Truly proud to commend the TradeGrid team, Africa’s fastest-growing downstream oil trader, for delivering one of the region’s standout growth performances: 10x year-on-year growth, alongside strong profitability.

This achievement reflects disciplined execution, deep industry insight, and technology purpose-built for African energy markets. The results speak clearly, not only in Nigeria, but also with a strong showing in Kenya.

This is scaling, not just growth: durable, compounding progress built on fundamentals. Well done, team. Let us win 2026.

Hello, Market: here, we welcome another strong IPO candidate for Africa, joining our breakout Ghana-based portfolio biotech company, Revna Biosciences, which has scaled precision medicine across the continent.

At Tekedia Capital, we celebrate our founders who are executing the mission, building critical capabilities that advance the wealth of nations and the prosperity of our communities. Big salute to Tekedia Capital builders, find more markets and win.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe, PhD

• Member of Board, TradeGrid, USA & Africa
• Member of Board, Revna Biosciences, USA & Africa
• Chairman, Tekedia Capital

On the grounds of a former Ford stronghold in Brazil’s Bahia state, Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD is attempting something few foreign automakers have managed in recent years: rebuilding large-scale car manufacturing in the country while fending off political, labor, and industry backlash.

BYD is targeting 50% local production and sourcing of vehicle components at its new Camaçari factory by the end of 2026, a move the company says is essential to its ambition of becoming Brazil’s top-selling automaker by 2030. The push toward localization comes as critics accuse the EV maker of undercutting domestic manufacturers through heavy reliance on imports and temporary tariff exemptions.

“We got here at a very fast speed — the pace that we need to maintain to reach this goal,” Alexandre Baldy, BYD’s senior vice president in Brazil, told Reuters during a visit to the sprawling industrial complex.

The internal deadline for meeting the 50% local-content threshold is January 1, 2027, he said, covering both components produced in-house and parts supplied by Brazilian firms, including tires and other key inputs.

The factory, located near Salvador, has already produced about 25,000 electric and hybrid vehicles since operations began in October, making Brazil BYD’s largest market outside China. The site spans more than 4 million square meters and occupies land vacated by Ford Motor Co when the U.S. automaker shut its Brazilian manufacturing operations in 2021, a decision that sent shockwaves through the local economy.

The symbolism of BYD’s arrival has been underscored by the city of Camaçari renaming a nearby avenue from Henry Ford to BYD, marking a sharp transition from American to Chinese industrial influence. For Brazilian policymakers eager to revive manufacturing and attract foreign investment, the project represents both opportunity and risk.

At present, BYD assembles vehicles using semi-knocked-down (SKD) kits imported from abroad, a model that benefited from an import tax exemption that recently expired. Baldy said the company will seek an additional quota to extend the exemption through the middle of this year, but stressed that SKD assembly is only a bridge to full-scale local production.

“Cars must be produced with local components to be economically and financially viable,” he said, adding that stamping, welding, and painting facilities at the plant are nearing completion.

Those upgrades are part of BYD’s first investment phase in Brazil, valued at 5.5 billion reais ($1.1 billion). The company plans to lift annual capacity to 300,000 vehicles, up from an estimated 150,000 units by the end of 2026. Meeting local-content requirements will also unlock a new strategic goal: exporting vehicles from Brazil to neighboring Mercosur countries, potentially as soon as this year.

That prospect has heightened concerns among regional automakers and labor unions, who argue that BYD’s rapid expansion, aided by lower-cost Chinese imports and favorable tariff treatment, threatens domestic producers. Brazil has already begun phasing tariffs back in on imported electric vehicles, a move widely seen as an attempt to force companies like BYD to invest more deeply in local manufacturing.

Baldy said BYD is responding by accelerating production lines that will eventually generate up to 20,000 jobs in Brazil. The Camaçari complex currently employs about 5,000 workers, including roughly 2,300 BYD staff and around 2,500 contractors and service providers.

For some employees, the return of car production to the site carries emotional weight. Adson Santana, a BYD assembly manager, said he was overcome when he returned to the same factory grounds where he once worked for Ford before its closure. The American automaker’s exit left thousands unemployed and symbolized the decline of Brazil’s auto manufacturing base.

BYD’s expansion has also faced scrutiny beyond trade and industrial policy. Last year, prosecutors launched a labor investigation into conditions during the construction of the plant. The case was settled late in the year, with contractors agreeing to pay 40 million reais in damages. Baldy said the compliance agreement was signed by the contractors, not BYD, though the episode highlighted the reputational and regulatory risks surrounding the project.

As BYD presses ahead, its Brazilian strategy is increasingly viewed as a test case for how Chinese manufacturers can adapt to political and economic realities outside their home market. Success in Camaçari would give BYD not just a dominant foothold in Brazil, but a regional export hub and a powerful counter to claims that its global rise is built solely on imports.

Now, Brazil must weigh the benefits of jobs, investment, and cheaper electric vehicles against the long-term health of its domestic auto industry.

Alphabet’s latest earnings once again underscored the company’s financial strength, but the market reaction showed that strong topline growth is no longer enough to reassure investors in an era defined by an escalating artificial intelligence arms race.

Shares of the Google parent slid in premarket trading despite beating expectations on both revenue and earnings, as attention quickly shifted to the sheer scale of its planned increase in AI-related capital expenditure.

Alphabet reported fourth-quarter revenue of $113.83 billion, comfortably ahead of the $111.43 billion expected by analysts, according to LSEG data. The results confirmed that the company continues to grow at scale, even as advertising markets remain uneven globally. Google Cloud stood out as the clear growth engine, posting revenue of $17.66 billion versus forecasts of $16.18 billion, reinforcing its rising importance within Alphabet’s broader business model.

Cloud’s performance is increasingly tied to Alphabet’s AI ambitions. Enterprise customers are adopting Google’s Gemini models for data analytics, application development, and generative AI use cases, driving higher usage of compute-intensive services. Management has repeatedly framed Cloud as the primary commercial outlet for DeepMind’s research breakthroughs, turning advanced models into recurring revenue streams. That narrative found some support in the numbers, with analysts pointing to strong backlog growth and rising demand for AI-related workloads.

Advertising, however, delivered a more nuanced picture. YouTube advertising revenue came in at $11.38 billion, missing expectations of $11.84 billion. While still growing year-on-year, the miss highlights lingering pressure in the digital advertising market, where competition from platforms such as TikTok and shifting brand budgets continue to cap upside. Search advertising, long Alphabet’s profit engine, showed signs of acceleration, but investors appear increasingly focused on how AI-driven changes to search could reshape monetization over time.

The dominant theme from the earnings call was Alphabet’s guidance on spending. The company said it plans to lift capital expenditure to between $175 billion and $185 billion in 2026, more than double its 2025 outlay. A substantial portion of that spending will be directed toward AI compute capacity, including data centers, custom chips, and infrastructure to support Google DeepMind’s expanding model portfolio.

This level of investment places Alphabet at the center of an industry-wide spending surge. Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have all signaled aggressive AI buildouts, but Alphabet’s projected capex stands out for its scale. The spending reflects a strategic calculation that leadership in foundational AI models and infrastructure will define competitive advantage for the next decade, even if it weighs on margins in the near term.

Analysts remain split on the implications. Barclays said costs tied to Infrastructure, DeepMind, and Waymo have already weighed on profitability and are likely to continue doing so. Still, the bank argued that Cloud’s growth trajectory and DeepMind’s progress help justify the aggressive spending, describing the combination of accelerating Search and improving AI economics as central to Alphabet’s long-term thesis.

Deutsche Bank took a more cautious stance, noting that Alphabet’s capex plan has “stunned the world” at a time when the technology sector is in flux. The bank questioned whether such an outsized investment would translate into durable returns or simply intensify competitive pressure across the industry.

Investor concerns are also shaped by broader market dynamics. Big tech valuations are increasingly sensitive to free cash flow and capital discipline, particularly as interest rates remain elevated. Heavy AI spending raises the risk that returns could take longer to materialize, especially if pricing power in cloud and AI services becomes constrained by competition.

Alphabet’s Management, in a clear strategy, is signaling that it is willing to absorb near-term margin pressure to secure long-term dominance in AI infrastructure, models, and applications. The gamble is that Gemini, DeepMind, and Google Cloud together can generate enough high-margin revenue over time to justify today’s unprecedented investment.

The immediate market reaction suggests skepticism rather than outright rejection. Investors appear to be weighing Alphabet’s proven ability to execute against the uncertainty surrounding the economics of AI at scale. As the industry moves deeper into a capital-intensive phase, Alphabet’s results show that beating earnings expectations may no longer be the decisive metric. Instead, confidence is expected to hinge on the company’s ability to convincingly demonstrate that its AI spending spree will translate into sustainable growth, defensible margins, and lasting competitive advantage.