Brands
Casio’s new watch collab with Stranger Things goes retro
Mumbai: Casio Computer Co. Ltd. has announced the release of the A120WEST, a collaboration model inspired by the Netflix megahit, Stranger Things.
Stranger Things is a Netflix mystery adventure series set in 1980s small-town America. In 1983, a young boy vanishes into thin air from a sleepy American midwest town. As friends, family, and local police search for answers, they are drawn into an extraordinary mystery involving top secret experiments, terrifying supernatural forces, and one very strange little girl.
A love letter to the 80s classics that captivated a generation.
The new watch design was inspired by Stranger Things, a show with plenty of references to 1980s culture. Based on the A120, a watch inspired by digital watches Casio released in the 1980s, the design pays homage to the ‘Upside Down’, an alternate dimension that exists in parallel to the human world.
The watch face depicts the world of the Stranger Things characters, with pop, colorful front buttons reminiscent of the 1980s with a Demogorgon appearing at the center, as he appears in the human world. When the LED light button is pressed, the show name is revealed printed upside down, implying the presence of another world on the other side. The back of the case and translucent band are designed with eerie tentacles stretching out from the underworld, evoking the connection between the two worlds.
The special packaging is illustrated with images of the show’s cast of young characters.
Seasons 1-4 of Stranger Things are now streaming globally on Netflix.
Brands
Google nears Nvidia in race for world’s most valuable company
Market cap gap narrows as Google hits $4.65 trillion, Nvidia at $4.86 trillion.
MUMBAI: In the AI gold rush, even the giants are sprinting and Google is suddenly gaining ground. Google is rapidly closing in on Nvidia in the race to become the world’s most valuable publicly listed company, with the gap between the two narrowing sharply amid diverging stock momentum. The tech giant’s market capitalisation has surged to around $4.65 trillion, following a more than 140 per cent rise in its share price over the past year.
That rally has added over $2.6 trillion in value in just 12 months, including nearly $900 billion since January alone. Its stock recently hovered at $381.80, slipping marginally by 0.04 per cent, but still reflecting strong upward momentum.
Nvidia, meanwhile, continues to hold the top spot with a valuation of approximately $4.86 trillion. The chipmaker crossed the $5 trillion milestone in October last year and peaked at $5.27 trillion on 27 April. However, its shares have largely plateaued over the past six months, rising just 0.2 per cent recently to $199.99.
The contrast in trajectories is striking. While Nvidia has seen relatively flat movement, Google has gained over 36 per cent in the same six-month period. Barron’s estimates suggest that if current trends hold, the valuation gap could shrink to as little as $190 million by the time Nvidia reports its first-quarter earnings on 20 May.
Daily momentum paints a similar picture. Nvidia recorded average daily gains of about 0.66 per cent last month, compared to Google’s stronger 1.42 per cent, an edge that could prove decisive in the short term.
Driving Google’s resurgence is its aggressive push into artificial intelligence across its ecosystem, from search and YouTube to cloud computing. The company has already invested $144 billion in capital expenditure over the past two years and plans to deploy a further $490 billion over the next two.
Its cloud division is also gathering pace. Google Cloud reported an order backlog of nearly $220 billion in the latest quarter, with total backlog touching a record $462 billion, around half of which is expected to be realised within two years. The company’s entry into chip sales is also beginning to factor into its growth narrative.
The last time Google briefly topped the S&P 500 by market value was in February 2016, when it edged past Apple for just two days. This time, the stakes and the numbers are far higher.
At the heart of the contest lies a single force: artificial intelligence. As both companies pour billions into infrastructure, chips and platforms, the leaderboard is no longer just about size, it is about who can scale the future faster.
