Author: Jaxon Bennett

Indian telecom giant Airtel is planning to double the capacity of its data centre business in less than three years, as growing domestic internet consumption and increasing artificial intelligence adoption drive unprecedented growth. Ashish Arora, chief executive of Airtel subsidiary Nxtra, the domestic leader in data centres, told the Financial Times it would invest about $600mn in its latest round of expansion to achieve nearly 400 megawatts in capacity by the end of 2027. It was also gearing up for further growth over the next five to seven years, he said, aiming to be the number one or two player.Data centre…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Cyber Security myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The writer is director of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre and professor of emergent harms at the University of CambridgeIn the past few weeks you might have heard the name “Scattered Spider” in relation to the ongoing disruption at Marks and Spencer, the Co-op and Harrods. While there has been no public attribution for the cyber attacks on UK retail as yet, there is speculation that the tactics used are similar to a network of loosely affiliated online miscreants that goes by this…

OpenAI and Microsoft are rewriting the terms of their multibillion-dollar partnership in a high-stakes negotiation designed to allow the ChatGPT maker to launch a future IPO, while protecting the software giant’s access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence models.Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest backer, is a key holdout to the $260bn start-up’s plans to undergo a corporate restructuring that moves the group further away from its roots as a non-profit with a mission to develop AI to “benefit humanity”.A critical issue in the deliberations is how much equity in the restructured group Microsoft will receive in exchange for the more than $13bn it has…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.They consume vast tracts of content, cost a packet to train and graft well past normal office hours. Junior lawyers have much in common with generative artificial intelligence. Galling, then, for the former to face pay stasis — Slaughter and May is freezing their salaries at £150,000 for now — while more spending is being thrown at AI.Expect the machines to continue shouldering more of the workload. Fusty image notwithstanding, lawyers have been deploying tech for nearly a century: dictaphones in the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The UK tax authorities have stopped collecting tens of millions of pounds a month in disputed VAT payments from Uber, after a setback in a related legal battle with the ridesharing app’s European rival Bolt.His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs has dropped its insistence that Uber keep paying VAT on the full cost of rides, instead of just on the company’s cut of the fare, until the matter is resolved in court, according to a footnote in Uber’s latest quarterly financial statements.Uber and…

This article is an on-site version of our Moral Money newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered three times a week. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters.Visit our Moral Money hub for all the latest ESG news, opinion and analysis from around the FT Welcome back.The struggle to balance profit and purpose is tough for many business leaders. It must be especially tricky when you think your industry might end up causing the extinction of the human race. How are artificial intelligence companies handling this delicate dynamic? Read on…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In 30 years, Google has gone from not-yet-existent to part of the furniture. To flaunt this fact, parent company Alphabet recently did something that’s typically the preserve of businesses that expect to be around for a long time yet: it issued some 40-year bonds.The internet search group’s debt sale this month is its first in five years. The longest-dated paper will not come due until 2065, by which time the US population will be nearly 400mn and pop icon Taylor Swift will…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Substack has added more than 1mn subscribers since Donald Trump’s triumph in the US election last November, as the online platform benefits from the shift towards creator-led journalism.Substack, a platform for writers and other content creators, reached 5mn paid subscriptions in March, across publications and podcasts. The platform attracted an additional 1mn subscribers between November and March alone, helping it generate positive cash flow in the first quarter.Substack, which is backed by investors including Wall Street banker Omeed Malik and polling expert…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the US companies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.It can be hard to train a chatbot. Last month, OpenAI rolled back an update to ChatGPT because its “default personality” was too sycophantic. (Maybe the company’s training data was taken from transcripts of US President Donald Trump’s cabinet meetings . . .)The artificial intelligence company had wanted to make its chatbot more intuitive but its responses to users’ enquiries skewed towards being overly supportive and disingenuous. “Sycophantic interactions can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress. We fell short and are working on getting it…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Nintendo said on Thursday it expected to sell 15mn units of its new Switch 2 console in its current fiscal year, undercutting market expectations as the Japanese video game company warned that US tariffs could wipe “tens of billions of yen” from profits. The first sales projection for the Switch 2 comes a month ahead of the games industry’s most-anticipated hardware launch this year. The new machine has attracted strong global pre-orders despite a higher-than-expected $450 price tag in the US.Analysts say the next-generation launch…