The Silent Breakthrough
T&V Letter Q1 2026
Electric cars and artificial intelligence show the same pattern: new technologies spread slowly at first, then suddenly. What seems like an exception or a futuristic topic for a long time becomes a global structural shift within a few years. For investors, what matters is not just what makes headlines today, but what is already making history in the background.
Insight
Electric cars: From a European exception to a global mass phenomenon
According to the energy think tank Ember, electric cars (pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids) accounted for less than 3% of new passenger car registrations worldwide in 2019. By the end of 2025, this share had risen to around 25%. Every fourth newly registered passenger car was electric.
What has changed is not just the number, but the pattern. According to Ember, in 2019 there were exactly four countries in the world where electric cars accounted for more than 10% of new passenger car registrations. All four were in Europe, all of them small markets with targeted support policies. In 2025, there are already 39 countries, twelve of them outside Europe, including China (53%), Singapore and Vietnam (around 40% each), Uruguay (27%), Thailand (20%), Costa Rica (17%), Indonesia (15%), and the USA (10%). Particularly striking: many of the fast-growing markets are not rich industrialized nations, but emerging markets that have simply skipped the internal combustion engine.
Norway shows where the journey can lead. According to Visual Capitalist, based on data from the IEA and Ember, the EV share of new Norwegian registrations in 2019 was already at 56%, unique in the world at the time and dismissed by many experts as a special case. According to the Norwegian Road Federation OFV, it was around 96% in 2025. In less than a generation, an entire country has transformed from an exception to a blueprint.
New technologies rarely spread linearly. They arrive creeping in, are underestimated, and then suddenly break through. Not always where you expect them to, but where the advantage is greatest and the resistance is lowest.
NEWSLETTER
Dear Reader
The first quarter of 2026 was quite eventful. What began with trade tensions and tariff announcements escalated in March with a conflict that very few had on their radar: the situation surrounding Iran intensified at a pace that caught the markets off guard. The price of oil surged to levels not seen since the 2022 energy crisis. Stock markets reacted as they always do in such moments: first with panic, then with reflection.
Global stock markets came under pressure, from the S&P 500 to European and Asian markets. For investors in Swiss Francs or Euros, matters were further complicated by what we already observed in the previous quarter: the US dollar continued to depreciate, which further amplified international market losses in local currencies.
For a global economy already struggling with sluggish growth, expensive oil is poison. It drives up production costs, burdens consumers, and squeezes corporate margins across all sectors. Geopolitical shocks of this nature are uncomfortable, but historically, they are rarely permanent.
What occupies our minds more than oil prices and stock market charts is a shift that is occurring more quietly, yet is more profound than anything we have seen in recent decades.
Beyond the Headlines
In February of this year, Matt Shumer, founder of a Silicon Valley AI company, published an article that garnered a great deal of attention in professional circles. In it, he recalls February 2020: most people were living normal lives, children were going to school, and travel plans were being made. Anyone who spoke of a virus that would change everything back then was hardly taken seriously. Three weeks later, the world was a different place. Shumer says he believes we are currently in a similar phase—not on the brink of a pandemic, but on the verge of a technological shift that is already underway but is not yet felt by most.
He describes his own daily work routine: he explains to the system what he wants, leaves his desk for four hours, and returns to a finished result. Not a draft. The finished result.
What many do not realize: AI does not improve linearly. For years, there were solid but absorbable advancements. Then the pace accelerated, and then it accelerated again. On February 5, 2026, OpenAI and Anthropic simultaneously released new models. Many who are close to the development describe this moment as a tipping point. Not like a light switch, but like the moment you realize the water has already risen to your chest.
For context: in 2022, AI still made mistakes on simple math problems. In 2023, it passed the bar exam. In 2024, it wrote functioning software. By late 2025, leading engineers declared they had handed over the majority of their programming work to AI systems. This is not a future scenario. This is a look back at four years.
A research organization called METR regularly measures how long AI systems can operate autonomously. A year ago, it was ten minutes; today, it is already several hours. The value doubles every seven months. Extending this trend, within two to three years we will be talking about systems that can autonomously handle projects lasting weeks.
What This Means
It is not just the technology sector that is affected. Lawyers reviewing contracts and conducting research, analysts building models and writing reports, doctors evaluating medical findings, journalists, programmers, marketing professionals — wherever reading, writing, and decision-making take place, AI can already keep pace. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, one of the world's leading AI companies, publicly stated that AI will replace around 50% of entry-level office positions in the next one to five years.
What distinguishes this shift from previous waves of automation is that it does not affect just one industry or one activity. It affects cognitive labor as a whole, and it is improving in all areas simultaneously.
Historically speaking, technological change has always advanced humanity. The power loom did not destroy the textile industry; it transformed it. The internet did not create fewer jobs, but rather different ones.
What is different this time is the speed and the breadth. Previous waves of automation primarily affected physical labor. This one affects cognitive labor. Not all professions at the same time and not overnight. But the direction is clear.
Our Conclusion
Geopolitics makes noise. Technological change makes history. Shumer aptly describes that those who learn to adapt to the change will emerge from it stronger. His advice: anyone who spends $20 a month to use the latest models and makes a habit of spending an hour every day trying out truly new things will understand what is coming in six months better than most people around them. The free versions are often lagged by over a year. The hurdle is low. Almost no one does it.
As always, we thank you for the trust you place in us!
*This communication is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a personal recommendation or an independent financial analysis.
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