Exclusive: Blackstone set to back AI ‘droid’ firm at $3.5bn valuation AI Blackstone is weighing a fresh funding injection for Nvidia-backed artificial intelligence firm Factory in a deal likely to value the coding company at more than $3.5bn, Morning Wire has learned. The New York-headquartered investment giant, which has been ploughing cash into AI firms and digital infrastructure in recent years, is considering the investment as part [...]
Glencore and Rio Tinto strike gold on high commodity prices Mining Rio Tinto and Glencore have posted near-record updates thanks to this year’s sky-high commodity prices and the uncertainty wrought by the Middle East conflict. Mining juggernaut Rio Tinto notched a 43 per cent jump in profit over the first six months of the year, pointing to persistently elevated metals prices and the ambitious efficiency programme [...]
Anthropic payout piles pressure on UK ministers in AI copyright row Tech The publishing industry has urged ministers to force AI companies to license copyrighted content after Anthropic agreed a record $1.5bn (£1.1bn) settlement over its use of pirated books to train AI models. Dan Conway, chief executive of the Publishers Association, told Morning Wire the agreement should serve as a warning to AI developers operating in [...]
Monzo founder joins Anthropic as AI talent race heats up July 13, 2026 Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield has joined Anthropic, as the US AI giant steps up its recruitment drive for senior tech leaders. Blomfield announced on Monday that he is taking a leave of absence from Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator to join Anthropic’s compute team, where he will work alongside co-founder Tom Brown on the [...]
Kemi Badenoch: AI firms ‘won’t come here’ if Britain overregulates July 7, 2026 Kemi Badenoch has warned Britain risks driving away the next generation of AI giants unless it lowers industrial energy costs or fixes London’s capital markets, arguing the UK cannot regulate its way to becoming a global tech leader. Speaking at the Politics UK Summit in Westminster on Monday evening, the Conservative leader said Britain was [...]
Bank of England to relax capital rules despite warning of economic threats July 7, 2026 The Bank of England set out proposals to relax UK banks’ capital rules even as it sounded the alarm on the growing risk of multiple threats hitting the UK economy. In the latest meeting of the central bank’s Financial Policy Committee top officials said it would work with watchdogs on a package of “broad reforms” [...]
Winners and losers: Billionaires boom but Brits suffer largest fall in wealth since pandemic July 1, 2026 The artificial intelligence boom fuelled a 13 per cent surge in global billionaire wealth last year, according to a fresh study which also found the UK has suffered the biggest fall in overall wealth levels of any developed nation since the pandemic. According to the UBS temperature check of high-net-worth individuals, nearly 400 billionaires were [...]
Britain must speed up to survive the AI era July 1, 2026 The AI era will reward the small number of countries that can adapt and build quickly enough and it will punish those that can’t, says Sam Richards “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve [...]
HSBC targets $100m in savings with Google Cloud AI tie-up June 17, 2026 Europe’s biggest lender HSBC has sealed a a tech tie-up with Google where it aims to use AI to scout priority projects that could bank the firm $100m in “efficiency gains”. The FTSE 100 giant is planning to roll out Google Cloud across its operations in a deal that the bank says will allow 200 [...]
Sadiq Khan: London tech boom can weather ‘dizzying’ AI risks June 1, 2026 Sadiq Khan has insisted London is “busy writing” the future of AI despite the “dizzying” risks posed by the technology, as fresh figures show the capital has reclaimed its position as Europe’s leading tech hub. The Mayor of London said AI presents both “impacts and opportunities”, but argued the capital was well placed to benefit [...]