• As someone who loves traveling and has visited all 50 states, I love checking out capital cities.
• Some of my favorites include Oklahoma City and Little Rock, which have tons of nature and art.
• I also think Providence has a great food scene, and Juneau should be on every travel bucket list.

Having traveled all over the US, state capitals fascinate me.

Some are major metropolitan areas, whereas others feel more random — supposedly chosen for historical significance, strategic location, or reasons I may never understand.

If you’ve already visited the obvious tourist destinations (Phoenix, Denver, and Austin, looking at you), consider this your cue to plan a trip to one of these lesser-known capital cities that deliver culture, history, and seriously good food — usually without the crowds or inflated price tags.

Call it capital gains for your travel bucket list. You’re welcome.

Oklahoma City has the perfect mix of nature and culture.

As someone who geeks out over economic development, I think the Bricktown neighborhood in Oklahoma City is one of the best examples of downtown revitalization in the country.

To get a sense of what the neighborhood has to offer, take a water taxi through the old warehouse district-turned-entertainment hub and check out all the restaurants, public art, and local landmarks.

Then, within walking distance of Bricktown, you can get wet and wild white-water rafting, tubing, or kayaking — when seasonally appropriate — at Riversport, where Team USA trains for Olympic canoeing.

If quirky attractions are your speed, you’ll love this city, too: OKC has some niche spots like the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and Factory Obscura, a cool interactive art space that gave me major Meow Wolf vibes.

Finally, I recommend everyone visit the sobering tribute to the victims, survivors, and rescuers of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.

I think Providence is one of the most underrated cities for food.

Rhode Island is a state that doesn’t always get a ton of buzz (beyond whispers about Taylor Swift’s rumored wedding venue), but I think it’s highly underrated — especially the food scene.

Cool off with a Del’s frozen lemonade, a signature treat you can find around the state, then follow your nose around Federal Hill, the city’s Little Italy.

My husband and I didn’t have a bad meal there: Raw oysters were plentiful, and I still dream about the beautiful fish dish we got from Dune Brothers Seafood, served out of a literal shack.

Rhode Island’s small size makes it super easy to explore other parts of the state from Providence, too. Newport’s mansion-lined Cliff Walk is just 40 minutes away by car, and the Block Island ferry — about a two-hour drive — is another fun day trip, where you can cruise around by moped.

Pro tip: Don’t miss WaterFire, an incredible art bonfire that ignites the river. It’s typically held twice a month from May through November.

Little Rock has a fascinating history.

There’s a lot to explore and learn in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The city’s retro yellow streetcar trolleys are a fun and free way to get a lay of the land. After that, follow the Civil Rights Heritage Trail or get a history lesson at the Clinton Presidential Library and snap a photo in the replica Oval Office.

If that’s not your vibe, check out the ESSE Purse Museum — one of the few handbag museums in the world, and an interesting look at the intersection of fashion and feminism.

When you’re ready to explore the Natural State’s, well, nature, mosey down to the Old Mill at T.R. Pugh Memorial Park — which you might recognize from the movie “Gone With the Wind” — or take a day trip to Hot Springs.

There, you can soak in the mineral waters, wander the national park and Bathhouse Row, and admire the incredible architecture at Garvan Woodland Gardens, where I almost got married.

Cheyenne, Wyoming, is the place to live out your Western dreams.

The biggest city in the least-populated state still feels like a small town with ample room to roam.

A few of my favorite activities include searching for all the giant painted cowboy boots around town, shopping for fringe, suede, and leather Western wear at The Wrangler, and designing custom hats at Wild J Trading.

You can also see the majestic creatures that once roamed in the millions up close at the Terry Bison Ranch on the Colorado border, and hand-feed the bison from a custom-built train.

Cheyenne is a great place for trainiacs, too. You can snap a pic of Big Boy — the world’s largest steam locomotive, and sometimes the Union Pacific Steam Shop is also open for tours.

I personally love visiting during Cheyenne Frontier Days to experience the beloved summer tradition of rodeos, carnivals, and concerts.

Juneau’s wilderness is captivating, and the city feels less remote than you might think.

Alaska may feel worlds away, but from Seattle — the closest major gateway — it’s just a two-hour flight, and you can be adventuring by lunchtime.

Mendenhall Glacier is just 20 minutes from downtown, and you can explore its icy, ethereal beauty by hiking, paddling, or riding in a helicopter.

Warm up with crab legs bigger than your head at Tracy’s King Crab Shack (my death-row meal), or head to Hangar on the Wharf, a restaurant in an actual airplane hangar, for freshly caught halibut and salmon.

Then, wash it down at Alaskan Brewing Company with beer flavored by glacier water, spruce tips, and alder smoke.

In the only capital where a glacier can be part of your post-flight plans, Juneau pairs trailheads and tide-to-table seafood with scenery that’s cool (literally).

• Israeli Air Force F-35I planes struck Iranian missile systems and military leaders on Saturday.
• The Israeli F-35 variant is known as “Adir,” meaning “Mighty One” in Hebrew.
• The planes also struck Iran in June and aided defenses against Iranian missiles in 2023 and 2024.

Israel launched what it called “the most extensive aerial operation ever conducted by the Israeli Air Force” on Saturday, targeting Iranian missile systems and military leaders in tandem with US forces. Israel’s F-35I stealth fighter jets were on the front lines.

The Israeli variant of the US-made Lockheed Martin Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter plane is known as “Adir,” meaning “Mighty One” in Hebrew. With advanced stealth capabilities and a customized electronic warfare system, the F-35I is one of the most powerful tools in Israel’s air defense arsenal.

In addition to Israel’s newest assault on Iran, the Israeli planes also conducted preemptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear program in June, intercepted hundreds of drones, missiles, and rockets fired by Iran in a retaliatory attack in 2024, and took down a missile fired by an Iran-backed group in Yemen in 2023, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Here’s a closer look at the “Mighty One” military aircraft.

F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jets, produced by Lockheed Martin, are some of the most advanced military aircraft in the world.

The F-35 stores its weapons and fuel internally, and its aligned edges and radar-absorbent coating also help the aircraft evade detection. The planes cost $44,000 per hour to fly, The National Interest reported.

They feature advanced stealth and information-processing capabilities and can reach supersonic speeds of Mach 1.6, or 548.8 meters per second.

Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn A. Hewson said in 2018 that the planes “can fly in what we call ‘beast mode,‘ carrying up to 18,000 pounds of internal and external ordnance, in a mix that can include 5,000-pound-class weapons.”

In 2016, Israel became the first country other than the US to acquire F-35 fighter jets.

Israel was the first country to select the model through the US Foreign Military Sales process and bought 50 planes, according to Lockheed Martin.

Israel has made significant modifications to the jets.

Israel manufactures its own wings and electronic warfare system for the F-35I. It also developed its own version of the high-tech helmet that displays the plane’s airspeed, altitude, targeting information, and other crucial stats directly on the pilot’s visor.

The Israeli Air Force named its F-35I variant “Adir,” meaning “Mighty One” in Hebrew.

The Israeli Air Force also added a six-pointed Star of David to the design, a Jewish symbol that also appears on the Israeli flag.

In 2018, Israel became the first country to use the F-35I in combat, its air force chief said.

“We are flying the F-35 all over the Middle East and have already attacked twice on two different fronts,” then-Israeli Air Force chief Major-General Amikam Norkin said in a speech at a gathering of foreign air force leaders, Reuters reported.

In July 2023, Israel acquired an additional 25 Adir planes in a $3 billion deal.

The deal was financed through the military aid Israel receives from the US, Reuters reported.

In November 2023, Israel’s F-35I Adir fighter jets took down a missile fired by an Iran-backed group in Yemen, according to the IDF.

It was the first known intercept of a cruise missile by an F-35 plane.

The Israeli Air Force released footage of the encounter on X, writing in Hebrew that its personnel are “preoccupied at every moment with planning and managing the defense response and are prepared for any threat in any area.”

Iran appeared to target the Nevatim air base, which houses Israel’s fleet of F-35I jets, during an attack in April 2024.

Out of the over 350 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, launched at Israel by Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon, around 99% were intercepted by Israel and its allies. The IDF released photos showing minor damage near a runway at the Nevatim Airbase and to a road in Hermon caused by the few projectiles that landed.

The missiles appeared to target Israel’s Nevatim Airbase in the Negev desert, which houses its fleet of F-35I stealth fighter jets. The base remained operational throughout the attack, according to the IDF, with the Adir fighter jets aiding the defensive mission.

“Iran thought it would be able to paralyze the base and thus damage our air capabilities, but it failed,” IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a statement.

In June 2025, the Israeli Air Force launched around 200 fighter jets, including F-35Is, in a preemptive strike targeting Iran’s nuclear program.

An IDF spokesperson said that Israeli fighter jets struck over 100 sites across Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon, including military targets and its largest uranium enrichment site in Natanz.

The IDF said that Iran’s nuclear program had “accelerated significantly” in recent months and called it “clear evidence that the Iranian regime is operating to obtain a nuclear weapon.” Iran maintains that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes.

“This is a critical operation to prevent an existential threat by an enemy who is intent on destroying us,” Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s Chief of the General Staff, said in a statement.

The IDF released photos showing planes used in the large-scale operation, including F-35I jets.

F-35Is struck Iran over the weekend in what the IDF called “the largest military flyover in Israeli Air Force history.”

As part of Operation Roaring Lion, Israel’s moniker for Operation Epic Fury, around 200 Israeli fighter jets, including F-35Is, struck 500 Iranian missile launchers and aerial defense systems on Saturday. IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani characterized the operation as “the most extensive aerial operation ever conducted by the Israeli Air Force.”

The strikes “significantly degraded” Iran’s offensive capabilities, the IDF said. The strikes also killed Iranian military leaders, including Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh and Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the IRGC.

The war in Gaza prompted new scrutiny of US military aid to Israel.

The October 7 terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas killed around 1,200 Israelis and captured over 240.

Israel’s counteroffensive airstrikes and military actions in Gaza resulted in over 72,000 Palestinian fatalities, according to figures provided to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. The IDF reports that at least 17,000 of these fatalities were Hamas militants. A ceasefire agreement was reached in October.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, over 1.9 million Gazans, around 90% of the population, have been displaced by the war.

The devastating human toll of the war in Gaza with US-funded planes like the F-35I has prompted new scrutiny of US aid to Israel, with some lawmakers in Congress raising the possibility of conditioning military and economic aid.

• Anthropic’s stance against the Pentagon and OpenAI’s resulting agreement is shifting the chatbot wars.
• As some ChatGPT users posted about canceling, Anthropic’s Claude over took ChatGPT to hit No. 1 on the App Store.
• OpenAI said its Pentagon agreement emphasizes human oversight of autonomous weapons and limits mass surveillance.

While OpenAI locks down Washington, Anthropic is locking down users and rocketing to the top of the App Store.

Anthropic has been sidelined in Washington following a public dispute with the Department of Defense over how its AI models would be deployed. President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to phase out its technology.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has secured new ground, with CEO Sam Altman announcing in a Friday night post on X that it had reached an agreement with the Department of Defense to deploy AI models in its classified network.

OpenAI’s agreement has left some loyal ChatGPT users uneasy about OpenAI’s ambitions, prompting online debates about the ethical implications — and some saying they were defecting to its rival Claude.

As of 12:50 pm ET on Monday, Claude ranked No. 1 among the most downloaded free apps on Apple’s US App Store. Claude also tops the chart for top productivity apps, where the top four apps are all AI competitors: ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok.

A spokesperson for Anthropic said, “Every single day last week was an all-time record for Claude sign-ups.” The AI startup said its upswing dates back to its much-discussed playful Super Bowl ad, which mocked OpenAI’s decision to test ads on ChatGPT.

“Since the start of the year, free active users have increased by over 60% and daily signups have quadrupled,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to Business Insider. “Claude’s paid subscribers have also more than doubled this year across Pro and Max plans.”

Even with the increase, Anthropic has a long way to go in matching ChatGPT, which OpenAI said on February 27 boasts over 900 million weekly active users. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has also positioned his company to focus more on the enterprise market.

Converts have taken to social media to share screenshots documenting their switch.

Pop musician Katy Perry wrote that she was “done” on X, alongside a screenshot of Claude’s pricing page, with a red heart around the $20-per-month “Pro” plan.

Another X user, Adam Lyttle, wrote “Made the switch,” alongside a screenshot of his email inbox with a receipt from Anthropic and cancellation confirmation from OpenAI.

On Reddit’s ChatGPT subreddit, dozens of users say they’ve deleted their accounts and are urging others to do the same.

“Cancel ChatGPT” has become a common refrain online, while some users have taken a more personal tone, saying Altman’s move “crossed the line.”

The agreement hasn’t polarized all AI users, however.

In one Reddit thread, several commenters said the news does not affect their choice of AI model, arguing that Anthropic’s work with Palantir raises similar concerns. In November 2024, Anthropic, Palantir, and Amazon Web Services struck an agreement to provide US intelligence and defense agencies access to Claude models.

After Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said he would designate Anthropic as a “supply chain risk to national security,” Anthropic said it would “challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”

In his Friday post, Altman said the Department of Defense had agreed with two of OpenAI’s safety principles.

“Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” Altman wrote on X. “The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”

By Saturday afternoon, OpenAI published a more detailed description of its contract with the Department of Defense, including the specific language it used surrounding the use of its models for surveillance and autonomous weapons.

On the topic of autonomous weapons, OpenAI said:

The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control, nor will it be used to assume other high-stakes decisions that require approval by a human decisionmaker under the same authorities.

On the topic of mass surveillance, OpenAI said:

The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with these authorities.

While some chatbot users suggested it’s all fair in business, war, and federal procurement, others suggested the Pentagon’s stance may have handed Anthropic a public relations win.

X user Tae Kim joked that Hegseth might need a new title: “Secretary Hegseth Chief of Claude Marketing.”

Chef and restaurateur Cesare Casella breaks down Italian cuisine scenes from movies and TV based on realism.

Casella discusses the accuracy of the meatballs from “The Godfather,” pasta sauce and thin garlic in “Goodfellas,” and capicola in “The Sopranos.” He also analyzes a dish from “Lady and the Tramp” (1955), timpano from “Big Night,” the tiramisu in “Superbad,” and carbonara from “Master of None.” He breaks down the pasta twirling technique from “Brooklyn,” cannoli from “The Bear,” and calzone from “Parks and Rec.” Casella reviews proper pizza throwing technique from “Seinfeld,” pizza-eating form in “Eat Pray Love,” lasagna-making in “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties,” mozzarella sandwiches from “Bicycle Thieves,” take-out salads from “Family Guy,” Italian kitchen-table dining in “Amarcord,” and trenette al pesto from “Luca.”

Casella has been cooking for more than 50 years and served as the head chef at the Michelin-starred restaurant Vipore in Italy. He then moved to the United States and worked at several fine-dining Italian restaurants in New York City such as Beppe and Salumeria Rosi. Today, Casella is head of the Department of Nourishment Arts at the Center for Discovery, a residential facility in upstate New York for the medically fragile. He oversees a team of chefs, nutritionists, therapists, farmers, and educators.

You can find Cesare on Instagram.

• In December, Paramount’s Larry and David Ellison said they had partners to help them buy WBD: Three Gulf states.
• At the time, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar were going to chip in a collective $24 billion into the deal.
• Are those countries part of the new deal Paramount struck with WBD last week? We don’t know yet.

A few months ago, Larry and David Ellison’s Paramount said it had lined up big backers for its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery: three Middle Eastern countries, which would contribute a total of $24 billion to help buy the media conglomerate.

Now, Paramount has won the rights to WBD, after Netflix walked away. Are those three Gulf states going to help finance Paramount’s new deal?

Paramount won’t say.

In government filings and on an investor call Monday, Paramount reiterated that the Ellisons and private-equity firm RedBird Capital Partners have pledged $47 billion toward the roughly $81 billion Paramount will pay to buy out WBD shareholders. The rest will be financed with debt.

But Paramount doesn’t say how much the Ellisons and RedBird intend to cough up themselves, and how much will come from other investors. A company rep pointed to the merger agreement, which lets them sell pieces of that $47 billion equity commitment — but doesn’t identify who those investors might be.

What we do know: In early December, Paramount had told WBD it intended to raise $24 billion via state-controlled funds from three countries: Saudi Arabia, which would contribute $12 billion, and Abu Dhabi and Qatar, which would kick in $7 billion each. And Paramount later said those countries would not ask for board seats or voting rights alongside their equity stakes.

So it’s entirely possible that those three countries’ funds will be in this deal, too. I’ve asked fund reps for comment; I’ve also asked Warner Bros. Discovery, which had previously flagged potential regulatory issues involving foreign investors in Paramount’s deal.

The notion of other countries owning a piece of a powerful American-run media giant, which has multiple news operations, streamers, and movie studios, seems like the kind of thing you might hear politicians, regulators, and even normal Americans talking about. Particularly given the participation of Saudi Arabia, whose government killed a Washington Post journalist in 2018, per US intelligence.

It may also explain why Paramount has never emphasized the idea of foreign investment in any of its press releases or public presentations about the deal. Or why Paramount once shot down a story saying it was rounding up Gulf investment.

But outside of a few complaints from the likes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the notion that Middle Eastern nations might own a meaningful stake in an important US company doesn’t seem to have registered as an issue, for now.

One reason is that Gulf state money is increasingly everywhere, including in big US companies. The Saudis, for instance, are set to be the primary owner of video game giant Electronic Arts once that deal closes this year. Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund now owns 15% of U.S. TikTok‘s operations.

And Donald Trump has made doing business in the Middle East a big part of his second-term focus: Last year, he brought a who’s who of American CEOs to a business summit in Saudi Arabia and later hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House.

So it’s very possible Gulf state money will end up in a giant American media company, too. It would be nice to know for sure.

For many enterprises, the hardest part of an IoT program is not selecting sensors, connectivity, or platforms. It is proving—year after year—that the deployment is economically sound. The conversation is shifting from “Can we fund the initial rollout?” to “Can we sustain and scale the operating model?”. This is why Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) has become the most practical decision framework for IoT: it exposes what truly drives long-term cost, risk, and value—well beyond the hardware bill of materials.

At the same time, IoT economics are changing. Device lifecycles are lengthening in industrial environments, security and compliance costs are rising, connectivity pricing is diversifying, and cloud spending is under tighter governance. As a result, many buyers are moving from CapEx-heavy project thinking to OpEx-driven product thinking—where ongoing service delivery, reliability, and change management matter more than the initial procurement.

Why IoT TCO models need a refresh in 2026

Classic IoT business cases often over-index on upfront costs (devices, installation, and initial integration) and under-estimate what happens after go-live. Three forces make that gap more expensive:

• Security and resilience are now baseline requirements: secure provisioning, key management, vulnerability monitoring, incident response, and periodic remediation need to be budgeted as recurring costs.
• Cloud and data costs are scrutinized: ingesting “everything” is rarely sustainable; storage, egress, and analytics workloads must be modeled with realistic usage patterns.
• Operational complexity is rising: multi-vendor stacks, multiple regions, device fleet growth, and regulatory constraints increase the cost of change.

A modern TCO model therefore needs to be less about “project cost” and more about “cost-to-serve a device, a site, and a business outcome over time.”

A practical IoT TCO framework

In IoT, TCO is best modeled in layers. Start with a baseline per-device/per-site cost structure, then scale it across fleet size, geography, and service levels (SLA). A robust framework includes:

1) CapEx: what you pay to deploy

• Device hardware: sensors, gateways, modules, enclosures, power systems, certifications, spares.
• Installation and commissioning: site surveys, labor, travel, safety constraints, calibration, acceptance testing.
• Initial integration: connectors to enterprise systems (ERP/MES/CMMS), data mapping, dashboards, identity, initial automation rules.
• One-time security setup: provisioning tooling, PKI bootstrap, secure element options, manufacturing or onboarding processes.

2) OpEx: what you pay to operate

• Connectivity recurring fees: SIM/eSIM subscriptions, private network costs, LPWAN subscriptions, roaming, APNs, VPNs.
• Cloud/platform consumption: message ingestion, device registry, digital twins, rules engines, storage, analytics, alerting, logs, egress.
• Device management and firmware operations: monitoring, remote diagnostics, configuration changes, OTA updates, rollout validation, rollback procedures.
• Security operations: certificate rotation, vulnerability management, pen tests, monitoring, SOC integration, incident response, compliance reporting.
• Field operations and support: truck rolls, replacements, RMAs, spare management, tiered support, NOC processes.
• Data operations: data quality checks, model maintenance, labeling (if AI), integration maintenance, API lifecycle management.

3) Risk and cost of change: the hidden multiplier

Many IoT deployments fail to scale because the “cost of change” is not modeled. Every change—new site, new device variant, new security requirement, new regulation, supplier disruption—creates engineering, validation, and operational work. Treat this as a budget line, not as a surprise:

• Change requests and roadmap delivery: feature evolution, new dashboards, new KPIs, new workflows.
• Vendor transitions: module swaps, carrier changes, cloud migrations, platform re-architecture.
• Regulatory updates: privacy/data retention, critical infrastructure constraints, sector compliance.

Core modeling units: per device, per site, per outcome

To keep models actionable, avoid a single monolithic spreadsheet. Instead, build three units and connect them:

• Cost per device-year: a normalized number that includes connectivity, platform, device management, and support (plus allocated security operations).
• Cost per site-year: site-specific fixed costs such as gateway infrastructure, on-prem edge compute, private network components, site visits, and local compliance requirements.
• Cost per outcome: the cost to deliver a business KPI (e.g., cost per avoided downtime hour, cost per tracked asset, cost per compliance report).

This structure helps decision makers compare architectures (direct-to-cloud vs gateway/edge, single-carrier vs multi-carrier, centralized vs regional data) without losing track of real-world operations.

From CapEx to OpEx: what is actually shifting?

Moving from CapEx to OpEx is not only an accounting preference—it changes how IoT is designed, procured, and governed.

IoT becomes a product, not a project

In a CapEx mindset, success is deployment completion. In an OpEx mindset, success is service performance over time: uptime, security posture, data quality, response time, and measurable business impact. This pushes teams to define SLAs, operational ownership, and continuous improvement from day one.

Procurement shifts to lifecycle contracts

More enterprises in 2026 want bundled offers (device + connectivity + platform + support) or managed services. This can simplify operations, but it also introduces vendor lock-in risk. A TCO model should explicitly quantify the trade-off between reduced internal OpEx and reduced flexibility.

FinOps meets IoT

Cloud governance practices—usage tagging, budgets, unit economics, anomaly detection—are increasingly applied to IoT workloads. If the platform bill cannot be explained in cost-per-device terms, it becomes vulnerable to budget cuts.

Key cost drivers that often get underestimated

1) Firmware and fleet update operations

Firmware management is rarely “free.” It requires staged rollouts, testing across variants, monitoring, and sometimes field remediation. The more heterogeneous the fleet, the higher the recurring engineering and QA effort.

2) Data egress and cross-region architectures

As deployments go global, data movement can become a structural cost. The cheapest architecture for ingestion is not always the cheapest for analytics, compliance, and long-term storage.

3) Truck rolls and physical reality

Battery replacement cycles, harsh environments, calibration needs, and site access constraints can dominate TCO in industrial contexts. TCO models should include realistic failure rates and service visit probabilities—not optimistic assumptions.

4) Security as an operating cost

Security expenses extend beyond initial device hardening. Certificate lifecycle, vulnerability scanning, security monitoring, penetration testing, compliance audits, and incident response are recurring, and they scale with fleet size.

How to build a defensible IoT TCO model in 2026

Step 1: Define the scope and time horizon

Most industrial IoT fleets should be modeled over 3–7 years. Shorter horizons hide recurring costs; longer horizons require explicit assumptions about refresh cycles and platform evolution.

Step 2: Create a unit economics baseline

Build a “device-year” baseline that includes:

• connectivity recurring cost
• platform consumption cost (average + peak)
• device management and OTA operations allocation
• security operations allocation
• support allocation

Step 3: Add scenario bands, not a single number

Use at least three scenarios:

• Expected: realistic adoption and operational maturity
• Constrained: higher failure rates, slower deployment, tighter compliance
• Optimized: improved automation, better device reliability, reduced cloud spend via edge filtering

Step 4: Separate “must-have” costs from “choice” costs

Some expenses are non-negotiable (secure provisioning, monitoring, incident readiness). Others depend on design choices (edge compute level, analytics depth, digital twin fidelity). Modeling them separately clarifies where architecture decisions matter most.

Step 5: Model scale effects and operational automation

At 100 devices, manual processes can work. At 50,000 devices, they become cost bombs. Add explicit assumptions on automation maturity—especially for onboarding, monitoring, and updates—and link them to headcount requirements and tooling costs.

Example structure: what your spreadsheet should look like

A usable TCO model does not need to be complex, but it must be structured:

• Inputs: fleet size growth, device types, average data volume, connectivity profile, SLA level, failure rate assumptions.
• Cost blocks: CapEx (one-time), OpEx recurring (monthly/annual), OpEx variable (per message/GB), risk reserves (percentage or fixed).
• Outputs: cost per device-year, cost per site-year, total annual run rate, marginal cost of adding 1,000 devices, sensitivity analysis.

Once these outputs exist, IoT decision-making becomes significantly clearer: teams can compare architectures, suppliers, and rollout plans using the same economic language.

Interpreting TCO: where ROI gets real

TCO is only half of the equation; the other half is value capture. Many programs struggle not because the technology fails, but because operational ownership is unclear. If the organization cannot convert data into decisions—maintenance work orders, process changes, inventory optimization—then even a “cheap” IoT stack becomes expensive.

The most resilient business cases therefore combine:

• measurable outcomes (downtime avoided, energy saved, compliance hours reduced)
• repeatable operations (standard onboarding, monitoring, support processes)
• predictable unit economics (transparent cost per device-year)

What best-in-class looks like in 2026

Enterprises that scale IoT successfully tend to share the same playbook:

• They design for operations: device management, security lifecycle, and support are built into the architecture.
• They measure unit economics: cost per device-year is tracked like any other operational KPI.
• They constrain data: edge filtering and event-based telemetry reduce cloud spend without losing insight.
• They industrialize change: firmware updates and configuration changes are treated as disciplined release processes.

Conclusion: the IoT winners will be the ones who master cost-to-serve

IoT is no longer judged by pilot success. It is judged by scalability, resilience, and the ability to operate safely over years. A modern TCO model is the bridge between engineering and finance: it makes costs explicit, reveals risk multipliers, and supports architecture choices with defensible unit economics.

As IoT shifts from CapEx-heavy rollouts to OpEx-driven services, the winners will be the teams that can answer a simple question with confidence: “What does it cost us to run this fleet for the next 12 months—and what will it cost when we double it?”

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