Author: Jaxon Bennett

Hello everyone, this is Cissy in Hong Kong.On a recent holiday in Vientiane, I was struck by the extent of Chinese influence in the city. From numerous Chinese restaurants to Chinese-only instructions on my hotel hair dryer, the presence in Laos’ capital was notable. Even more striking was the prevalence of Chinese EVs. At one charging station, the instructions were, again, only in Chinese, and of the five cars charging, two were BYDs and two were Netas, while the fifth one was a VinFast, a Vietnamese brand.I also encountered a Neta when I called a taxi via a local ride-hailing…

The Australian government plans to introduce a levy on social media companies and search engines to force them to pay publishers for journalism after Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, walked away from an existing arrangement.In the proposed amendments to current regulations, any social media platform or search engine that derives more than $250mn in revenues a year from Australia would be subject to a “charge”. That levy would be offset against any payments made directly by tech companies to publishers. The move is intended to encourage them to negotiate with the media industry over commercial deals.It is the…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldMark Zuckerberg’s Meta has donated $1mn to a fund for Donald Trump’s inauguration events in the latest overture by the social media platform aimed at mending relations with the US president-elect.The donation marks the first time Facebook’s owner has contributed to an inauguration fund and comes after recent jockeying to curry favour with Trump, who has previously accused the platform of censoring rightwing voices and threatened to jail its chief executive.Last week, Meta’s head of global affairs Nick Clegg conceded…

The writer is a fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the Cyber Policy Center. She is the author of ‘The Tech Coup’Romania shocked the world last month when it voted for an outsider with ultranationalist views as president. Călin Georgescu was polling poorly just weeks before the election. TikTok was crucial to his sudden success. It also appears to have been a key facilitator of foreign interference from Russia. Romania’s constitutional court has since opted to annul the results of the first election round. All eyes are once more on social media platforms and their ability…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A decade ago, after selling Siri to Apple, the creators of the voice-controlled AI assistant had another big idea.With their new company, Viv, they set out to solve a persistent problem for smartphone users: How to accomplish everyday tasks without having to juggle multiple apps. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to toggle between separate travel, hotel and map apps when planning a vacation, and could rely instead on a piece of software that integrated them all?Viv never made the…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the US & Canadian companies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Doughnut maker Krispy Kreme said a cyber security attack has disrupted its online operations, including online orders, in parts of the US, which the group warned would have a material impact on its business. The US company said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday that it had been notified on November 29 of “unauthorised activity” in part of its IT systems, which it had taken steps to contain and remediate. As a result, it…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Google has launched a more advanced version of its Gemini artificial intelligence model that enables it to take actions on users’ behalf, as the US tech group races to bring AI-powered assistants to consumers. The Silicon Valley giant on Wednesday also unveiled its vision of two “AI agents” powered by the new model, that can answer real-time queries across text, video and audio. These have been tested by a small group of users in the US and the UK over the past…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.“While [Sam] Altman measured success with numbers, whether for investments or people using a product, [Demis] Hassabis chased awards,” writes Parmy Olson in her book Supremacy, about the co-founders of DeepMind and OpenAI. “[Hassabis] often told staff that he wanted DeepMind to win between three and five Nobel Prizes over the next decade.”Just a few hours after Olson won the 2024 Financial Times and Schroders Business Book Award for Supremacy this week, Hassabis rendered the first edition out of date by accepting…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Microsoft’s artificial intelligence head Mustafa Suleyman is building a new team focused on consumer health by hiring staff from a similar unit he once led at Google DeepMind, as the rival companies race to create lucrative applications from the cutting-edge technology.Suleyman, a British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind in 2010, has hired Dominic King, the former head of DeepMind’s health unit and a UK-trained surgeon, as vice-president of Microsoft AI’s new London-based health team. He has also poached Christopher Kelly, a clinical research…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been valued at $350bn in a new deal to purchase employees’ shares, making the rocket and satellite maker the world’s most valuable private start-up.SpaceX and its investors will purchase $1.25bn of the company’s existing common shares at $185 a share, said four people with knowledge of the transaction. That marks a 65 per cent leap in its share price since its most recent deal in September, when employees sold shares for $112 apiece.SpaceX will purchase about $500mn of…