Affluent Big Four partners lack ‘fire in the belly’ to disrupt consulting market Advisory The trend of Big Four partners leaving to launch boutique consultancies has accelerated in recent years. But the co-founder of consultancy Q5 Partners has told City AM that many will struggle to build true challenger brands without an “all or nothing” approach. Five founders, including managing partner Olly Purnell, launched boutique consultancy firm Q5 Partners at the [...]
Clio hires legal tech veteran to overhaul backlogged courts AI Legal tech firm Clio has appointed Casetext’s co-founder to lead an initiative integrating AI directly into the court system. Clio, which currently offers its tech to lawyers and law firms, will create a “dedicated product line” of legal AI software “designed around the distinct needs of courts and judges”. Lawyer Pablo Arredondo was appointed to [...]
Top FTSE headhunter rescued by rival after plunging into administration Consulting A City-based boutique headhunter which won executive-level talent for a host of FTSE 250 firms and collapsed after pumping investment into an AI platform has been purchased by one of its competitors, City AM can reveal. 6 Group, a global executive recruitment consultancy, purchased Savannah Group and its AI platform, MapX, in July after founder [...]
Even Claude says AI watermarking is no ‘silver bullet’ August 18, 2026 Claude has questioned whether watermarking AI-generated text can ever provide a foolproof way to identify machine-written material, just days after its maker, Anthropic, began embedding invisible marks into the chatbot’s own output. Asked by City AM whether AI-generated content should be watermarked, Claude warned that simple marks can be “cropped, screenshotted, or edited out”, while [...]
Google backs publisher model as Apple considers price tag for news August 14, 2026 Google said it backs the established system for paying news publishers, even as Apple considers a radically different model that would tie payments to how often its AI assistant uses journalism. The search giant considers itself the only major tech platform with a structured approach to paying publishers at scale, City AM understands, with licensing [...]
Anthropic subscriptions overtake OpenAI in the UK, fresh data suggests August 14, 2026 Spending on Anthropic subscriptions has overtaken OpenAI in the UK for the first time, fresh data suggests, as the firm’s focus on enterprise customers helped boost its revenues. Anthropic accounted for as much as 54 per cent of all UK business spending on AI firms in the three months to July, compared to just 27 [...]
Legora eyes $10bn funding valuation four months after last raise August 13, 2026 AI legal tech firm Legora is eyeing a new funding round as it aims for a $10bn valuation, nearly double the $5.6bn it raised in April. The Stockholm-based startup, which creates AI tools for law and professional services firms and corporate in-house legal teams to draft and review documents, is reportedly in the early stages of [...]
Meta glasses court ban sparks privacy warning for City businesses August 13, 2026 Meta’s controversial smart glasses have been banned from courthouses across England, prompting lawyers to sound the alarm for businesses about growing legal risks surrounding the wearable tech. Earlier this week, it was revealed that His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) had confirmed that camera glasses were banned from its sites across England and Wales. [...]
Does the real economy care that much about AI? August 13, 2026 Take your pick of alarmist projections about the future of the global economy from top tech leaders. Monzo’s founder, Tom Blomfield, reckons unemployment will surge over the next five years as more and more human output is replaced by AI. Elon Musk reckons it will be near 100 per cent in a decade. But projections [...]
AI gold rush leaves accountancy firms exposed to costly cyberattacks August 12, 2026 Accountancy firms are pouring millions of pounds into AI, but the industry forgot to modernise security systems and is leaving itself exposed to costly cyberattacks. According to a report by software company Fastly, shared with City AM, more than 75 per cent of businesses that identified as AI-first, meaning they had integrated AI into core [...]