Author: Jaxon Bennett

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the US & Canadian companies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Shares in Symbotic, a SoftBank-backed provider of warehouse automation software, plunged by more than a third on Wednesday after cutting its revenue forecast and disclosing errors in its accounts. The group, which went public in 2022 in New York via a Spac, said that it had identified errors related to the recognition of revenues in its accounts covering the first nine months of 2024. As a result, Symbotic said it had been unable to file its annual report on time.In…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.SoftBank is buying up $1.5bn worth of stock in OpenAI, bolstering its position in the $150bn artificial intelligence company as Masayoshi Son seeks to position the Japanese group as an artificial intelligence leader.SoftBank is buying the shares through a tender offer, a mechanism which allows current and former OpenAI employees who have held their stock for more than two years to sell, according to two people familiar with the situation. The deal is set to close early next year.The tender offer, first…

In a world of fast-changing consumer preferences and increasing choice, companies that want to stay ahead must work continuously to ensure that their goods and services satisfy the customer. In 2023 McKinsey said that big industries, including automotive, telecoms and consumer products, anticipate that a third of sales, worth $30tn over five years, will come from new products.Advancement is key and the level of fresh funds flowing into research and development is considerable. According to the latest UK statistics, £71bn was spent on R&D in 2022, of which £50bn came from the business sector. In the US the figure is…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Investors in Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter are set to make a huge windfall from a surge in the valuation of his artificial intelligence company, reaping rewards from being loyal backers of the billionaire’s business empire.Musk has given investors that backed his $44bn Twitter acquisition 25 per cent of the shares in xAI, which he founded last year to take on rivals such as OpenAI and Anthropic. xAI is set to close a new $5bn fundraising round as early as Wednesday, according…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Indian technology grandee Nandan Nilekani expects companies around the world will increasingly build their own smaller-scale artificial intelligence models to streamline operations and boost productivity, dampening hope of a substantial enterprise payday for more powerful generative products.The chair of IT services major Infosys told the Financial Times he was “not so sure” companies would want to shoulder the high costs and the potential “black box” of data and copyright liabilities associated with large language models behind popular applications, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.“When…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Samsung Electronics has announced the second management shake-up of its chip division this year, illustrating the turmoil at the South Korean tech giant as it faces growing concern over its technological competitiveness in advanced memory chips used in artificial intelligence hardware. Jun Young-hyun, who was installed as head of the semiconductor unit in the previous reshuffle in May and has acknowledged the company’s “chip crisis”, will serve as the new head of its memory chip business and co-chief executive. This gives Jun…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the US & Canadian companies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.OpenAI’s new video-generation artificial intelligence tool Sora was briefly leaked by artists testing the new model, which some creative industries fear could pose a disruptive threat. A project on developer platform Hugging Face on Tuesday appeared to be connected to the application programming interface for OpenAI’s Sora, enabling others to access the model and generate videos using the AI.Several testers uploaded a letter to the platform accusing OpenAI of taking advantage of “hundreds of artists [who] provide unpaid labour through…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The artificial intelligence revolution over the past two years has been a gift to investors. It gripped a clutch of winner-takes-all stocks and catapulted them higher, creating multitrillion-dollar companies and padding out portfolios.With so much at stake, it is natural to wonder whether this will all end in tears. The echoes of the dotcom bust at the turn of this century are strong, and having so much riding on such a small clique of companies — Nvidia, Microsoft and the like —…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Mistral, Europe’s most valuable artificial intelligence start-up, is ramping up its US expansion in an effort to compete with Silicon Valley rivals for AI talent. Paris-based Mistral is building out an office in Palo Alto, California, as it looks beyond its European roots for engineers and scientists, as well as expanding its US sales team. One of Mistral’s three co-founders, Guillaume Lample, is also weighing a potential move from Paris, according to two people familiar with the company’s thinking. However, another person…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Apple is facing an uphill battle to release its own artificial intelligence models in China, with a top Beijing official warning that foreign companies will confront a “difficult and long process” to win approval unless they partner with local groups.Apple chief Tim Cook arrived in China on Monday for his third visit of the year as the company tries to navigate the country’s complex regulatory regime and bring its Apple Intelligence to devices sold in the country. In recent months, the iPhone…