Author: Jaxon Bennett

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.An initial public offering is like a gummy bear rescued from behind a sofa cushion. It may be sweet and delicious, but it also tends to come with a film of miscellaneous detritus. The would-be consumer must decide how much is too much.CoreWeave, a US data centre operator and the year’s biggest tech IPO to date, has fallen foul of this not-quite-scientific test. On Thursday, it sharply downsized what would have been a $32bn listing to $23bn and cut the amount of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Nintendo is set to catapult its long-awaited Switch 2 games console into the teeth of a global trade war, betting a reshaped supply chain can help it overcome the impact of US tariffs and that a built-up machine can match the runaway success of its predecessor.Eagerly anticipated for years by console fans, Nintendo is expected to unveil the key details about its new gaming machine on April 2 — dubbed “liberation day” by Donald Trump, who intends to announce “reciprocal tariffs” on…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Chinese technology giant Tencent is taking a €1.2bn stake in a new spin-off from Ubisoft, as the struggling French games developer attempts to shore up its balance sheet. The deal values a new subsidiary that will run Ubisoft’s top franchises — including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six — at about €4bn. Shenzhen-based Tencent, one of the world’s largest video games companies by sales, will own about a quarter of the new unit, with Ubisoft controlling the remainder.  Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft’s co-founder…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Imagine this set-up for a new stock market listing. A transformational new technology has sparked an infrastructure spending boom. Entrepreneurs from outside the tech industry have spotted the opportunity to borrow heavily to build a new type of infrastructure company, narrowly focused on feeding the new demand. With Wall Street hungry for pure-play ways to invest in the new technology, the conditions for an IPO would seem opportune.That could be a description of CoreWeave, the wholesaler of AI computing power. Its shares…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Well, there it is:CoreWeave is planning to slash the size of its initial public offering and bring in Nvidia as an anchor investor, another sign of wavering investor demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure on Wall Street.The cloud computing provider will formally set the price of its shares later on Thursday and is expecting to pare back its offering to around $1.5bn, according to people close to the matter. CoreWeave had initially targeted raising $4bn and dropped that figure to $2.7bn when it began…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.CoreWeave is planning to slash the size and value of its initial public offering and bring in Nvidia as an anchor investor, another sign of wavering investor demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure on Wall Street.The cloud computing provider will formally set the price of its shares later on Thursday and is expecting to pare back its offering to about $1.5bn, according to people close to the matter. CoreWeave had initially targeted raising $4bn and dropped that figure to $2.7bn when it began a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Fusion energy start-up Marvel Fusion has raised €113mn in new funding as Germany steps up its efforts to compete in the global race to create zero-carbon power by combining atoms.The Munich-based company has completed a series B funding round with investment from the venture arm of Swedish private equity group EQT, Siemens Energy and the European Innovation Council, according to its founder Moritz von der Linden.The new funding for Marvel’s laser-based technology is one of the largest investments to date in Europe’s…

Imagine a caravan maker. It sells caravans to a caravan park that only buys one type of caravan. The caravan park leases much of its land from another caravan park. The first caravan park has two big customers. One of the big customers is the caravan maker. The other big customer is the caravan maker’s biggest customer. The biggest customer of the second caravan park is the first caravan park.Sorry, not caravans. GPUs. As Tabby Kinder and Rob Smith wrote last week for MainFT:CoreWeave . . . which leases computing capacity to tech groups building artificial intelligence models, is gearing up for the…

Hello! This is Lauly, saying hi from the warm weather in Taipei.I can’t believe it’s already been weeks since I returned from Barcelona covering the annual Mobile World Congress, one of the biggest tech exhibitions in a year. As my colleague Annie Cheng Ting-Fang mentioned in her newsletter, we had to take cold showers for three nights at our hotel due to a plumbing issue, walked more than 10,000 steps at the expo and then had to endure subway disruptions for two straight days.And that was not all. I remember I was on my way back from the exhibition to…

One scoop to start: Elliott Management held talks with private equity groups in recent months to gauge interest in buying Bayer’s consumer health business, as the US hedge fund considered reviving a pressure campaign at the German conglomerate.And a big job move: James Gorman, the former chief executive of Morgan Stanley, is to join General Atlantic as a strategic adviser as the US-based private equity group prepares a highly anticipated initial public offering.Welcome to Due Diligence, your briefing on dealmaking, private equity and corporate finance. This article is an on-site version of the newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here…