The Software Tollbooth That Keeps Raising Prices

Author

Noah Zelvis
January 09, 2026

Some companies win by being flashy.

This one wins by being unavoidable. It sits in the middle of critical workflows, quietly taking a small cut every time things move, sync, or ship. Users don’t brag about it.

They just melt down when it breaks. That’s the point.

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Enterprise Software

Gmail Is No Longer An Inbox, It’s An Operating System

Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is rolling out a new AI Inbox for Gmail that reframes email around tasks instead of timestamps.

Instead of scanning endless threads, users now see what needs action first and what can wait.

Suggested to-dos surface bills, appointments, follow-ups, and reminders automatically.

A second section groups updates like purchases, finances, and account activity into clean summaries that reduce inbox noise.

Search Stops Being Search

Gmail search is evolving from keywords to conversation. Users can ask natural language questions and get direct answers pulled from their inbox without opening multiple emails.

The system extracts names, dates, documents, and decisions across threads. Gmail starts behaving like a personal memory engine rather than a static archive.

Google Brings Writing And AI In-House

Google is also introducing a built-in proofreading tool that improves clarity, tone, and structure with one-click edits.

It refines wording, simplifies sentences, and catches common mistakes automatically.

At the same time, previously gated AI features like Help Me Write, smart replies, and thread summaries are expanding to more users.

Gmail is quietly becoming a full productivity layer that manages reading, writing, and decision-making inside one interface.

Music Streaming

Real-Time Listening Is Spotify’s New Retention Weapon

Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) is now showing what your friends are listening to in real time directly inside the app.

The goal is simple: make music discovery feel alive without forcing users to jump to another platform.

Listening activity now sits inside Messages, turning tracks into social signals rather than static links. One tap lets you play, save, or react instantly while the song is still spinning.

Jams Get Easier And Stickier

The update also tightens Spotify’s collaborative listening feature by making it easier to start a Jam.

Premium users can request a Jam directly from Messages and turn a solo session into a shared queue in seconds.

Once connected, both listeners can add tracks and shape the session together in real time.

It’s a lightweight group experience designed to feel spontaneous rather than scheduled.

Keeping The Conversation Inside Spotify

Spotify has been steadily pulling social behavior back into its own ecosystem. Messages, live activity, and Jams reduce the need to share links through external apps.

This strategy keeps engagement measurable, habits sticky, and attention locked inside Spotify’s walls.

As streaming competition intensifies, social presence is becoming just as important as playlists.

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Robotaxis

New Name, Same Sensors, Bigger Ambitions For Waymo’s Driverless Fleet

Waymo has officially renamed its Zeekr-built robotaxi to Ojai as the vehicle prepares to enter commercial service.

The rebrand is meant to simplify the rider experience and make the vehicle feel less like a prototype and more like a product.

Under the skin, Ojai remains the same purpose-built autonomous vehicle Waymo has been refining for years.

What changes now is perception; this is no longer an experiment, it is a frontline member of Waymo’s fleet.

Built For Autonomy, Tuned For Cities

Ojai is packed with a dense sensor stack including cameras, lidar, radar, and external audio systems designed to handle dense urban environments.

The vehicle has been tested extensively in real-world conditions across Phoenix and San Francisco.

Waymo has also refined the vehicle’s physical design, from paint finish to interior layout, as it shifts from testing to daily passenger use.

These tweaks reflect a move from engineering focus to rider experience.

A Rebrand That Signals Expansion

The renaming comes as Waymo accelerates its rollout across multiple cities and prepares for broader public access.

Internal employee testing is already underway, one of the final steps before full commercial launch.

Ojai represents more than a name change; it marks Waymo’s transition into a scaled mobility platform.

As Alphabet pushes deeper into autonomous transport, branding, reliability, and trust now matter as much as software.

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Recent Tech Movers

Monday.com (NASDAQ: MNDY)

Work Gets Messy, They Get Paid
Monday keeps winning the boring way: expanding inside accounts. Teams start with one use case (project tracking), then the thing spreads like office gossip.

Marketing, ops, HR, even finance shows up eventually. The sticky part is that once a company builds its workflows into a platform, ripping it out feels like volunteering for pain.

The angle here is simple: it’s not AI will change everything, it’s workflow sprawl is real.

If they keep landing bigger customers and upselling seats, the stock tends to behave like a steady climber, not a coin flip.

What to watch next: Net retention, enterprise adds, and whether management keeps the “profitable growth” tone instead of chasing vanity expansion.

SentinelOne (NYSE: S)

Cyber Budgets Don’t Die, They Just Get Rearranged
SentinelOne is in that category of spending that gets argued about… right up until something bad happens, and then suddenly everyone finds the budget.

Endpoint security is crowded, but the opportunity is still massive because companies keep adding devices, apps, and cloud messiness.

This is a “prove it” stock. When the numbers are clean, the multiple expands fast. When they wobble, it gets punished.

If you like the name, treat it like a position you build in layers, not something you YOLO after a green day.

What to watch next: Customer churn, billings trends, and whether margins keep improving without growth falling asleep.

Elastic (NYSE: ESTC)

Search Is Not Dead, It Just Moved Into Everything
Elastic is one of those companies that quietly powers the plumbing. Search, logs, observability, security, basically the stuff dev teams need when systems get complex and nobody knows why the app is on fire.

The bull case is that modern infrastructure keeps generating more data, and someone has to index it, monitor it, and make it useful.

The bear case is competition and the occasional “wait, are we spending too much on tooling?” moment.

But if you’re picking mid-cap tech that’s actually tied to real workloads, Elastic belongs on the list.

What to watch next: Cloud momentum, customer expansion, and whether pricing stays disciplined.

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The Quiet Tollbooth Becoming A Platform

Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG)

Why This Name Is Working
Datadog is what companies buy after they’ve already built modern tech and realized it’s basically a million moving parts duct-taped together.

It watches the apps, servers, cloud services, and logs, then tells you what’s broken and why. The magic is not the dashboard.

It’s the habit: once teams rely on it daily, it becomes part of the operating system.

The story has also matured. This isn’t just growth at any price anymore. It’s about durable usage, expanding product adoption, and staying in the budget even when CFOs start sharpening pencils.

Scorecard You Can Use

  • Sticky by design: It’s tied to uptime, troubleshooting, and productivity. Those don’t get cancelled lightly.

  • Land-and-expand machine: Customers start with monitoring, then add more modules as complexity rises.

  • Usage-driven upside: When workloads rise, spend tends to rise with it, like a quiet volume lever.

Why The Tape Cares

  • AI and cloud complexity: Even if you don’t want to say AI every five seconds, the reality is workloads are heavier and systems are messier. Monitoring becomes more valuable, not less.

  • More products per customer: The compounding is in the bundle. More modules means higher switching costs and better lifetime value.

  • Operational discipline: If margins keep improving while growth stays healthy, DDOG gets rewarded as a quality compounder, not a hype trade.

What Could Spook It

  • Optimization cycles: Customers sometimes tune usage to save money. That can ding near-term growth.

  • Crowded field: Big cloud vendors and other monitoring players aren’t exactly friendly.

  • Valuation mood swings: This one trades on sentiment as much as numbers. When the market gets cranky, it gets hit.

What To Watch Next

  • Net retention: The best customers expanding tell.

  • Large customer adds: Bigger accounts usually mean broader product adoption later.

  • Module adoption: If attach rates keep rising, the platform story is alive.

Actionable Take

  • Builders: Treat DDOG like a core mid-cap tech compounder. Add on red days, keep sizing sane, and let the more products per customer flywheel do the heavy lifting.

  • Traders: Respect the volatility. Use clean technical levels and don’t chase if it’s already sprinted for a week straight.

  • Bottom line: If the market wants profitable growth again, this is the kind of name it tends to hug.

Everything Else

  • 🐯 Zhipu IPO is putting China’s “AI tiger” in the Hong Kong spotlight, with investors squinting at how it stacks up in the global model race.

  • 💾 Samsung says profits basically did a gym transformation, with AI memory prices doing the heavy lifting in Q4.

  • 🪙 Bitcoin’s 2026 crystal-ball season is back, and these price calls range from “reasonable” to “please step away from the leverage.”

  • ☁️ France’s OVHcloud is still grinding higher, posting Q1 growth and keeping its annual guidance steady.

  • 🤖 Anthropic is reportedly trying to raise a monster round, with $10B plans that would slap a jaw-dropping valuation tag on the company.

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