A French soldier uses a drone during a training exercise at a military field near Abu Dhabi on Saturday. Time was, military contractors appealed to equity investors for their stodginess -- predictable revenue, solid profit margins and reliable dividends. While weaponry behemoths like fighter-jet maker Lockheed Martin and missile producer RTX still occupy a key corner of most stock portfolios, they've gotten some company of late -- nimble upstarts more akin to technology firms with lofty valuations and the promise of rapid profit growth. The newcomers at the top of the rankings -- in share price appreciation, if not yet market value -- include drone-maker Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, satellite intelligence outfit Planet Labs PBC and data analytics company Palantir Technologies. Each has seen its stock at least double this year.

Business leaders agree AI is the future. They just wish it worked right now. Since ChatGPT exploded three years ago, companies big and small have leapt at the chance to adopt generative artificial intelligence. SAN FRANCISCO/STOCKHOLM - Last spring, CellarTracker, a wine-collection app, built an artificial intelligence-powered sommelier to make unvarnished wine recommendations based on a person's palate. The problem was the chatbot was too nice.

Takeda's psoriasis pill developed with AI assistance succeeds in trials Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune disorder that causes rashes marked by itchy, scaly rashes and afflicts more than 125 million people worldwide. Takeda Pharmaceutical announced that its oral psoriasis drug zasocitinib proved safe and effective in late-stage trials, marking a milestone in its effort to treat the incurable skin condition and offset looming revenue pressure. Patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis who took the once-daily pill showed significantly clearer skin compared with those on placebo or the existing therapy apremilast, the company said in a statement Thursday. Takeda plans to submit data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulators beginning in fiscal year 2026. If approved, zasocitinib would join the small but growing oral psoriasis treatments -- long a market dominated by ointments and injectable antibody therapies -- and stand out as one of the first drugs discovered with the help of artificial intelligence.

The exhibition is scheduled to continue through Friday. Rapidus, Japan's government-backed semiconductor developer, is betting on artificial intelligence-enhanced design tools to give it an edge over its competitors, in an effort to speed up its chip-design process and minimize costs. The firm made the announcement during Semicon, a semiconductor-industry event being held in Tokyo from Wednesday to Friday at the Tokyo Big Sight convention center. Rapidus' newly announced suite of offerings, which will be rolled out next year, includes Raads Generator, an AI-assisted design tool modeled on large-scale language models -- AI systems trained on datasets -- and optimized for 2-nanometer chip manufacturing. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

Japan's top uniformed military officer, Gen. Hiroaki Uchikura, listens during an interview with The Japan Times at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo on Monday. Imagine hundreds if not thousands of enemy missiles and artificial intelligence-enabled drones speeding toward your country, some at hypersonic speeds, capable of overwhelming your air defenses. But for Japan's top uniformed military officer, reinforcing the country's defense capabilities to counter these complex and diverse threats is not just a concern, it's become one of his top priorities. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

The National Police Agency plans to warn against the obscene use of AI at delinquency-prevention lectures at schools and other events. More than half of cases reported to Japanese police of explicit deepfakes targeting those aged under 18 were created with the involvement of students from the same schools as the victims, National Police Agency data have shown. This is the first time that the NPA has released information on minors who became victims of obscene fake images created using generative artificial intelligence and other technologies. The agency plans to create flyers and warn against such use of AI at delinquency-prevention lectures at schools and other locations. According to the NPA, police were consulted over 79 cases of deepfakes targeting those up to the age of 17 from January to September this year.

AI-assisted hiring will drive Indeed's growth, Recruit CEO says Companies embracing artificial intelligence to recruit and hire people won't threaten Indeed.com's Hisayuki "Deko" Idekoba, who leads Indeed and its parent, Tokyo-based Recruit Holdings, said the business is using AI to help companies optimize their talent-acquisition approach based on the pool of candidates, number of applicants per job and other factors, while using the flow of data to set compensation levels or adjust job qualifications. "We're gradually starting to deploy solutions such as AI agents to customers," Idekoba said in an interview in Tokyo. For Recruit, the shift reflects a broader transformation in how employers find and evaluate talent, as AI reshapes recruitment worldwide. Automated tools are speeding up candidate screening, cutting hiring costs and helping businesses respond to labor shortages and changing skill demands.

Three years after ChatGPT made OpenAI the leader in artificial intelligence and a household name, rivals have closed the gap and some investors are wondering if the sensation has the wherewithal to stay dominant. Investor Michael Burry, made famous in the film The Big Short, recently likened OpenAI to Netscape, which ruled the web-browser market in the mid-1990s only to lose to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. OpenAI is the next Netscape, doomed and hemorrhaging cash, Burry said recently in a post on X, formerly Twitter. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.