Applied Materials

Boston Dynamics has released new material focused on robotic hands designed for modern AI systems and practical work tasks. The announcement highlights the company's push beyond legged locomotion into dexterous manipulation, a key step toward robots that can handle tools and objects in real environments. Robotics watchers are closely following how such grippers could integrate with Atlas-style platforms and current AI models.

Investors are weighing Applied Materials against ASML as a technology stock pick for 2026. Both companies dominate semiconductor equipment: Applied Materials supplies deposition and etch tools, while ASML holds a monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography machines essential for advanced chips. The comparison comes as chipmakers ramp spending on AI-driven capacity, leaving analysts divided over which equipment maker offers the better outlook for next year.

A newly unsealed court opinion lays out the reasoning behind Thomson Reuters' victory in a closely watched copyright and fair-use lawsuit against an AI company over the use of its legal research content. The ruling is being read as one of the first major judicial assessments of how fair-use doctrine applies to training data for artificial intelligence systems.