Ivan Levingston / Financial Times: Vilnius-based Vinted says it closed an ~€880M secondary share sale led by EQT, Teachers' Venture Growth, and Schroders at an €8B valuation, up from €5B in 2024 — Second-hand marketplace sells €880mn of existing shares to investors including Teachers' Venture Growth and Schroders Capital
Financial Times: Sources: some UK officials fear Keir Starmer's plan for closer EU ties risks the US-UK alliance; a source says the main issue is the UK adopting EU AI rules — Officials concerned about damage to country's technology sector and alliance with US — UK technology ministers have expressed concern …
Financial Times: China blocks Meta's $2B Manus acquisition, after reviewing whether it violated investment rules, and tells both to cancel it; Manus moved to Singapore in 2025 — Regulators had reviewed whether deal violated Beijing's investment rules — China has ordered Meta to unwind its $2bn acquisition …
Stephen Morris / Financial Times: Epoch AI: Google controls ~25% of global AI compute, with ~3.8M TPUs and 1.3M GPUs; Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says demand and revenue justify the spend — Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud's CEO, says its AI chips and models can help the data centre business gain ground
Financial Times: Canada-based Cohere and Germany-based Aleph Alpha agree to a merger valuing the combination at ~$20B, to work on sovereign AI; both governments support the deal — Canadian and German start-ups to focus on ‘sovereign’ AI systems independent of US and China
Emma Dunkley / Financial Times: EY survey of 18,000 people across 23 countries: ~49% of consumers have used AI over the past six months to support their savings and investment decisions — Gen Z and millennials the most likely groups to consult chatbots on money matters — Nearly half of global consumers are turning …
Financial Times: Memo: White House says it has info indicating “foreign entities, principally based in China” are engaged in “industrial scale distillation” of American AI tech — Trump official Michael Kratsios says Chinese entities stealing from American labs
Kaye Wiggins / Financial Times: Anthropic and law firm Freshfields sign a deal to develop specialized legal AI tools for document drafting, contract review, due diligence, and more — Tech group will tap ‘magic circle’ law firm's expertise as it builds products that can be sold to rivals
Financial Times: Sources: Revolut is aiming for a valuation of $150B to $200B in an IPO; founder Nik Storonsky said this week that Revolut would IPO in 2028 at the earliest — Bumper IPO would trigger increased stake for founder Nik Storonsky but group has no plans to float shares before 2028
Stephanie Stacey / Financial Times: Airbnb launches a pilot in NYC, LA, and other cities that lets users to select from a range of boutique hotels alongside private homes in a bid to boost growth — Company expands accommodation options alongside home rentals but analysts warn of stiff competition
Financial Times: Sources suggest Anthropic is holding off from a wider Mythos release until it can reliably serve it to customers; Anthropic has suffered outages in recent weeks — Dario Amodei met with Susie Wiles despite lawsuits over whether AI lab is a national security threat
Financial Times: Sources: Recursive Superintelligence, a four-month-old start-up developing self-teaching AI and founded by ex-DeepMind and OpenAI engineers, has raised $500M+ — Group founded by former engineers at DeepMind and OpenAI secures $4bn valuation in deal with Google's venture arm and Nvidia
John Thornhill / Financial Times: An interview with Dario Amodei, who says the negative narrative around AI is dominant because the industry hasn't yet fully delivered the benefits it promises — The tech entrepreneur on Claude Mythos, repercussions from the Pentagon dispute — and his message for the super-rich
Financial Times: Uber agrees to buy an additional 4.5% stake in German food delivery rival Delivery Hero from Prosus for ~€270M, which would bring Uber's total stake to ~7% — German delivery group's largest shareholder Prosus has agreed to reduce its stake over EU competition concerns
Bryce Elder / Financial Times: Shoe company Allbirds, which sold last week for $39M after its valuation fell from $4B+ in 2021, says it aims to become an AI compute provider; BIRD jumps 350%+ — Ah, zeitgeist: — Allbirds is a San Francisco maker of wool trainers that was once valued at more than $4bn.
Financial Times: Iran's internet blackout enters a record 45th day, per NetBlocks, amid the war; the country's 90M people now rely on the domestic National Information Network — When the US and Israel attacked Iran, assassinating supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and calling on the Iranian people to rise …
Barbara Moens / Financial Times: The EU appoints Anthony Whelan as its top competition official; Whelan says he will press ahead with Big Tech investigations despite President Trump's pressure — Anthony Whelan, a former adviser on tech, vows to pursue cases irrespective of ‘noise’ around them
Elizabeth Bratton / Financial Times: Law firms say lawyers are spending more time responding to swaths of AI-generated client documents, potentially leading firms to raise fixed-fee contract prices — Firms may raise prices for fixed-fee contracts if clients keep sending flurries of emails and letters
Daniel Tudor / Financial Times: Analysts and researchers say Google's TurboQuant compression algorithm to make LLMs more efficient is more likely to expand memory chip demand than reduce it — More efficient artificial intelligence could mean even greater need for semiconductors, say experts
Zijing Wu / Financial Times: A wave of top AI researchers returned from the US to China in the past year, driven by better pay, quality of life, and a more restrictive US immigration system — Engineers and scientists return for better pay and quality of life as US grows more hostile — In the hushed corridors …
Clara Murray / Financial Times: Ramp data: 30.6% of US businesses paid for Anthropic's tools in March, up from 24.4% in February; OpenAI's US business adoption remained nearly flat MoM at ~35% — Divergence reflects company's recent rapid growth owing to strong interest in its Claude Code products
Financial Times: Sources: Alibaba appointed Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren to lead its AI unit after a pivot from open source to monetizable MaaS models led to Qwen executive departures — Move may affect a global developer community that relies on Qwen models from the Chinese company
Financial Times: An Iranian union official says Iran will demand that shipping companies pay tolls in crypto of $1 per barrel for tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz — Country's oil exporters' union says toll to be paid in cryptocurrency and vessels monitored for weapons
Financial Times: Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid western sanctions after its Ukraine invasion — Videos show A7 office in Nigeria, while company also claims new branch in Zimbabwe — A recent vacancy posted …
Financial Times: Sources: Meta's “Project Walleye” Ohio data center seeks $3B in loans in a first-of-its-kind deal where lenders will fund both the building and the power assets — ‘Project Walleye’ lenders would be first to fund both construction and power — A data centre campus backed …
Stephen Morris / Financial Times: Sources: AI startup Poolside held talks with Google and others to revive a Texas data center project after a CoreWeave deal and a $2B Nvidia-led round collapsed — AI start-up held talks with Google and other cloud providers in bid to revive ambitious 2-gigawatt Texas project
Laura Pitel / Financial Times: How a small German state's bid to replace Microsoft with open-source alternatives like Linux and Kamailio faces issues, as the EU pushes “digital sovereignty” — Schleswig-Holstein's radical tech overhaul offers Europe a live experiment in ending dependence on US Big Tech
Patrick McGee / Financial Times: As Apple turns 50, a look at how a management course in postwar Japan paved the way for Steve Jobs' obsession with quality and its dominance in the iPhone era — How a little-known yet highly influential management course in postwar Japan paved the way for Steve Jobs' obsession with quality.
Joe Miller / Financial Times: US CTO Ethan Klein plans to urge the UK and its allies to help “shore up” quantum computing supply chains at a London meeting, after a US-UK tech deal standoff — US CTO Ethan Klein seeks British co-operation amid stand-off over wider tech pact
Bethan Staton / Financial Times: AI has led some employers like L'Oréal to return to in-person assessments during recruiting, as senior HR leaders see a steep rise in AI-generated applications — Employers wading through job applications are returning to in-person and practical assessments
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Paris-based AI startup Mistral raised $830M in its debut debt financing to build Nvidia-powered data centers across Europe; Mistral plans to spend €4B in total — French company's debut debt financing follows rising demand for alternatives to US groups
Financial Times: Vinod Khosla says AI is accelerating a shift of wealth and power away from workers, and an income tax overhaul in the US could offset voter fears about job loss — Vinod Khosla says voter fears over technology causing job losses will shape upcoming US elections
Barbara Moens / Financial Times: The EU accuses Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos of failing to protect kids from exposure to pornographic content, in preliminary DSA investigation findings — Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos accused of inadequate checks on users' ages — The EU has accused some of the world's …
Financial Times: OpenAI shelves its erotic chatbot “indefinitely” as it refocuses on its core products, sources say after technical issues as well as staff and investor concerns — Decision follows staff and investor concerns about sexual AI content — OpenAI has shelved plans to release an erotic chatbot …
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Apple rolls out mandatory UK age verification with iOS 26.4, requiring users to provide a credit card or ID, a first in Europe, after UK government pressure — Move follows pressure from government on smartphone makers to do more to protect children online
Rafe Rosner-Uddin / Financial Times: Amazon's Zoox plans to launch a paid robotaxi service in Las Vegas by late June, pending local approvals and an NHTSA exemption, ahead of a San Francisco launch — Driverless car group pushes forward with commercial rollout to catch up with rivals Waymo and Tesla
Joe Miller / Financial Times: How Palantir became a flashpoint on the US campaign trail due to its ICE work, ahead of the midterms; six lawmakers publicly refuse any further Palantir funds — Donald Trump's unpopular immigration crackdown has made links to the Peter Thiel-backed company a liability for candidates
Financial Times: European VC firm Hummingbird raised $800M to find “misfit” founders, taking its total assets to ~$2B, after backing Kraken and AI vibe coding startup Lovable — Hummingbird to put $800mn in funds to work after lucrative early bets on the likes of Kraken and Lovable
Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times: US Senators Warren and Banks urge suspending Nvidia AI chip export licenses to China and Southeast Asia, following Supermicro co-founder Wally Liaw's indictment — Lawmakers call for commerce department to suspend licences that let company send advanced semiconductors to south-east Asia
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Q&A with GV's Tom Hulme on the AI investment cycle, London's and Europe's opportunities, Q.ai and Nothing investments, AI social norms, sovereign AI, and more — The head of the European office of GV talks about the AI investment cycle and predicts a comeback for Google Glass-style smart glasses
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: A Stanford study of 391K+ messages across nearly 5,000 chats: AI chatbots affirmed user messages in nearly 66% of replies, often validating delusional thinking — AI chatbots are reinforcing unhealthy beliefs in their users by agreeing even when users express delusional or harmful ideas …
Financial Times: Sources: KKR, Blackstone, and other investors have turned down some data center debt because of insufficient insurance against risks like natural disasters — Lack of sufficient cover means some investors are walking away from deals — Lenders looking to fund the build-out of data centres …
Anastasia Stognei / Financial Times: Mobile internet blackouts hit Moscow as the Kremlin tightens control; Roskomnadzor data shows average daily traffic is down ~20% in March compared to February — Outages mark new phase in government campaign against internet freedom — Moscow is experiencing mass mobile internet blackouts …
Elon Musk / Financial Times: A US judge questions Elon Musk's $134B claim for damages in his lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft but rules he can still make his case to a jury — California court questions billionaire's expert witness but declines to exclude the testimony from April trial
Financial Times: Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab signs a chip supply deal with Nvidia worth tens of billions of dollars, planning to deploy 1GW+ of next-gen Vera Rubin chips — Multiyear partnership includes a further ‘significant’ investment from Nvidia into one-year-old AI start-up
Financial Times: South Korean giant Coupang is lobbying the US to represent its interests as it faces 10+ data leak probes; Coupang Korea CEO Harold Rogers attended Trump's SOTU — Coupang leans on its US domicile to lobby Washington against probes from Seoul — Coupang, the online retailer, once called itself a “proud Korean company”.
Mary McDougall / Financial Times: A Lloyds-commissioned study of 5,000 people in the UK finds that 50%+ of the adults used generative AI platforms for financial advice; ChatGPT was the most used — Millions of people are already turning to chatbots such as ChatGPT to plan their retirement — When Dan, a 41-year-old …
Michael Acton / Financial Times: Samsung's consumer device chief TM Roh says it is “open to strategic co-operation” with more AI groups, having recently added Perplexity to its mobile OS — Korean giant's device chief says its future Galaxy devices will host multiple models as users mix and match AI tools
Financial Times: Sources: Palmer Luckey's ModRetro, which wants to sell updated versions of 1990s consoles like the Nintendo 64, is in talks to raise funding at a $1B valuation — From AI weapons to Game Boys, defence tech billionaire is in talks to raise funds for new gaming venture ModRetro
Financial Times: US investors are pushing Asian fund managers to create special vehicles so they can invest in Asia while avoiding US investment restrictions on Chinese tech — Institutional clients increasingly want so-called parallel funds that exclude certain assets — US investors are increasingly …