Author: Jaxon Bennett

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Europe must rethink military procurement to keep up with the fast-changing world of drone warfare, the new boss of German start-up Stark has said.Uwe Horstmann, who will on Thursday be announced as the 15-month-old attack drone maker’s first chief executive, welcomed calls from top western military officials to update long-standing purchasing models to reflect the pace of innovation in the sector since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “When and how do we want [these drones]? How many of them? What do we…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.WPP and Google have struck a five-year deal to embed AI tools such as Gemini and video generator Veo into the UK advertising group’s offer to clients.Google’s AI will be used to create advertising campaigns rapidly and more effectively by WPP’s agencies, including real-time personalised marketing for millions of customers.The partnership includes a $400mn spending commitment from WPP for Google technologies to bring AI across its services.The deal is the first to be struck by new chief executive Cindy Rose, the former…

Additional reporting by Edward White, Rachel Millard and Maya de Souza. Additional development by Dan Clark.Fuel mix, generation and load data from Grid Status. California operating battery facility locations from EIA data, which is preliminary and relies on self-reported data. Capacity figures are based on EIA totals and facilities constructed in multiple phases may be reported as separate sites. Population data from Copernicus GHSL.Drone footage of Edwards Sanbord from BlackBoxGuild. Aerial images of Kola Energy Storage from NextEra Energy and of Eland from SOLV Energy, courtesy of Arevon. Source link

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Elon Musk agreed to settle with four former Twitter executives, including the social media platform’s ex-leader, who had sued the billionaire for more than $128mn in severance pay after he fired them following the company’s 2022 acquisition.Musk and X have reached an undisclosed settlement with former chief executive Parag Agrawal, former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, former general counsel Sean Edgett and former chief financial officer Ned Segal, according to an update to the lawsuit filed in federal court in California. The…

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,…