Sarah White / Financial Times: France secured €110B+ of proposed AI and data center investments this week, amounting to ~10 GW of new computing capacity, equivalent to ~10 nuclear reactors — Investors warn approvals and local opposition could slow France's massive data centre build-out
Richard Milne / Financial Times: Supercell, King, and Sybo say the EU's Digital Fairness Act, which requires pop-ups to show virtual currencies' real-world values, could make games “unplayable” — Makers of ‘Clash of Clans’, ‘Candy Crush Saga’ and ‘Subway Surfers’ warn EU proposals could throttle rare tech success
Financial Times: Anthropic says it will extend Project Glasswing to organizations in 15+ countries, sources say giving Mythos access to Five Eyes, NATO, Samsung, SK, and others — About 150 organisations will be given advanced cyber security model following requests from around the world
Financial Times: French private equity firm Ardian partners with data center group Verne to build an up to €5B AI “gigafactory” outside Paris, targeting 500MW in total capacity — Data centre and research facility to be built as Europe seeks to create ‘digital backbone for the future’
Financial Times: SoftBank pledges to invest up to €75B in AI computing clusters in France, first leading a €45B investment to build 3.1GW of capacity by 2031 in Hauts-de-France — Masayoshi Son places France at the centre of his global AI ambitions — SoftBank has pledged to invest up to €75bn …
Financial Times: Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, which exploded during testing on Thursday, was set to ferry 48 Amazon Leo satellites on Monday; Amazon paid Blue Origin $2.7B — Failure comes days before planned launch of internet satellites for Amazon
Financial Times: A look at strains in the UK's fintech sector, as former industry darlings are forced to overhaul their operations or merge under pressure to reach profitability — Shachar Bialick credits his stint in the Israel Defense Forces 25 years ago for instilling in him the determination to build …
Financial Times: Sources: Princeton Digital Group to sell its Chinese data center assets for as much as $1B, capping global buyout firms' retreat from China's data center market — Princeton Digital Group's sale process caps foreign retreat from the country's sensitive digital infrastructure.
Financial Times: Crypto companies prepare for the threat that quantum computers could hack core industry security, including breaking the critical code underpinning Bitcoin — Threat to code that underpins bitcoin has moved ‘from theoretical to credible’, industry figures warn
Peter Wells / Financial Times: The Trump administration plans to require most green card applicants to return to their home countries to apply, which could adversely impact tech workers — Move to tighten permanent residency requirements could have significant implications for businesses
Financial Times: Document and sources: China banned Nvidia's RTX 5090D V2 chip, aimed at gamers and animators, while Jensen Huang was visiting China with Donald Trump last week — Beijing aims to support domestic players including Huawei and Cambricon as they catch up to US rivals
Arjun Neil Alim / Financial Times: Standard Chartered plans to cut nearly 8,000 back-office positions by 2030, a 15%+ reduction in support functions in hubs like Bengaluru, amid growing AI usage — Comments from CEO Bill Winters come as bank sets out plans to cut almost 8,000 jobs — Standard Chartered plans …
John Gapper / Financial Times: King's Cross, where Google's new UK HQ is due to open later this year, has become London's new tech, VC, and AI hub, attracting OpenAI, Anthropic, and others — A formerly rundown area has become London's new global technology hub — Google's new UK headquarters in King's Cross …
Stephen Foley / Financial Times: Professional services firm EY has withdrawn a study on loyalty rewards programs after researchers at GPTZero found apparent AI hallucinations and fake footnotes — Incident is latest example of professional services firm being led astray by new technology — EY has withdrawn a study …
Daniel Thomas / Financial Times: Ofcom says X has committed to implementing stronger protections for UK users, including reviewing illegal hate content within 24 hours, following a probe — Social media platform commits to providing faster review of reported material following regulator's investigation
Kieran Smith / Financial Times: London-based edtech startup Multiverse raised $70M at a $2.1B valuation from Index and others as it pushes into AI training; it acquired StackFuel in January — Education technology start-up raises $70mn in its first fundraising since 2022 — Euan Blair's Multiverse has raised $70mn …
Financial Times: Delivery Hero says founder Niklas Östberg plans to step down as CEO by March 2027, as the German food delivery group faces mounting activist investor pressure — Founder Niklas Östberg will leave German food delivery group by next March — Delivery Hero founder Niklas Östberg …
Financial Times: Analysis: the combined free cash flow of Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta is expected to fall to ~$4B in Q3 and hit its lowest full-year level since 2014 — Silicon Valley giants have transformed from asset-light cash machines to huge infrastructure investors
Laith Al-Khalaf / Financial Times: The UK FCA says it is investigating PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa for alleged anti-competitive behavior, in a rare antitrust investigation by the regulator — Move is rare exercise of Financial Conduct Authority's competition law powers — PayPal, Mastercard and Visa are being investigated …
Financial Times: Uber reports Q1 revenue up 14% YoY to $13.2B, below $13.3B est., Gross Bookings up 25% YoY to $53.7B, trips up 20% YoY to 3.6B, and a $1B revenue UK tax law hit — Ride-hailing company posts weaker than expected first-quarter revenues but issues optimistic outlook
Financial Times: Sources: some lenders are exploring private deals to sell their data center debt, and some banks are seeking to offload their Oracle-linked loans at a discount — Global lenders explore private deals and risk transfers to cut exposure to AI boom — Banks are hunting for new ways …
David Keohane / Financial Times: Nintendo's share price has fallen by ~45% since August 2025, as rising memory chip costs drive investor concerns over profit margins for the Switch 2 — Higher memory chip costs fuel fears of price rise for Switch 2 and cast shadow over console's success — The latest Super Mario movie released …
Michael Acton / Financial Times: Apple CFO Kevan Parekh says that “the iPhone 17 family is now the most popular lineup in our history” and “we believe we gained market share during the quarter” — John Ternus pledges to continue ‘deliberateness and discipline’ in first comments since being named next CEO
Zijing Wu / Financial Times: Sources: Huawei expects AI chip revenue to hit ~$12B in 2026, up 60% from $7.5B in 2025, as orders for its Ascend 950PR chip surge and Nvidia stalls in China — Chinese tech companies place large orders for the Shenzhen-based group's latest range of AI processors
Financial Times: Study: long-shot Polymarket bets on military action, defined as $2,500+ wagers at odds of 35% or less, have a ~52% average win rate, vs. 25% for political bets — High rate of winning wagers likely to add to concerns that sensitive information can leak on prediction markets
Financial Times: Sources: OpenAI has, in practice, abandoned its Stargate JV in favor of large bilateral deals; execs say its guiding principle remains to “build more compute” — Chief executive Sam Altman's flexible approach to infrastructure projects is unsettling partners but boosting computing lead
Tim Harford / Financial Times: A working paper uses an LLM to analyze X's political discourse, finding that anger is by far the most common emotion expressed by US users, especially those 65+ — There is a gap between the calm, rational decision-makers we often aspire to be and the overwrought, sentiment-tossed creatures we often are.
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