Financial Times: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says the company plans to spend $10B+ “over the coming years” to deploy 120K driverless vehicles, aiming to be in 15+ cities in 2026 — Chief Dara Khosrowshahi lauds strong bookings and record cash flow as company seeks to fund costly AV push
Joseph Cotterill / Financial Times: A World Bank report says developing economies stand to benefit more from AI boosting their workers' output than they will lose in jobs being replaced by AI — World Bank says workers in poorer economies more likely to benefit from the technology than be replaced by it
Nikou Asgari / Financial Times: How Wall Street learned to love the blockchain, as US regulators accept tokenized assets and other tech can offer significant advantages in speed and efficiency — Financial companies hope to modernise markets with the technology but systemic risks remain.
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: UK court filing: in July, Apple launched a new legal challenge against the UK government's attempt to create a “backdoor” to access encrypted customer data — iPhone maker files complaint over latest government demand to allow access to encrypted user data
Daniel Thomas / Financial Times: Ofcom Chair Ian Cheshire says he is overseeing a “wide-ranging” review aimed at refitting the regulator to new duties overseeing Big Tech and enforcing the OSA — Ian Cheshire tells FT that watchdog will need ‘more resources’ to enforce online safety rules as it takes on wider brief
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: London-based AI chip startup Olix raised $312M led by Fundomo, with participation from Arm, at a $3.3B valuation, up from $1B+ after raising $220M in February — British entrepreneur behind Olix raises $312mn from investors including Arm in effort to take on Nvidia
Financial Times: As Taiwanese server makers expand in Mexico, the country has become the second-largest supplier of servers to the US, behind Taiwan, with $46.9B in YTD sales — Factories churning out servers for data centres are pushing exports to record levels
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: Chinese VC firms are rushing to raise new funds after three years of record-low fundraising, amid renewed enthusiasm for China's tech, AI, and robotics sectors — Managers capitalise on investors' desire to ‘hedge’ against US market bets — China's venture capital firms are rushing …
Financial Times: Apple introduced a cap and a 30-day cool-off period on bug report submissions, citing a deluge of AI-assisted reports; researchers can request higher quotas — iPhone maker has limited the number of vulnerabilities researchers can submit to manage wave of reports
Rafe Rosner-Uddin / Financial Times: Sources: Amazon staff find “catastrophically expensive” AI costs due to a lack of controls, like $1.8M on Claude to fail to match author details with listings — E-commerce giant's staff said the new technology had caused budget overruns that sometimes took months to detect
Financial Times: An AI avatar of Brazil's jailed ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, who is banned from communicating publicly, is testing new AI rules ahead of Brazil's 2026 elections — Lawyers for former president insist he did not authorise the projection following legal challenge from leftwing groups
Daniel Thomas / Financial Times: X settles a long-running legal battle with the World Federation of Advertisers, ending a case that accused brands like Mars and Shell of illegally boycotting X — Billionaire had accused brands of organising an illegal boycott — Elon Musk's X has settled a long-running legal battle …
Financial Times: BNY, the world's biggest bank for safeguarding assets, plans to use blockchain tech for its transfer agency record-keeping systems that service ~$8.6T in assets — Banks rush to embrace tokenised system blurring the lines between traditional finance and digital asset ecosystem
William Sandlund / Financial Times: CXMT's IPO delivers a windfall for Hefei, an eastern China inland industrial city, with the government sitting on 5,000%+ paper gains after an early investment — Funds run by local government make gains of 5,000% from chipmaker's blockbuster listing — A blockbuster IPO by CXMT has delivered …
William Sandlund / Financial Times: Crypto exchanges like tradeXYZ are giving global investors exposure to Chinese AI-linked stocks like CXMT, bypassing Beijing's control on foreign capital access — Perpetual futures let investors circumvent restrictions on foreign access to China's equity market
Financial Times: A look at China's bid to build an alternative global order in AI by making open models widely available and training people in developing countries to use them — Beijing makes most ambitious offer yet to build alternative global order — China's President Xi Jinping has set …
Ima Jackson-Obot / Financial Times: Several universities including Yale, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Waterloo have restricted or disabled their use of AI detectors over accuracy concerns — Some institutions are overhauling assessment and trying to move away from the emphasis on surveillance
Financial Times: A profile of Yang Zhilin, founder of Moonshot AI, which faced early doubts over revenue and model capabilities before its Kimi K3 delivered a “DeepSeek moment” — Known as ‘Yang the genius’ by classmates, his new K3 model has closed the gap with leading US rivals
Financial Times: Analysis: US tech companies have cut ~140K jobs YTD, or more than 33% of announced US layoffs in 2026, with ~50K cuts from Amazon, Oracle, Meta, and Microsoft — Investment spree is reshaping Silicon Valley while wider US jobs market holds steady — US tech companies have shed nearly 140,000 jobs since …
Financial Times: Flush with AI cash, South Korean groups are making their biggest US investment push in years, with their Q1 US foreign direct investment up 100%+ YoY to $10.2B — Companies make biggest US investment push in years to build up tech capabilities and avoid Donald Trump's tariffs
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 …