What's up: OpenAI debuts a web browser; Samsung and Google enter the headgear wars; buzzword of the AI era: Circularity.

Good morning. The AI boom is driving global spending on information technology into unprecedented territory. A new forecast by consulting and research firm Gartner predicts that IT spending will rise 9.8% in 2026, crossing the $6 trillion mark for the first time.

Earlier this year, companies were a bit reluctant to spend their IT budgets, but that sentiment has been lifting in the second half of the year.

“The uncertainty pause that began in the second quarter of 2025 started to alleviate in the third quarter and a significant budget flush is anticipated before the end of the year,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner. “Despite being in the trough of disillusionment in 2026, GenAI features are now ubiquitous across software already owned and operated by enterprises and these features cost more money, aligning with this flush. The cost of software is going up and both the cost of features and functionality is going up as well thanks to GenAI,” Lovelock wrote.

Gartner has drawn thousands of IT leaders to Orlando, Fla. for its annual Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. Later this morning, I will moderate a panel assessing how enterprises are deploying AI agents. Gartner global enterprise research chief Chris Howard and I will assess the state of AI agents with Vinod Bidarkoppa, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Walmart International and Leigh-Ann Russell, chief information officer and global head of engineering at BNY.

Time to put the infrastructure to work. The Gartner forecast captures spending on data center systems, which is expected to surge 46.8% in 2025 and rise 19% in 2026. The question now is whether consumers and businesses will put all of that infrastructure to sufficient use. There are daily efforts to help AI scale up and out, including OpenAI’s new browser. (More on that below.) Infrastructure spending (See chart) assumes that AI usage will be ubiquitous in the way that electricity is part of everyday life. We’re not there yet. The next few years will put that theory to the test.

After establishing beachheads in internet search and internet shopping, OpenAI's ChatGPT is going for the whole enchilada. The company on Tuesday unveiled its first internet browser, ChatGPT Atlas. An agent mode, which can take web-based tasks, like booking tickets, on behalf of users, is available for Plus, Pro, and Business subscribers. Atlas currently is available only for machines running Apple’s MacOS, Verge reports.

Humans are winning at Reddit (for now). Daily visitors are up, so are its stocks and in a recent study of 150,000 user-generated content citations across the web, Reddit was the most used source at 40%, WSJ reports. Lately, AI labs have regarded the social content-sharing service in much the same way, striking licensing deals to bring its content to their products. At the same time Reddit is battling against AI-generated text and facing increased competition from AI-based search.

“Will AI Take My Job?”, a news special that aired Monday on Britain’s Channel 4 ended with a surprise when it was revealed that the anchor of the show was AI-generated, Variety reports. 

Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella’s pay increased 22% for fiscal 2025 to $96.5 million, CNBC reports. The company in a filing said about 90% of Nadella’s compensation is in Microsoft shares. Microsoft’s stock price has risen by 23% so far in 2025. 

BlackRock was among the biggest investors in the $27 billion private-debt deal backing construction of a Meta Platforms data center in Louisiana, WSJ reports. BlackRock ETFs bought more than $3 billion of bonds in the facility, named Hyperion. Pimco, the giant bond manager, was the biggest buyer, accounting for $18 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

GalaxyXR, a new mixed-reality headset developed by Samsung and Google, debuted this week at $1,800, about half the price of Apple's Vision Pro, Bloomberg reports.

Texas Instruments said it is seeing a semiconductor-industry recovery chug along at a more moderate pace than past cycles as it gave lower-than-expected guidance for the current quarter, WSJ reports.

Some investors have drawn comparisons between the megadeals of today and some excesses of the original dot-com bubble, WSJ reports.

Today the dollars at stake are exponentially bigger, the deals are more complex, and the money trail is often harder to follow. But some similarities are real. One risk: If enthusiasm for spending money on data centers wanes, companies such as Nvidia and Microsoft could be hit twice—with less revenue coming in and declining values for their equity investments in customers.

Warner Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav is in the fight of his professional life to stop the company from being swallowed by Paramount, the rival entertainment giant controlled by David Ellison. Ellison has financial backing from his father Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest man. (WSJ)

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate in the New York City mayoral race, will need billions of dollars to fund his affordability agenda, but it is far from certain he will be able to deliver. (WSJ)

A Trump nominee withdrew Tuesday from a Senate confirmation hearing to lead a White House ethics watchdog office, following a report that he made racist and antisemitic comments in a text chain. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.