Here are the top business and tech headlines making waves on March 20, 2026: OpenAI's desktop superapp plan, Mastercard's $1.8B stablecoin push, Scholastic's stock buyback, Inwit's tower competition shock, Kalshi's soaring valuation, and Samsung's massive $70B+ AI chip investment.

OpenAI, the company behind the famous AI chatbot ChatGPT, is launching a new desktop superapp that combines three tools into one. The superapp will include the ChatGPT app for chatting with AI, the Codex coding platform for programmers, and a browser for completing web tasks. By combining these platforms into one app, OpenAI wants to make the user experience simpler and more streamlined. Currently, each tool exists in its own separate application. This makes it harder and more time-consuming to access each application and achieve high quality from the tools they offer. The company also wants to refocus its efforts and work more efficiently with this new desktop superapp.

Greg Brockman, President of OpenAI, will take temporary charge of the new superapp and any reorganizations within the company. Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s chief of applications, will take charge of the sales department to begin selling the new superapp. OpenAI recently launched a standalone desktop version of Codex earlier in 2026.

• It will reduce the amount of extra work users have to complete with multiple separate applications.
• It will allow OpenAI to compete with other AI companies such as Anthropic.
• It will give the users a one-stop-shop experience for chatting, coding, and browsing.

The AI industry as a whole is aggressively focused on creating products with higher speeds and providing higher quality outputs from their AI models. OpenAI is shifting its focus to engineering and business customers with this new superapp. A launch date has not yet been announced for the desktop superapp. Overall, however, this new product will make using AI on desktop computers more convenient for humans.

The article: Reuters

Mastercard, a giant in the global payments industry, has agreed to buy BVNK, a platform based in London that works with stablecoins. Stablecoins are digital coins tied to real money like the US dollar. The two companies have agreed on a price of up to 1.8 billion dollars for BVNK, which is worth an additional 300 million dollars based on the success of the deal. This will be the biggest Mastercard move into the crypto industry to date.

BVNK allows fiat and stablecoins to connect with each other across over 130 countries on several major blockchains. The company specializes in allowing people to send money quickly and cheaply, especially for things like cross-border remittances. Mastercard chose to build upon BVNK rather than creating their own because it would take years to build the same technology and licenses. BVNK started in 2021 but already has key payment licenses in place in several countries.

• BVNK will allow Mastercard to offer customers various stablecoin options.
• Mastercard will also gain significant speed in moving money across borders for customers.
• Closing is expected by the end of 2026 following approval from regulators.

Mastercard has been venturing into the world of digital assets for years through its Crypto Partner Program. The company is attempting to provide customers with more options for fast and cheap money transfers through the blockchain. Mastercard’s chief product officer Jorn Lambert revealed that BVNK would significantly speed up the Mastercard company’s launch into the blockchain and stablecoin industry.

The article: Reuters

Scholastic Company is a big company that makes and sells children’s books and educational products. They have been around for over 100 years. They will buy back up to 200 million dollars of their common stock through a method known as a modified Dutch auction tender offer. The price will be between $36 and $40 per share. Shareholders will get to decide how many shares of stock to sell and at what price. The offer will start on March 23rd, 2026, and end on April 20th, 2026. Scholastic will pay for the stock with its cash on hand and its credit line.

• Shareholders will get to pick how many shares and what price they want to offer.
• The company will not tell shareholders what price to pick for their shares.
• Documents will go to the SEC on March 23rd for everyone to see.

The president and CEO of Scholastic Company, Peter Warwick, said buying back the stocks would help return the cash to the company’s owners after their real estate sales. This offer gives shareholders a fair chance to sell their shares if they would like. People should talk to their own financial advisors before deciding to participate in this offer. This offer could lead to fewer shares in the market for Scholastic Company, which could help its stock price.

The article: prnewswire

Inwit is an Italian company that builds and runs mobile phone towers. These towers hold antennas that allow mobile phones to access signals. However, Inwit’s shares dropped after Swisscom and Telecom Italia or TIM said that they will form a joint venture to build and run mobile towers in Italy.

Fastweb and Vodafone, which is under Swisscom, and TIM will use these towers. However, other customers will also be allowed to use these towers. They also plan to use this joint venture to speed up the launch of 5G technology to Italy at a cost that is competitive with other European countries. Their funding will come from external investors and loans.

• Inwit’s shares dropped by 26% on the day of the announcement on March 19, 2026.
• The drop wiped out all of the company’s gains for the year.
• However, Swisscom saw its shares drop by 0.5 percent and TIM’s shares dropped by 2.9 percent on the same day.

Inwit used to be a division of Telecom Italia but spun out on 2020 to serve its customers, which include TIM, Fastweb, and Vodafone. However, they will now face competition from this joint venture. Although there will be a rise in the lease costs that the companies will have to pay to Inwit, it will ultimately help the country to get better 5G signals. However, the stock market reacted as people were concerned about the competition that Inwit will face from this new joint venture. Even though the shares of Inwit dropped on this day, the rest of the European stock markets also dropped on this trading day.

The article: WSJ

Kalshi operates a prediction market trading platform where people place bets on various events in politics, sports, the economy, and more. The company recently hit a valuation of $22 billion in a funding round in which it raised $1 billion.

Coatue Management was the leading investor in this round. Kalshi was valued at $11 billion only a few months ago in December 2025. Thus, the company has doubled its value in such a short period from investors who have a high level of confidence in the company and its growth potential.

• Users from around the world can trade binary contracts on the exchange.
• The company is regulated by the United States under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
• Its main competitor, Polymarket, is also experiencing rapid growth and is targeting a $20 billion valuation.

The growth of prediction markets has caught the attention of lawmakers due to concerns regarding insider trading and the lack of user protections. The company is currently in court fights with judges who have blocked its sports betting exchanges from operating without a gaming license. Despite the legal challenges, the valuation of the company demonstrates the popularity and value of these trading platforms. The additional funding will allow the company to expand its operations while it works to resolve these legal issues in different states.

The article: Reuters

Samsung plans on investing over $70 billion this year, specifically around $73.3 billion in total, into building more chip factories and conducting research. This is a 22% increase in their spending relative to what was projected before, and their focus is on AI chips.

Their main point of desire is ultimately to gain the same level of performance in the AI chip space as rivals like SK Hynix, who already leads the market in high-bandwidth memory chips that are sold to companies like Nvidia for implementing into AI products and processes. This spending is also more than Taiwan’s TSMC plans to spend this year.

The $73.3 billion will go into:

• Expanding their chip making capacity.
• Funding research into next generation AI semiconductors.
• All of this spending will occur in the year 2026.

While Samsung has fallen behind in the AI chip space, they are ultimately making significant efforts to gain the lead in the industry again. AI requires chips that can perform at faster and smarter rates, thus creating significant interest in companies to produce these types of chips for use in AI technologies. By committing to producing these chips, Samsung Electronics will compete better with rivals for Ai and claim a higher share of the growing industry.

The article: Bloomberg

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