Judith Murphy

Judith Murphy is a financial journalist and market analyst covering AI, technology stocks, and emerging market trends. She has contributed to multiple financial publications and brings a data-driven approach to her coverage of the technology sector and its impact on global markets.

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Judith Murphy · Jun 22, 2026 · 5:05 PM

Getty Images stock triples after sealing a display deal with OpenAI that bets on licensing over litigation

Getty Images shares surged as much as 200% on June 22 after announcing a multi-year display partnership with OpenAI that puts licensed photos inside ChatGPT. The deal vindicates Getty's strategy of licensing its archive to AI companies rather than relying solely on litigation, building on prior deals with Perplexity and Canva.

Judith Murphy · Jun 22, 2026 · 10:46 AM

AWS just made enterprise AI agent infrastructure a solved problem and startups should be worried

Judith Murphy · Jun 22, 2026 · 1:15 AM

Brands are flooding social media with AI influencers and hoping you don't notice

Brands including Hyundai, Fenty Beauty, Prada, and Samsung have run campaigns with AI-generated virtual influencers, in some cases without disclosing the personas are synthetic. With the virtual influencer market projected to hit $45 billion by 2030 and the FTC's enforcement unit still finding its footing, companies are racing to lock in ROI before mandatory disclosure rules close the gap.

Judith Murphy · Jun 21, 2026 · 8:49 PM

Enterprise AI budgets hit a wall and the reckoning is reshaping how companies spend and how founders pitch

After years of open-ended AI budgets, CFOs are imposing hard spend caps, usage dashboards, and role-based model access as enterprise AI costs spiral out of control. A single company's $500 million Claude API bill and Microsoft's cancellation of internal Claude Code licenses mark the turning point, while a new category of AI cost-governance startups rushes to fill the gap.

Judith Murphy · Jun 21, 2026 · 5:01 PM

Nvidia's stock boom is quietly minting a new generation of AI startup founders

Former Nvidia employees, enriched by a stock that has risen roughly twelvefold since 2022, are leaving in growing numbers to found AI startups. With $1.4 billion raised across 74 alumni-founded companies and a formalized startup pipeline through programs like Launching Legends and EverGreen, the Nvidia alumni cohort is emerging as one of the most structurally advantaged groups in the current AI funding boom.

Judith Murphy · Jun 21, 2026 · 1:04 PM

How to Build a Marketplace Startup That Solves the Chicken-and-Egg Problem

How to build a marketplace startup without getting stuck in the chicken-and-egg trap comes down to sequencing, not simultaneous execution. OpenTable solved it by selling restaurants standalone software before the diner side existed. Airbnb solved it by targeting a single event in a single city. The founders who got it right didn't crack the paradox. They sidestepped it.

Judith Murphy · Jun 21, 2026 · 12:35 PM

The study that blows up the biggest argument against AI data centers

Judith Murphy · Jun 21, 2026 · 8:08 AM

The sandwich bot that preyed on Ethereum traders for years just got drained for $7.5 million

Jaredfromsubway.eth, the Ethereum MEV bot responsible for roughly 70% of sandwich attacks over the past year, was drained for $7.5 million after an attacker deployed 66 fake token contracts over several weeks to bait the bot into granting approvals that were later used to empty its holdings. The incident exposes a structural vulnerability in how automated MEV systems handle unfamiliar contracts.

Judith Murphy · Jun 21, 2026 · 1:49 AM

Kevin Warsh's Fed debut leaves startups and AI borrowers navigating a world without rate cut relief

Judith Murphy · Jun 20, 2026 · 5:02 PM

Lloyds Banking Group bets £100 million on AI as it recruits the executive who rewired DBS

Lloyds Banking Group has appointed Sameer Gupta, the architect of DBS Bank's award-winning AI transformation, as Chief Data and AI Officer, as the bank doubles its AI value target to over £100 million for 2026. With 50-plus generative AI tools already in production and an AI Academy set to train all 67,000 employees, Lloyds is making a structural bet on AI capability rather than headline products.

Judith Murphy · Jun 20, 2026 · 12:36 PM

WhiteBIT's Austrian MiCA license secures its EU future as rivals face a July 1 cliff edge

Judith Murphy · Jun 20, 2026 · 8:48 AM

Microsoft shareholders are suing over AI promises that the numbers couldn't keep

A Michigan pension fund's federal securities lawsuit against Microsoft, filed June 12, alleges the company concealed Azure's deceleration and the true scale of its AI infrastructure costs before a January earnings miss wiped $357 billion from its market cap. The case could set a legal precedent for how every major hyperscaler discloses the gap between AI capex promises and actual cloud revenue conversion.

Judith Murphy · Jun 20, 2026 · 3:06 AM

SpaceX's Nasdaq debut turned Solana into the dominant venue for tokenized stock trading

The SpaceX Nasdaq IPO launched SPCX on Solana the same day and drove $4.3 billion in tokenized stock trading over 30 days, pushing Solana to 94% of all on-chain equity volume globally. A single high-profile listing did more for tokenized equities adoption than years of DeFi advocacy, raising serious questions for traditional brokers and exchanges about where equity trading infrastructure is heading.

Judith Murphy · Jun 19, 2026 · 11:18 PM

China moves to choke the metal that powers AI optical chips and Washington is scrambling to respond

China is tightening customs scrutiny on indium exports, demanding end-user disclosures from foreign buyers of a metal that feeds the optical chips powering AI data centers. With InP wafer prices up 250% since Beijing restricted indium phosphide in 2025, Coherent's CEO lobbying in Beijing, and the Pentagon seeking to stockpile 403 tons, the supply chain chokepoint is no longer theoretical.

Judith Murphy · Jun 19, 2026 · 7:30 PM

Amazon is investigating engineers who testified against data center expansion as Seattle votes to halt new builds

Three Amazon engineers who testified before Seattle City Council in support of a one-year moratorium on new AI data center construction were called into HR meetings afterward and have filed a civil rights complaint alleging retaliation for protected political speech. The episode lands as Amazon commits $200 billion in capex to data center infrastructure in 2026, and as Seattle's 9-0 moratorium vote signals growing municipal pushback against the hyperscaler build-out.

Judith Murphy · Jun 19, 2026 · 3:42 PM

Harvey AI's 12x token surge reveals that legal AI has crossed from experiment to infrastructure

Harvey AI's monthly token consumption has jumped from 1 trillion to 13 trillion in under six months, driven by a full shift to agentic cloud workflows. At $300M ARR and an $11 billion valuation, the legal AI company has moved past the pilot phase. The harder question now is whether its pricing captures the value it's creating.