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The Data Security Stock That Wins When Things Get Friday The 13th-ey

Author

Noah Zelvis
February 13, 2026

Friday the 13th is usually when people avoid ladders, black cats, and making big decisions. Markets do not have that luxury.

Data keeps sprawling, identity keeps getting messy, and AI is basically a copy machine with an espresso addiction.

The winners are the companies that help enterprises keep their crown jewels from wandering off into the wrong inbox, the wrong contractor account, or the wrong chatbot prompt.

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Streaming Platforms

YouTube Blinked On Vision Pro In 2024 And Launched In 2026

Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) YouTube has officially launched a dedicated app for Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) Vision Pro after spending 2 years directing headset users to watch content in Safari.

When Vision Pro first shipped, YouTube skipped native development entirely, leaving users without offline downloads or immersive playback.

Third-party workarounds like Juno popped up briefly before being pulled for violating YouTube's terms.

The App Is Built For Immersion

The new app supports standard videos, Shorts, and a Spatial tab featuring 3D, VR180, and 360-degree content on a theater-sized virtual screen.

Users on the M5-powered Vision Pro get 8K playback, and gesture controls let you resize windows and scrub through video.

It is a full-featured experience that makes the old Safari workaround look like a placeholder.

The Timing Tells A Story

YouTube is arriving just as Vision Pro momentum has cooled significantly.

Sales dropped to roughly 45,000 units in Q4 2025, production reportedly paused due to weak demand, and marketing was scaled back across key markets.

Every major streaming competitor, from Disney+ to Peacock, launched native apps at the headset's debut.

YouTube chose to wait, watch, and build only once the risk was low. It is a safe move, but not a bold one.

Consumer Hardware

Amazon Wants To Be Your Backup ISP For $99 A Year

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN)-owned Eero launched the Eero Signal 4G LTE, a $99.99 device that automatically switches your home network to cellular when your internet goes down.

It plugs into any compatible USB-C powered Eero router with Wi-Fi 6 or higher and returns to standby once service is restored.

The device uses a built-in multi-carrier eSIM that connects to the strongest available network, supporting AT&T, Verizon, and other major carriers.

A 5G version is coming later this year at $199.99.

Built For People Who Cannot Afford Downtime

The target audience is clear — remote workers, always-on security systems, and households in outage-prone areas.

Because cellular is only used during outages, subscription costs remain well below those of standard LTE plans.

At launch, users can choose between a $99.99 annual plan with 10 GB of backup data or a $199.99 tier with 100 GB.

Both come with discounted introductory pricing, and Eero Business support is expected later this year.

Amazon Keeps Locking Down The Home

This is another quiet move by Amazon to embed itself deeper into household infrastructure.

Every Eero device sold strengthens the ecosystem lock-in, and adding cellular failover makes the product harder to replace.

For Amazon, the play is not selling routers. It is becoming the invisible layer that keeps the connected home running no matter what.

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Consumer AI

Snap a Grocery List, and Uber Eats Will Handle The Rest

Uber's (NYSE: UBER) Uber Eats rolled out a new feature called Cart Assistant, an AI chatbot that builds your grocery cart from a typed list or a photo.

Users can snap a picture of a handwritten list or a recipe screenshot, and the assistant automatically adds matching items to the basket.

The feature is now live in beta inside the app.

Customers search for a grocery store, tap the Cart Assistant icon, and let the AI handle the rest before making any manual adjustments.

It Learns What You Already Buy

Cart Assistant pulls from previous orders to prioritize brands and products a customer already prefers.

It is not just matching keywords to shelf items — it is personalizing the cart based on real buying history.

Users can still swap items or add products, but the baseline cart is built before they touch anything. The goal is to cut the path from idea to checkout down to seconds.

The Grocery AI Race Is Already Crowded

Uber Eats is not the first to move here.

Instacart launched an OpenAI-powered search tool back in 2023, DoorDash tested its own AI chatbot that same year, and both Uber Eats and DoorDash integrated with ChatGPT last year.

Cart Assistant is a defensive play as much as a product launch.

Grocery delivery is becoming an AI-first experience, and Uber cannot afford to let competitors own the interface between customers and their carts.

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Recent Tech Movers

HashiCorp (NASDAQ: HCP)

DevOps Glue, Now With Big-Company Muscle
HashiCorp is basically the duct tape and plumbing behind modern cloud infrastructure: Terraform for building, Vault for secrets, Consul for networking.

The twist is it is no longer a scrappy standalone story.

IBM has been buying its way into the modern developer stack, and HashiCorp fits like a missing puzzle piece for enterprise cloud management.

For retail investors, the takeaway is simple: the tools are still sticky, and the strategic value is real.

But if you are looking at it like a normal mid-cap trade, remember this is now more of a corporate chess move than a pure momentum ticker.

What to watch: How aggressively IBM integrates the products into its hybrid cloud pitch, and whether that drives faster adoption in big enterprise accounts. 

Confluent (NASDAQ: CFLT)

The Streaming Data Story Just Turned Into a Takeout Order
Confluent’s business is data-in-motion.

It helps companies move event streams around in real time so apps can react instantly: fraud checks, recommendations, logistics updates, you name it.

The headline now is that IBM is buying Confluent in a deal valued around $16 billion.

Confluent itself even flagged a pending transaction and paused the usual earnings call guidance cadence, which is basically corporate speak for we’re in the middle of something big, do not make us talk about next quarter.

Why it matters: It validates streaming data as core infrastructure, not a nice-to-have. Also, if you ever wanted confirmation that data plumbing is a real business, IBM just wrote the check. 

HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS)

Marketing Software With an Earnings-Date Deadline
HubSpot is the CRM and marketing platform that keeps showing up in growing businesses like a helpful friend who also happens to automate your entire funnel.

The big near-term catalyst is its Q4 2025 financial results scheduled for February 11, 2026.

That matters because this stock can move on any combo of: subscription growth, customer adds, and what management says about budgets in 2026.

In other words, it’s a vibes stock with fundamentals. The market wants proof that demand is still sturdy and that AI features are helping conversion, not just making nicer demos.

What to watch: Guidance tone. If they sound confident on pipeline and retention, the stock usually responds like it just found an extra espresso shot.

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The Big Cyber Risk Safety Play

Varonis (NASDAQ: VRNS)

Why This Name Is Working

Varonis is the company you look at when you realize the biggest cyber risk is not always some hoodie-wearing hacker.

It is your own messy internal sprawl: who has access to what, where sensitive data actually lives, and which permissions are basically hanging open like a screen door in a hurricane.

In early February, Varonis reported Q4 and full-year 2025 results, and the company highlighted momentum in its SaaS transition and AI-driven data security positioning.

It also announced an acquisition of AllTrue.ai, which signals they are leaning into automated discovery and classification, not just alerts and dashboards.

This is the kind of business that benefits from the modern reality: more cloud storage, more collaboration tools, more sharing, more AI agents touching data, and more accidental exposure.

Nobody sets out to leak sensitive files. They just keep clicking share.

Scorecard You Can Use

  • Data visibility is the product: if you cannot find it, you cannot secure it.

  • Permissions are the silent killer: the bigger the org, the uglier the access map.

  • AI makes the mess faster: more data copied, summarized, moved, and duplicated across tools.

Why the Tape Cares

  • Security budgets stay defensive: companies might cut swag, but they rarely cut protection against career-ending data exposure.

  • SaaS transition is the rerate lever: the market likes recurring revenue stories when they look clean and sticky.

  • AI adds urgency: more automation means more accidental surface area.

What Could Spook It

  • Execution risk in the SaaS shift: transitions are great until churn spikes or expansions slow.

  • Competitive noise: data security is crowded, and buyers want fewer vendors, not more.

  • Macro hesitation: if IT spending freezes, sales cycles can stretch.

What to Watch Next

  • Net retention and subscription growth trends

  • Commentary on AI-driven data discovery and classification post-acquisition

  • Any sign that the platform is expanding deeper into existing accounts

Actionable Take

  • Builders: If you want a practical AI-adjacent security play, treat VRNS like a long-game compounder. Add on pullbacks, size it so you can sleep.

  • Traders: Respect the volatility. Security names can gap on results and guidance, so use levels, not hope.

Bottom Line: Friday the 13th is about avoiding bad luck. In enterprise data, bad luck is just bad hygiene.

Varonis sells the mop, the flashlight, and the lock for the room you forgot existed.

Everything Else

That's our coverage for today; thanks for reading! Reply to this email with feedback or any tech stocks you want me to check out.

Best Regards,
—Noah Zelvis
Tech Stock Insider