Ofcom flexes Online Safety Act with ignored fine December 6, 2025 Ofcom has issued its first major penalty under the Online Safety Act, and it’s aimed squarely at AVS Group Ltd, a little-known adult website network registered to a virtual mailbox in Belize. The regulator fined the firm £1m on Thursday for failing to introduce mandatory age checks across its 18 adult sites, then added another [...]
Relief for fintech startups as government plans new short-term FCA licences December 4, 2025 Fintech startups could be about to start trading much sooner after the government signalled plans to issue temporary licences in advance of getting full accreditation. Startups often suffer delays of months or even over a year as they wait for regulators at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to grant them authorisation, during which they burn [...]
Acrobat Studio: The new AI tool to transform your business efficiency December 4, 2025 Business owners know the hassle of managing multiple platforms to get a single task done. This is impractical, it costs time and therefore money, and can get in the way of doing the things they really love. That’s why it’s essential to invest in the right tools. The issue is, there are many platforms out [...]
UK workers could reclaim half their day thanks to AI, report finds December 4, 2025 UK office workers could reclaim nearly half of a standard eight-hour workday thanks to AI, according to new data from Salesforce. The findings, based on a commissioned study from IDC, suggest AI tools are not just automating repetitive tasks, but are starting to reshape how humans actually work. On average, UK employees estimate that AI [...]
FCA launches ‘safe space’ for AI as City firms rush to deploy new tech December 3, 2025 The City’s top regulator has opened the doors to its first-ever ‘AI live testing‘ scheme, giving major financial firms a controlled environment to trial AI without fear of tripping regulatory wires. NatWest, Monzo, Santander, Scottish Widows, Gain Credit, Homeprotect and fintech Snorkl are among those in the inaugural cohort. The FCA says the scheme is [...]
Revolut and LSEG join growing list of OpenAI customers December 3, 2025 Fintech juggernaut Revolut has joined a host of banking giants in leveraging OpenAI tech to beef up their financial crime protections. The digital bank is one of the latest to partner with the ChatGPT maker as it seeks to enhance its fincrime agent and customer services. The $75bn fintech is also using OpenAI’s large language [...]
Smiths Group strikes deal to offload detection business for £2bn December 3, 2025 London listed Smiths Group is set to offload another of its businesses, as it works to streamline its operations after bowing to increasing investor pressure. The FTSE 100 company has agreed to sell its Smiths Detection division to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners in a £2bn deal. The business manufactures threat detection technology, including [...]
Powervault: London Mayor-backed Tesla battery rival collapses December 3, 2025 Battery storage firm Powervault, which had been tipped to become the UK rival to Tesla, has collapsed into administration, City AM can reveal. The London-based company, which had been backed by the Mayor of London’s Greater London Investment Fund as well as the British Business Bank, has appointed administrators Menzies to oversee its wind-down, according [...]
AI powers UK’s startup surge as founder numbers soar December 3, 2025 While Britain is trudging through another tax-heavy Budget, LinkedIn data has revealed signs of a founder boom, with AI doing much of the heavy lifting. As Rachel Reeves attempted to boost startup and scale-up appetite in her Budget, LinkedIn revealed that the number of UK professionals adding ‘founder’ to their profile has jumped 69 per [...]
Silicon Valley has invented its own form of central planning December 3, 2025 With so much capital focused on a small select group of companies like OpenAI and Microsoft we’ve created our own form of central planning, just with corporate overlords instead of government ones, says Lewis Liu The US stock market continues to march toward record territory, with everyone from Big Tech CEOs to Goldman Sachs speculating [...]