Meta surges, Microsoft stumbles as Big Tech doubles down on AI spend January 29, 2026 Three members of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ Big Tech stocks – Meta, Microsoft and Tesla – gave investors an early read on the health of the AI boom after US markets closed on Wednesday. Meta shares jumped as much as nine per cent in after-hours trading after the Facebook owner posted record revenues and issued an [...]
Amazon confirms 16,000 job cuts after internal email error January 28, 2026 Amazon has confirmed it will cut 16,000 jobs globally, just hours after staff were mistakenly alerted to the redundancies in an internal email that was not meant to be sent. The latest round of layoffs follows the 14,000 corporate roles Amazon said it would axe in October, taking total white-collar cuts to around 30,000 in [...]
Big Tech’s AI borrowing boom tests US bond market January 27, 2026 Big Tech is on track to become the dominant force in the US corporate bond market, as the race to build AI infrastructure drives an unprecedented surge in borrowing that is beginning to worry investors. By the end of the decade, around half of the 10 largest borrowers in the US bond market will be [...]
WhatsApp probe casts shadow ahead of Meta earnings January 26, 2026 Meta heads into a crucial earnings week under mounting regulatory pressure, after the UK watchdog, Ofcom, opened a formal investigation into WhatsApp’s data handling. This comes just days after Meta paused access to its AI chatbots for teenagers worldwide, Britain’s communications regulator, Ofcom, said it is looking into whether the social media giant provided “incomplete or inaccurate” [...]
Amazon plans new round of job cuts as IMF chief warns of AI ‘tsunami’ January 23, 2026 Amazon prepares a new round of job cuts amid growing use of automation across corporate roles, following a round of redundancies just months ago. The move comes as the head of the International Monetary Fund warned that AI is set to hit the global labour market like a “tsunami”. Speaking at the World Economic Forum [...]
Musk-Altman rift widens as judge approves court battle January 16, 2026 OpenAI and Microsoft have lost their final bid to avoid a courtroom battle with Elon Musk, with a US judge ruling that the Tesla and xAI founder can proceed to trial over claims that the start-up breached its original charitable mission. The case, set for a jury trial in late April at the District Court [...]
Big Tech wants to access your health records January 16, 2026 OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT Health this month is set to capitalise a behavioural pattern that has already taken hold. Millions of people use AI chatbots to make sense of symptoms, test results and medical jargon, often even before speaking to a qualified clinician. The difference is that now, as of just last week, the technology [...]
Big Tech steps up energy hiring as grid creaks under AI pressure January 14, 2026 Big Tech is increasingly recruiting energy specialists as access to electricity becomes a central constraint on the expansion of AI infrastructure. Energy-related hiring at tech firms rose 34 per cent year on year in 2024, according to Workforce.ai data, and has remained around 30 per cent above pre-2022 levels. The increase reflects growing demand for [...]
OpenAI could face more hurdles for IPO than Anthropic January 12, 2026 As artificial intelligence giants inch towards the public markets, copyright litigation is becoming an increasingly influential factor in how investors assess risk. And with that in mind, Anthropic appears to be starting from a less complicated position than its larger rival, OpenAI. Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence have said the Claude founder faces “significantly less legal [...]
The Magnificent 7 in 2025 – and the survival of the richest December 31, 2025 In the spirit of end-of-year round-ups, it is worth scrutinising the fortunes of the so-called Magnificent Seven: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, and Tesla and their dominance of global equity markets, which shows no signs of abating. Yet 2025 was a year that highlighted both the extraordinary influence and the vulnerabilities of these mega-cap [...]