Google's Pixel 11 lineup ships with iterative upgrades while Nvidia pitches GPUs as investable assets

Google launched its Pixel 11 series this week with minimal hardware changes and a $100 price increase, betting that new AI software features can justify the bump. Meanwhile, Nvidia is working with major financial institutions to turn compute infrastructure into an asset class—a move that CEO Jensen Huang compared to the birth of mortgage-backed securities.

Pixel 11: More money, same hardware

The Pixel 11 starts at $899, up from $799 last year, with the same Tensor G6 processor and 12GB of RAM as the base Pixel 11 Pro. Storage doubled to 256GB, but reviewers note the hardware is otherwise unchanged from the Pixel 10. The Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL add brighter 3,600-nit displays and faster charging, but also drop base RAM from 16GB to 12GB—a regression that coincides with industry-wide price increases following what some are calling "RAMageddon."

The Pixel 11 Pro Fold saw a $100 price hike to $1,899 without a storage increase, and reviewers described its design as "dated" compared to Samsung's thinner 2026 foldables and ahead of Apple's rumored foldable iPhone launch next month.

Google's pitch centers on software: Camera Looks for color grading, Magic Capture for extracting frames from video, and Proactive Assistance for contextual help. But the Pixel Watch 5's most interesting features—including blood pressure trends and strength training cues—won't roll out until next month, making it difficult to evaluate whether the $50 price increase to $399.99 is justified.

Nvidia's compute-as-asset-class play

Nvidia announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to create $500 billion in financing to turn compute into an investable asset class. "This is really the first time that technology chips have become an investable asset class," Huang told CNBC, describing GPUs as "revenue-generating assets" that are "productive, long-lived, fungible, flexible."

The framing represents a sharp reversal from last year, when Huang said of the previous-generation Hopper chips: "When Blackwell starts shipping in volume, you couldn't give Hoppers away." Now those same chips are being pitched as durable assets.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called it "the very beginning, like what it was when I started in the mortgage-backed securities market in the 1970s, and I look upon this as a next future for financial engineering." That comparison may raise concerns: mortgage-backed securities collapsed when mortgages were overproduced. The AI industry is seeing saturation in data center construction, and Chinese open-source models increasingly require less compute despite being competitive.

Rental prices for older Nvidia chips have been rising, with Silicon Data projecting continued increases through 2028. One cloud provider nearly doubled its Blackwell B200 rental prices during a recent contract renewal.

Other developments

Amazon expanded Prime Air drone delivery to nearly 500 US cities, up from 11 locations. The service delivers packages under 5 pounds within approximately 60 minutes, covering areas of roughly 175 square miles per site. Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Boise are among the new metro areas getting access.

Amazon also upgraded Fire TV devices to Alexa Plus for free, previously requiring a Prime or Alexa Plus subscription. The conversational AI assistant can provide mood-based movie recommendations, jump to specific scenes, and control smart home devices.

Moderna and Merck reported positive Phase 3 results for intismeran autogene, an individualized mRNA neoantigen therapy for melanoma, in combination with Merck's KEYTRUDA. The study met primary endpoints for recurrence-free survival and distant metastasis-free survival, marking the first positive Phase 3 result for an individualized neoantigen therapy and the first for an mRNA-based cancer therapy.

China's Unitree Robotics surged 620% in its Shanghai market debut, reaching a market cap of $66 billion before closing up 460%. The company shipped over 5,500 humanoid robots last year and unveiled its Superman model Monday, marketed as capable of jumping two meters high and running 12.66 meters per second.

Meta launched a Mac app for its AI chatbot that can view shared windows, provide suggestions, and support dictation across all apps. The company also introduced business-focused features that analyze Instagram and Facebook post performance, integrate with Google Workspace, and automate recurring tasks like weekly performance reports.