$25B Inflows in Down Year
Sam Altman Targets Apple’s AI Throne and Google Regains AI Momentum
$25B Inflows in Down Year
BlackRock’s spot bitcoin ETF continues to attract capital even in a difficult year for crypto prices, underscoring the changing profile of ETF investors.
Data highlighted by Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas shows that BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has pulled in more than $25 billion of net inflows in 2025, ranking sixth among all U.S. ETFs. This comes despite IBIT posting a negative return of roughly 9.6% for the year.
Notably, IBIT attracted more new money than the SPDR Gold ETF, even though gold surged about 65% over the same period. The only ETFs ahead of IBIT in inflows were broad equity products, led by Vanguard S&P 500 ETF.
Balchunas argued that the key signal isn’t short-term performance, but investor behavior. Strong inflows during a down year suggest long-term conviction. As he put it: if $25 billion can arrive in a bad year, the upside in a good one could be far larger.
Sam Altman Targets Apple’s AI Throne
The race to dominate large language models is increasingly tilted toward Google, at least in the eyes of many investors. With vast user data from Search, YouTube, Android, Maps, and Gmail—and leadership from figures like Demis Hassabis—Google appears structurally advantaged in the AI arms race.
But Sam Altman is playing a longer game. Rather than framing the future around model benchmarks alone, the OpenAIchief sees the real battle unfolding in consumer hardware. In Altman’s view, the ultimate rival isn’t Google, but Apple.
That ambition became clearer after OpenAI recruited legendary iPhone designer Jony Ive. The goal: a purpose-built AI device that moves beyond phones, prioritizes audio over screens, understands real-world context, and ships with its AI system fully integrated.
Apple’s massive cash flow and hardware expertise remain formidable, while OpenAI is still focused on refining ChatGPT amid competition from Anthropic and others. Still, Altman is betting that the next computing platform hasn’t been invented yet—and that OpenAI can help define it.
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Google Regains AI Momentum
Google’s grip on the AI narrative looked increasingly fragile in early 2025, as rivals gained attention and investor confidence wavered. That changed after the company elevated Josh Woodward, a 16-year veteran, to oversee the Gemini app while retaining leadership of Google Labs.
The move placed Woodward at the center of Google’s AI strategy just as competition from OpenAI and its breakout product ChatGPT intensified. Internally, colleagues credit Woodward with cutting through bureaucracy, accelerating product launches, and balancing speed with safety in a market plagued by AI errors and low-quality content.
Under his leadership, Gemini features such as the viral image tool “Nano Banana” drove massive user engagement, briefly straining Google’s infrastructure. By late 2025, Gemini had overtaken ChatGPT in Apple’s App Store rankings, helping restore confidence in Alphabet’s AI direction.
Woodward’s rise highlights a broader shift: execution speed and product focus now matter as much as model quality in the AI race.
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