Financial Times: UK CMA Chair Marcus Bokkerink plans to leave the antitrust agency, after pressure from UK ministers; the CMA appoints ex-Amazon exec Doug Gurr as interim chair — Marcus Bokkerink replaced at CMA with government saying it wants pro-business decisions to drive prosperity and growth
Keir Starmer / Financial Times: The UK PM debuts plans to increase its public sector compute by over 20x to spark a “national renewal”, saying the UK doesn't need to walk a US or EU path on AI — Going our own way will unleash national renewal — Artificial intelligence is the defining opportunity of our generation.
Stephanie Stacey / Financial Times: Workers are adopting generative AI faster than companies can issue guidelines on how to do so; a survey says ~25% of the US workers already use the tech weekly — Staff are adopting large language models faster than companies can issue guidelines on how to do so
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Microsoft President Brad Smith calls on Donald Trump to “push harder” against cyberattacks from Russia, China, and Iran amid a wave of state-sponsored hacks — Big Tech group's president calls on new US administration to take tougher approach on state-sponsored cyber attacks
Yoshua Bengio / Financial Times: AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio says models like OpenAI's o1 could accelerate research on AI itself and calls for more urgent AI regulation to protect the public — Advances in reasoning will lead to substantially improved capabilities in mathematics and science — The writer is professor …
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: UK podcaster Harry Stebbings' 20VC raised a $400M fund for early stage startups, one of Europe's biggest venture funds; the podcast recently hosted Sam Altman — British firm 20VC pulls in $400mn to invest in early stage tech start-ups — A venture firm founded by 28-year-old British …
Financial Times: Analysis: Kamala Harris has spent $57M on Google and Meta ads since Biden dropped out on July 21, compared to Trump's $5.6M; Biden-Harris spent $139M in 2024 — Former president's lacklustre output points to significant tactical change from four years ago — Kamala Harris has spent 10 times …
Financial Times: A look at the race to build advanced AI robots; PitchBook: robotics startups have raised $6.5B across 552 deals in 2024 vs. $9.7B across 1,256 deals in 2023 — Google, OpenAI and Tesla race start-ups to develop AI robotic systems in effort to transform healthcare and manufacturing
Financial Times: Amazon to invest up to $4B in Anthropic, with an initial investment of $1.25B for a minority stake in the AI startup, and an option to increase the total to $4B — Amazon Web Services lures Claude chatbot maker, which was valued at nearly $5bn earlier this year
Financial Times: An overview of Parag Agrawal's tenure as Twitter's CEO so far, as he battles declining business performance and plunging morale amid Elon Musk's takeover bid — The tech prodigy's battles with a mercurial opponent are coming to a head — It's hard to know which part of Parag Agrawal's job …
Financial Times: An overview of Parag Agrawal's tenure as Twitter's CEO, struggling with a declining business performance and a plunging morale amid Elon Musk's takeover bid — The tech prodigy's battles with a mercurial opponent are coming to a head — It's hard to know which part of Parag Agrawal's job …
Financial Times: SenseTime seeks to raise between $750M and $767M in its Hong Kong IPO, at a valuation of between $16.5B and $17B; the company previously hoped to raise $2B — Chinese AI group's downsized share offer comes as Beijing seeks to rein in sector — SenseTime, the Chinese artificial intelligence …
Song Jung-a / Financial Times: Samsung reports Q3 operating profit of $13.26B, up 28% YoY, its best in three years, but warns chips could be entering a downcycle as laptop demand subsides — South Korean company has record sales but warns semiconductors could be entering downcycle — Samsung Electronics has estimated …
Financial Times: SoftBank-owned Z Holdings, the new parent company of Line and Yahoo Japan after merger closed on March 1, details plan to invest $4.7B to compete with GAFA — SoftBank Group affiliate Z Holdings on Monday announced plans to invest ¥500bn ($4.7bn) and hire 5,000 AI engineers over five years …
Kaye Wiggins / Financial Times: Amsterdam-based Catawiki, an online auction site that specializes in selling high-value collectors' items like classic cars, raises €150M from PE firm Permira — Private equity firm invests €150m in online marketplace for classic cars and artworks
Financial Times: UK government and India's Bharti Enterprises win an auction for bankrupt satellite broadband operator OneWeb for $1B; the parties will own a 45% stake each — British government's joint venture with Bharti will compete with Elon Musk's Starlink — Britain is set to go head to head …
Alex Barker / Financial Times: GroupM: digital ad spend is predicted to overtake spending on traditional media for the first time in 2020, excluding online ads sold by old media outlets — Overall spending predicted to fall almost 12% but pain will be unevenly spread across industry — Digital advertising on platforms …
Olaf Storbeck / Financial Times: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun has been arrested on suspicion of false accounting and market manipulation — Prosecutors accuse him of inflating German fintech company's balance sheet and revenues — Wirecard's former chief executive Markus Braun has been arrested on suspicion …
Alexander Gabuev / Financial Times: US and EU sanctions against Huawei have bolstered Sino-Russian cooperation, as the Chinese telecom company looks to be the main player in Russia's 5G build out — US and EU sanctions against the Chinese telecoms group have bolstered Sino-Russian co-operation — The writer is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center
Financial Times: A look at the top 100 companies according to market cap added YTD amid the pandemic, with Big Tech leading: Amazon gained ~$401B, Microsoft ~$270B, Apple ~$219B — The first in an FT series on corporate resilience in a year of human and economic devastation
Joe Miller / Financial Times: Volkswagen plans to develop 60% of its vehicles' software by 2025, up from 10% now, and grow its Car.Software unit from 3,000 staffers to 5,000 by end of 2020 — Carmaker rules out working with tech companies to develop operating system for its vehicles — Volkswagen has ruled out working …
Financial Times: Wirecard's CEO Markus Braun resigns over the missing €1.9B in cash; James Freis, chief compliance officer who joined company on Thursday, named as interim CEO — Markus Braun resigns as payment group's shares continue to collapse and investors threaten legal action
Financial Times: German payments group Wirecard says €1.9B cash is missing and that “spurious cash balances” might have been provided to its auditor by a third party — Shares of payments group crash as it says a third-party may have tried ‘to deceive’ its auditor
Financial Times: Sources: SoftBank has invested $500M+ into Credit Suisse supply-chain finance funds that then made big bets on the debt of struggling SoftBank-backed startups — Japanese conglomerate engages in circular flow of financing to Vision Fund start-ups — SoftBank has quietly poured more than $500m …
Jonathan Eley / Financial Times: Ocado, a UK-based online grocery delivery service, to raise £1B+ of fresh equity and debt as it seeks to capitalize on a surge of interest amid the pandemic — Funds will bolster existing spending and facilitate new deals — Online supermarket Ocado is to raise more than £1bn …
Rana Foroohar / Financial Times: To remain this big and unregulated, Facebook aligns itself with powers that be, as its actions in Myanmar and now in the US show — To stay this big and unregulated, the social media platform can't afford to upset rulers — Oligarchs are immoral business leaders who …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: Reddit pledges to honor Ohanian's request to appoint a black director, says it'll update content moderation policies to “explicitly address hate” within weeks — Founder to leave controversial discussion platform, saying resignation can be ‘act of leadership’
Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan / Financial Times: Google removes Remove China Apps, which promised to help users rid their smartphones of Chinese apps, from the Play Store; the app had 4.7M downloads in India — Remove China Apps reached top of Play Store in India before it was ousted on Tuesday — Google intervened on Tuesday after millions …
Adam Green / Financial Times: The pandemic has forced governments around the world to enact digital health reforms, giving tech companies a greater role in delivering healthcare services — Privacy rules loosened as push towards e-healthcare gathers pace — An unexpected consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic …
Max Seddon / Financial Times: COO of Yandex talks about revenue fall in its online ads and taxi businesses due to COVID-19, hopes increased demand for its delivery apps can mitigate losses — Fall in revenues for tech giant's online advertising and taxi businesses offset by surge in demand for delivery services
Financial Times: Sources: UK's NHS has already begun developing a second contact tracing app in parallel, using technology provided by Google and Apple — NHS team that built first app is told to build another on Apple-Google system — The NHS has already begun building a second smartphone app to trace …
Miles Kruppa / Financial Times: Many Silicon Valley startups are announcing job cuts and spending freezes to prove they can be disciplined about costs to would-be investors amid the pandemic — Balance of power shifts back to investors as founders look to bolster balance sheets — As one of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups …
Richard Milne / Financial Times: Norwegian videoconferencing startup Pexip, whose clients include US government and Spotify, seeks ~$200M in IPO this quarter at a post-money valuation of ~$570M — Video-conferencing firm's clients include the US government, Amnesty International and Spotify
Miles Kruppa / Financial Times: Sources: Airbnb raises another $1B in debt from investors including Apollo Global and Silver Lake, after raising a similar $1B funding round last week — New debt finance deal comes a week after an equal-sized funding round to help weather crisis — Airbnb is raising $1bn of senior debt …
Dave Lee / Financial Times: CloudKitchens blames rogue staffer for “Internet Food Court” PR campaign, after it created an impression that Kalanick was launching it during COVID-19 crisis — The Hollywood kitchen facility seemed perfect for the coronavirus crisis — but then suddenly vanished from the internet
Financial Times: A teardown reveals that Huawei's P40 phone contains several critical US parts, primarily RF chips; the US parts were made by Qualcomm, Skyworks and Qorvo — FT teardown of new smartphone identified US parts makers including Qualcomm and Skyworks — Huawei is still using components …
Nic Fildes / Financial Times: Researchers: Virgin Media's exposed marketing database included 1,100+ records of customer requests to block or unblock websites with porn and extreme “gore” — Records linking accounts to gambling and pornography sites may have been accessed — More than 1,000 records linking …
Richard Waters / Financial Times: Sources: Waymo is now valued at more than $30B, after raising $2.25B this week — Windfall pushing Alphabet division above rivals comes at turning point for group — When outside investors lined up this week to pour $2.25bn into Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving technology division, it brought strong validation for a decade of work.
Stephanie Findlay / Financial Times: A look at India's booming video streaming market, fueled by Reliance Jio's cheap data, as companies like Flipkart and delivery service Zomato invest in content — As Netflix and Amazon splurge on original content to win streaming supremacy in India, Bollywood producer Tanveer Bookwala has never been so busy.
Financial Times: Facebook to give body cameras to UK Met for firearms training exercises and will use the footage to train algorithms on real-life first person shooter incidents — Facebook will use footage from police body cameras to train its computers to recognise gun attack videos …
Harriet Agnew / Financial Times: France says it has received €5B from institutional investors to invest in tech startups over the next three years, as it seeks to grow more unicorns — President Emmanuel Macron announced on Tuesday that France has drummed up €5bn of capital from institutional investors to pour …
Rochelle Toplensky / Financial Times: Sources: after considering Spotify's complaint about App Store fees, the EU has decided to launch an antitrust probe into Apple's conduct — The EU will launch a formal antitrust investigation into Apple in the next few weeks after Spotify accused the iPhone maker of “tilting the playing field to disadvantage competitors”.
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times: A comprehensive look at the plethora of face datasets, available upon request from universities and US government, used to train facial recognition software — When Jillian York, a 36-year-old American activist, was on vacation in February, she received an unexpected text.
Financial Times: Mondelez sues insurance company for refusing to pay out $100M claim for NotPetya damages, launching the first major legal battle over cyber attack cost recovery — Mondelez, the US food company that owns the Oreo and Cadbury brands, is suing its insurance company, Zurich …
Martin Coulter / Financial Times: Venafi, which protects machine identities like cryptographic keys and digital certificates to minimize harm after a network is breached, raises $100M — A start-up specialising in “machine identity protection” has secured $100m in its latest round of financing, led by Silicon Valley-based …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: Profile of Mike Novogratz, whose merchant bank Galaxy Digital has raised $242M on Toronto Venture Exchange in August and is a major investor in crypto startups — Mike Novogratz keeps crossing his fingers that this year's bitcoin crash, which has seen the cryptocurrency lose three-quarters …
Murad Ahmed / Financial Times: Turin-based Deltatre acquires IP video software maker Massive Interactive for $127M to challenge Disney and Endeavor in online sports streaming services — UK-based software maker Massive Interactive has been snapped up by Italian company Deltatre for $127m, in a deal designed to create …
Financial Times: Facebook hires Nick Clegg, former UK deputy prime minister, as head of global affairs and communications, to succeed Elliot Schrage — Facebook has hired Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, to head its global affairs and communications team as it faces escalating problems …