Song Jung-a / Financial Times: PUBG developer Krafton is eyeing major expansion in India, seeking acquisitions as growth slows in China and the US, and plans to invest at least $50M annually — South Korea's Krafton faces a tough fight to wring revenues from price-sensitive players — The South Korean games developer …
Financial Times: NPCI, which runs India's digital payments network UPI, has started making its infrastructure available to banks to deliver short-term loans to small businesses — Infrastructure will let banks deliver short-term loans more easily but encouraging take-up could prove difficult.
Financial Times: EU competition commissioner Teresa Ribera says the EU must be ready to walk away from the US trade deal if the US demands a watered-down DSA and DMA — Bloc must be prepared to walk away from trade deal with US if it retaliates against Brussels' digital laws, warns Teresa Ribera
Financial Times: Sources: ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao threatened to quit Meta within days of joining and return to OpenAI; later, he was given the chief AI scientist title — Longtime acolytes are sidelined as Big Tech chief directs biggest leadership reorganisation in two decades
Akila Quinio / Financial Times: Klarna reports Q2 revenue up 25% YoY to $823M and net loss up 194% YoY to $53M, as it prepares for a second attempt at a US IPO, after pausing plans in April — Revenues jump a fifth to $823mn as Swedish buy now, pay later group continues US expansion and neobank drive
David Keohane / Financial Times: SoftBank-owned PayPay files for a US listing; sources: PayPay aims to raise $2B+ at a $10B+ valuation, and the listing could happen by the end of the year — Sale of American depositary shares could value payments company above $10bn and help fund AI bets — PayPay has filed for a US listing …
Financial Times: Sources: Marc Andreessen complained to the UK government last week about the Online Safety Act and called for a reprimand of technology secretary Peter Kyle — Venture capitalist's intervention comes amid backlash to sweeping new internet legislation — Marc Andreessen …
Financial Times: AI's energy demands are driving fossil fuel investment, as energy needs for AI training and data centers are poorly matched with the patterns of solar and wind — Energy demand for training machines and running apps is driving a surge of investment into fossil fuels
Kieran Smith / Financial Times: Darktrace says it plans to invest $200M in the US in 2026, up 11% YoY, as part of a push to surpass $1B in revenue and grow its US sales to 50% of its revenue — UK-based cyber security group steps up investment plans following takeover by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo
Financial Times: Sources: Mistral is in discussions, including with Abu Dhabi's MGX, to raise $1B at a valuation of about $10B, up from its previous valuation of €5.8B — French AI start-up seeks additional firepower to compete with deep-pocketed US and Chinese rivals
Financial Times: Sources: Bank of England governor blocked a meeting arranged by UK Chancellor between regulators and Revolut to discuss Revolut's full banking authorization — Chancellor's aim to discuss fintech becoming fully fledged bank thwarted by BoE governor — Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey intervened …
Josh Noble / Financial Times: The English Premier League recently signed deals with Adobe and Microsoft to offer AI-powered tools to fans, including those playing the Fantasy Premier League — Football body's turn to Big Tech aims to cement dominance after it made €2.1bn in overseas broadcast deals last season
Richard Waters / Financial Times: Google has defended Search against the first wave of disruption from generative AI, but AI agents and apps that can reduce clicks now threaten its ad business — The company has defended search but its dominant position in online advertising may still be up for grabs
Financial Times: Analysis: US and UK entry-level graduate job listings have plunged since 2022, but there's only tentative evidence of AI-related disruption in some occupations — Tech is blamed for destroying entry-level roles but economic uncertainty and offshoring are playing a part
Financial Times: Insiders describe Linda Yaccarino's tumultuous partnership with Elon Musk and say the two failed to gel as Musk's blunt style clashed with Yaccarino's polish — Inside the former social media CEO's tumultuous partnership with the world's richest man — Hannah Murphy in San Francisco …
Richard Waters / Financial Times: PitchBook: VC exits through public listings, acquisitions, and buyouts reached $67.7B in Q2 2025, up from $38.5B a year ago and the strongest showing since 2021 — Figma listing plans might raise hopes of a rise in IPO activity — When design software company Figma revealed its plans …
George Hammond / Financial Times: An interview with computational linguist Emily Bender, who coined the term “stochastic parrot”, on her AI skepticism, co-writing the book The AI Con, and more — The computational linguist on her motivations for taking on Big Tech, the dangers of chatbots — and why AI is just a ‘glorified Magic 8 Ball’
Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times: A look at the tech industry's lack of consensus on what AGI or ASI is, whether LLMs are the best path, and what the tech might look like if or when it arrives — It has been tipped as the next big breakthrough out of Silicon Valley, but is it a scientific goal — or a marketing buzzword?
Michael Acton / Financial Times: Former Apple employees say integrating LLMs with Siri has led to bugs, an issue not faced by companies that have built GenAI-based voice assistants from scratch — iPhone-maker hit by technological challenges that have led to delays to the full rollout of its ‘Apple Intelligence’ features
Eric Platt / Financial Times: Sources: Musk's feud with Trump will complicate xAI's attempt to raise $5B in debt, and might increase lending costs or cause some lenders to walk away entirely — Bank was close to lining up $5bn for artificial intelligence group when US president and billionaire attacked each other
Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times: An interview with Gaia Marcus, director of the UK-based think tank Ada Lovelace Institute, on AI regulation in the UK and Europe, AI safety, bias, and more — The head of the UK-based think-tank talks about her hopes and fears for future oversight of AI — Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT …
Financial Times: Sources say Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and other Chinese companies are testing domestic alternatives as they deal with a dwindling stockpile of Nvidia processors — Tougher US export restrictions on advanced chips give added urgency to testing of domestic alternatives
Philip Stafford / Financial Times: UK-based R3, a blockchain tech developer for financial institutions, partners with the Solana Foundation to let R3 customers use the Solana blockchain — R3 reaches agreement with Solana Foundation in move to tokenise global stocks, bonds and funds — Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT …
Financial Times: How SpaceX's Starlink moved quickly to solidify its lead in the satellite internet business, as its competitors face production and launch capacity bottlenecks — Unlock the Editor's Digest for free — Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Andy Bounds / Financial Times: Sources and a document: the EU plans to levy a flat €2 fee on billions of small packages entering the bloc, mainly from China, in a fresh blow to Temu and Shein — Brussels could apply a €2 handling fee on billions of small packages imported mainly from China
Owen Walker / Financial Times: A look at Interpol's innovation lab in Singapore for studying cybercrime, digital piracy, and more, and developing new techniques for bringing down criminals — On the front line of the escalating global arms race between police and criminals — A fleet of underwater drones …
Financial Times: Sources: Apple plans to move assembly of all US-sold iPhones, ~60M/year, to India by the end of 2026, as President Trump's trade war pushes a pivot from China — FT Exclusive: Tech giant plans to shift assembly as soon as next year in response to Donald Trump's trade war
Financial Times: Sources: the EU will impose minimal fines on Apple and Meta next week, far below the DMA's 10% of global turnover cap, to avoid tensions with President Trump — Brussels to push ahead with enforcing digital rules on Big Tech groups but with low financial penalties for breaches
Financial Times: Current and former Meta employees describe how Joel Kaplan has risen over the past decade to become Mark Zuckerberg's most trusted political fixer — Meta's newly promoted head of global affairs has masterminded social media giant's pivot towards Donald Trump
Kieran Smith / Financial Times: Deliveroo reports FY 2024 revenue up 2% YoY to £2.08B and a £2.9M net profit, up from a £31.8M loss in 2023, its first annual profit, and plans a £100M buyback — Takeaway group expands beyond takeaways but warns of weak consumer sentiment
Akila Quinio / Financial Times: A look at UK fintechs Revolut and Monzo's push to expand in the US, where they face steep challenges in a complex regulatory environment and strong competition — Revolut and Monzo face steep challenges in a complex regulatory environment and competitive retail banking sector
George Hammond / Financial Times: PitchBook: the Al frenzy has led to the fastest investment pace since 2021, with $30B+ invested into US startups so far this quarter and $50B more in the works — Investor excitement over fast-developing technology has seen a flurry of massive funding rounds this year
Financial Times: Sources: Microsoft canceled some CoreWeave agreements over delivery issues and missed deadlines before its IPO; Microsoft made up 62% of CoreWeave's 2024 sales — AI data centre provider hit by blow from biggest customer ahead of the biggest tech listing this year
Financial Times: Turing winners Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton warn over unsafe AI deployment, saying releasing models “without safeguards is not good engineering practice” — Two pioneers of reinforcement learning have won the $1mn prize from the Association for Computing Machinery
Financial Times: Thoma Bravo closed a €1.8B fund for European software deals, after opening a London office in 2023; the US PE firm has deployed €14B in Europe since 2010 — Private equity investor's partner says the region's market 'isn't as crowded as in the US'
Financial Times: How Walmart's investment in tech, including an AI tool to plan worker shifts, helped it take on Amazon, with 18% of its ~$680B revenue in 2024 generated online — A decade ago, its huge stores looked outdated as online sales grew. Now they are pulling in more customers than ever
Financial Times: A look at the race to bring satellite-connected smartphones to a wider market, as estimates suggest that ~350M people lack access to mobile broadband coverage — Race to bring satellite-connected phones to wider market heats up as some question bullish promises from operators
Euan Healy / Financial Times: Investors worry about EU satellite operators Eutelsat and SES amid soaring debt and rise of Starlink, which now has 6,000+ satellites and serves ~130 countries — Growing competition from US rivals weighs on indebted European satellite operators — Investors are growing increasingly concerned …
Costas Mourselas / Financial Times: Investor letter: Elliott Management warns the White House's embrace of crypto is helping fuel a speculative mania that “could wreak havoc” when prices collapse — Supporting digital assets that could marginalise the dollar is ‘dangerous’, investor letter says
Financial Times: Mistral AI, seen as Europe's great hope for AI, is losing ground to US rivals and being overshadowed by DeepSeek; sources say its ARR is in the tens of millions — Mistral AI was hailed as a potential global leader in the technology. But it has lost ground to US rivals — and now China's emerging star
Financial Times: US tech stocks fall sharply pre-market over DeepSeek worries, with NVDA down 10%+ and META and MSFT down 3%; ASML fell 9%+; Japanese chip companies also dropped — Start-up's model raises questions about need for huge western hardware investment — Tech stocks fell sharply on Monday …
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