$192.7B
How much VC funding went to AI startups from January through September of 2025, per PitchBook data, out of a total $366.8B.
Most of that cash went to major players in the space — e.g., Anthropic, xAI, etc. — but 1.3k+ AI startups have achieved valuations over $100m while ~500 have become unicorns.
Obvious question here: Will the AI bubble ever pop? Opinions vary, with some investors touting the value of investing in not just AI, but power grids and chips and everything else that it — and other tech — requires. However…
8
On a scale of 0 to 8, how likely it is that, yes, AI is a bubble just waiting to burst, according to economist Brent Goldfarb, who co-wrote Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation with David A. Kirsch. Goldfarb told Wired that AI checks all the boxes of what makes a bubble — uncertainty and a great narrative, among them.
65%
Share of US workers who are interested in microshifting, per Owl Labs' 9th Annual State of Hybrid Worker report. This means employees work in short, non-linear blocks based on what they need to accomplish, when they're typically most productive, and how they're feeling that day. Managers and caregivers were 3x more likely to try microshifting than individual contributors and non-caregivers.
$2.2B+
How much the highest-grossing film of 2025 has made. If you're in the US, you might assume we're talking about A Minecraft Movie, which pulled in ~$424m at the domestic box office — but you'd be wrong. We're actually talking about Ne Zha 2, a Chinese animated film about a mythological figure in Chinese folk religion. It's become not only the highest-grossing animated film ever, but one of the highest-grossing films of all-time. For reference, Avatar is at No. 1, with a $2.9B global box office.
But here's a fun fact: If you adjust for inflation, the actual highest-grossing film would be 1939's Gone With the Wind, which benefitted from debuting long before we had a cornucopia of movies to watch from the comfort of our own homes.
41
Cities deemed unaffordable, per The Economist's third annual "Carrie Bradshaw Index," up from 38 cities in 2024. This index compares the gross median wages of 100 US cities with the income required to live alone — as Carrie Bradshaw did in "Sex and the City" — using the 30% rent-to-income rule that states tenants should spend no more than 30% of their gross income on rent.
Cities received a value above 1 if the average worker could find an affordable place to roll solo and less than 1 if that dream was unattainable. New York City, where Bradshaw lived in Manhattan, was the most unaffordable city, requiring an income of $151.6k. Wichita, Kansas, where the median income was 75% higher than what would be required to rent the average studio, was ranked most affordable.
47.6%
Of the US households that acquired a pet in 2025, the share that got a cat, per a report from the American Veterinary Medical Association. This is up from 43.5% in 2023, while the share of households that acquired a dog was 54.5%, down from 57.3% in 2023.
Why does this matter? Dog and cat acquisition is slowly sliding toward parity in America, perhaps signaling an eventual end to the dog-people vs. cat-people debates. All pets are great, which is probably why the average US pet owner spent $1.7k on them this year. Worth every penny.
98.67%
And finally, the most important digit of 2025: The likelihood that Chicago's famous Rat Hole — an imprint where a rat was believed to have died shortly after a layer of concrete was poured onto the sidewalk — was actually created by a squirrel, per a study published in the journal Biology Letters. Researchers compared measurements of the impression to eight rodent species to come to this conclusion.
The Chicago Department of Transportation removed the imprint last year, but it lives on in City Hall storage and via a plaque at the original site in Roscoe Village.
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