Author: Jaxon Bennett

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Japan’s subsea cable champion NEC is set to receive government support to buy the ships needed to put it on a par with US, French and Chinese rivals, as the vital communications infrastructure increasingly becomes a national security concern. NEC charters its vessels, while the other three major global players — New Jersey-based SubCom, France’s state-owned Alcatel Submarine Networks, and China’s HMN Tech, a former Huawei subsidiary — all have the advantage of owning cable-laying fleets.Officials in Tokyo are preparing to close…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Technology sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The writer is former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and writes Futurepolis, a newsletter on the future of democracyPoint your browser at publicai.co and you will experience a new kind of artificial intelligence, called Apertus. Superficially, it looks and behaves much like any other generative AI chatbot: a simple webpage with a prompt bar, a blank canvas for your curiosity. But it is also a vision of a possible future.With generative AI largely in the hands of a few powerful companies, some national governments…

In 2005, when I began research for my novel The Story of a Marriage, which takes place in the 1950s, I did not yet know in which part of San Francisco it would be set. I wanted a part of town obscure enough to the reader that it would feel fresh (and allow me my own inventions) yet still able to evoke the grandeur and beauty of my adopted city.I picked the Sunset neighbourhood: the westernmost stretch of the city below Golden Gate Park. It seemed to me untouched either by “hipster” gentrification, the recent dotcom boom-and-bust or in fact…

Hello from Yifan in Silicon Valley, your #techAsia host this week.It’s been a busy week for the chip industry. In addition to anxiously waiting for the long-threatened semiconductor tariffs, now floated at around 300 per cent by US President Donald Trump, the biggest AI and semiconductor industry barometer, Nvidia, reported earnings on Wednesday.Despite logging another over 50 per cent year-on-year revenue jump, investors seemed dissatisfied. Nvidia shares dipped over 3 per cent during extended trading on Wednesday following the earnings release.Part of the market reaction might be because Nvidia’s road to recovering the China market is proving to be tougher…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK banks myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.NatWest and Lloyds are among the big banks braced for losses on billions of pounds in loans to troubled UK broadband providers, as the weakest players in the nascent fibre sector battle mounting financial pressure.Dozens of “altnets” — alternative network providers — have tried to challenge the dominance of BT’s Openreach and Virgin Media O2 but many are struggling to attract enough customers to meet the costs of their network rollout and have been hit by higher interest rates.Lloyds Banking Group said…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.A new OpenAI model arrived this month with a glossy livestream, group watch parties and a lingering sense of disappointment. The YouTube comment section was underwhelmed. “I think they are all starting to realize this isn’t going to change the world like they thought it would,” wrote one viewer. “I can see it on their faces.” But if the casual user was unimpressed, the AI model’s saving grace may be code. Coding is generative AI’s newest battleground. With big bills to pay,…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Nvidia delivered solid results on Wednesday as the $4tn tech giant at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom signalled resilient growth, with markets jittery about whether the momentum around AI can continue.The company reported revenue of $46.7bn for the quarter to July 28, up 56 per cent year on year and slightly above consensus estimates of $46.5bn, according to Visible Alpha.Nvidia said it expected $54bn in sales for the current quarter, plus or minus 2 per cent, compared with expectations of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.AT&T is back in the M&A game. Compared with some of the US telecoms giant’s previous efforts, its shareholders seem more enthusiastic. On Tuesday, AT&T said it would buy $23bn worth of spectrum licences from satellite operator EchoStar, whose founder Charlie Ergen has thrown in the towel on creating a fourth national mobile phone operator. This follows AT&T’s earlier $6bn purchase of fibre internet assets from Lumen Technologies, which, like EchoStar, was an overleveraged company that needed to raise cash.AT&T is no…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldPresident Donald Trump has threatened tariffs and export controls on countries whose taxes, rules or laws on tech companies “discriminate” against the US.In a post on his Truth Social platform late on Monday, Trump railed against “Digital Taxes, Legislation, Rules, or Regulations” and warned he could impose more levies and institute tighter controls on exports of US technologies.“As the President of the United States, I will stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies. Digital Taxes, Digital…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is a senior partner at William Fry and a member of Ireland’s AI Advisory CouncilGenerative artificial intelligence poses two copyright puzzles. The first is the widely discussed question of compensation for work used to train AI models. The second, which has yet to receive as much attention, concerns the work that AI produces. Copyright is granted to authors. So what happens to work that has no human author? The US has drawn the clearest line in the sand to date. In…