstore chain in the United States. In February 2011, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Five months later, the plan to find a buyer failed, and the remaining 399 stores all went into liquidation, with over 11,000 employees losing their jobs. Americans did not stop reading, and books did not disappear. What changed was the way readers searched for, purchased, and consumed content. 1. Two brothers redesigned the bookstore using data The story of Borders began in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1971, brothers Tom Borders and Louis Borders opened the first bookstore. At that time, many bookstores still relied on the store manager's experience to decide inventory, with bestsellers placed in prominent locations

Just yesterday, the world's largest oilfield services company SLB announced the acquisition of German heat exchanger manufacturer Kelvion for $4.1 billion. The deal includes $3.4 billion in cash and the assumption of approximately $700 million in debt, and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2027. Kelvion is expected to generate revenue of $2.3 to $2.4 billion in 2026, with data centers already becoming its largest and fastest-growing customer market. After the integration is completed, SLB hopes that the data center solutions business will achieve revenue of $4.5 to $5 billion by 2028. SLB's acquisition of Kelvion, a century-old industrial company that grew through drilling, pumping, and underground engineering, now spending billions to enter AI data centers, reflects that global capital is seeking new entry points beyond GPUs. AI chips are becoming increasingly popular, and cooling computing power has become a heavy-asset business. From data center air conditioning to chip water cooling Traditional data centers mainly rely on air cooling. Cool air enters from the front of the cabinet, and fans carry the heat generated by servers to the back, where it is handled by air conditioners and chillers. Early server cabinets had power of only a few kilowatts, and air cooling was sufficient. As CPU and GPU performance improved, the power per cabinet gradually increased. With advanced chip manufacturing processes, the number of transistors continues to grow, but voltage and leakage control become increasingly difficult, concentrating heat in a very small area. AI training further amplifies the problem. Nvidia GB200 NVL72 integrates 36 Grace CPUs and 72 Blackw

In May 2026, the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha was chaired for the first time by Greg Abel sitting in the main seat. Warren Buffett sat in the audience, listening to the successor answer shareholders' questions. For the previous sixty years, the center of the stage had always belonged to him. This handover had no dramatic farewell. Buffett had stepped down as CEO at the end of 2025; at 95 years old, he still served as chairman and continued to go to the office five days a week. Berkshire wrote in its 2025 annual report that he remained involved in insurance underwriting, the management of its subsidiaries, and stock and capital allocation. A man who had spoken about "long term" for decades gave his final important demonstration by gradually stepping back and letting the system continue to operate. As of the end of 2025, from 1965 to 2025, Berkshire's compound annual growth rate per share market value was 19.7%, while the S&P 500 including dividends was 10.5%; cumulative increases were approximately 6,099,294% and 46,061%, respectively. These figures easily paint Buffett as a genius myth. However, the truly valuable part of his life to unpack is how judgment is amplified layer by layer by knowledge, connections, capital, reputation, and time; as well as the mistakes and costs that do not appear in the rate of return table. Before fame: He was exposed to money very early and learned sales early on. Buffett did not start from poverty. His father, Howard Buffett, ran a securities business and later became a member of the U.S. Congress