Author: Jaxon Bennett

The UK economy has been the subject of much negative coverage in the past few years, but it continues to punch above its weight when it comes to incubating fintech businesses.Seven out of the top 20 fintech, banking and insurance companies in this year’s FT1000: Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies ranking are based in the UK.Businesses such as SME-focused Allica Bank, in second place overall, payments tech company Zilch, ranked 11th, and investing and savings app Chip (in 12th place) underline the broad range of expertise and fertile ground for fintech companies in the UK.“The UK [has been] a very strong…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s pledge to spend an extra $100bn on advanced manufacturing plants in the US will do little to help the country restore its global lead in chipmaking, according to Pat Gelsinger, who was forced out as chief executive of Intel late last year.His comments come less than a month after the White House hailed the investment from TSMC, the world’s largest chip manufacturer, as an important milestone in efforts to bring production of the most advanced semiconductors back on…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.CoreWeave, the cloud computing group seeking to launch a blockbuster $32bn initial public offering, violated several key terms of a $7.6bn loan last year, triggering a series of so-called technical defaults.The US company, which leases computing capacity to tech groups building artificial intelligence models, disclosed in the exhibits to its IPO document that it had to ask its biggest lender Blackstone to amend the terms of the loan and “waive” these defaults in December.While CoreWeave did not miss any payments under the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Amazon MGM Studios has named two veteran Hollywood executives to produce the next James Bond film, just weeks after the Broccoli family gave up control of the franchise after more than 60 years.The streaming giant appointed Amy Pascal and David Heyman on Tuesday, turning to two producers with a record of blockbuster successes to revive the franchise.Pascal was the head of Sony’s motion picture division and launched the studio’s successful Spider-Man franchise. Heyman produced the Harry Potter and Paddington films.Barbara Broccoli and…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Beijing has introduced energy efficiency rules for the use of advanced chips that would prevent Chinese companies from buying Nvidia’s best-selling processors in the country if implemented strictly.The National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner, is advising Chinese groups to use chips that meet stringent requirements in new data centres and expansion of existing facilities, according to documents reviewed and analysed by Financial Times.Nvidia’s H20 chip — less powerful than its top-range graphics processing units but tailored to meet Washington’s…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldThe US has put dozens of Chinese entities on an export blacklist in the first big effort by the Trump administration to slow China’s ability to develop advanced artificial intelligence chips, hypersonic weapons and military-related technology.The US Department of Commerce on Tuesday added more than 70 Chinese groups to the “entity list”, which requires any American company selling technology to them to have a licence. In most cases the licence request will be denied.Among the listed groups are six Chinese subsidiaries…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.London-based artificial intelligence start-up Synthesia is offering company stock to the human actors it uses to generate digital “avatars” of people, in a radical move for the AI industry that rethinks how workers are compensated for helping to train the cutting-edge technology.The company, which hit a $2.1bn valuation this year, announced on Tuesday that it is creating a pool of company shares at present worth $1mn through which it will reward actors with equity in return for the use of their likeness…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Architects of the EU’s landmark artificial intelligence act have urged Brussels to halt “dangerous” moves to water down the rules, which would spare big US tech groups such as OpenAI and Google from key elements of the law.The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, is holding discussions that could result in more parts of the law — considered the world’s strictest regime regulating the development of AI — becoming voluntary rather than compulsory. This includes provisions designed to force AI companies ensure cutting-edge…

Chinese artificial intelligence start-ups are overhauling their business models as they fight to remain competitive following the widespread adoption of rival DeepSeek’s technology across the country. Zhipu, once considered China’s most prominent large language model start-up, has pinned its hopes on an initial public offering to sustain its cash-intensive growth as it focuses on building up its enterprise sales business, according to two people familiar with the matter. Among China’s other leading generative AI start-ups, 01.ai has stopped “pre-training” large language models to focus on selling tailored AI business solutions using DeepSeek’s models; Baichuan has opted to concentrate on the…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK tax myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The UK is working on options to soften the impact of its digital services tax on US technology companies to help secure a tariffs deal with the White House, after the Trump administration played hardball on the issue.The British government is open to a range of possibilities, including changes to the 2 per cent flat rate of the tax, and to its features, said people briefed on the discussions between the UK and US.The tax could continue to garner significant revenue for…