Will Alphabet’s century bond start a new trend? A brief history February 11, 2026 This week Google owner Alphabet raised £1bn in a highly unusual century bond, in a sign of the extreme lengths tech firms are willing to go to to meet the ballooning capital costs of investment in AI. The 100 year sterling note formed part of a $32bn debt raise for Alphabet, following similar moves from [...]
Money Supermarket shares tumble to 13-year low on AI fears February 10, 2026 Shares in Money Supermarket have tumbled to their lowest in 13 years on renewed anxieties that advances in AI are eating into the value of price comparison sites. The FTSE 250 stock sunk as much as 13 per cent by mid-morning on Tuesday, before paring back losses later in the afternoon. Mony Group shares closed [...]
Fractile pledges £100m UK expansion amid AI chip push February 10, 2026 UK chip start-up Fractile has announced a £100m expansion of its British operations, scaling up in London and Bristol as ministers step up calls for greater domestic ownership of critical AI. The investment, which will be rolled out over the next three years, will fund a new industrial hardware engineering facility in Bristol. The move [...]
Why your boss might tell you to wear an Oura ring February 10, 2026 Physiology is becoming the next boardroom obsession with employers deploying wearable healthtech to track performance, says Paul Armstrong There’s a growing gap between how businesses model risk and how performance actually degrades. Corporate performance is still described through revenue growth, operating margin, capital efficiency and market share, yet the real constraint on execution increasingly sits [...]
UK businesses turn to overseas talent and AI as Reeves’ taxes bite February 9, 2026 British businesses are facing a “trade off” as rising costs for employers push firms into investing in overseas talent and leveraging AI. Whilst businesses are ditching the “wait-and-see” approach that engulfed firms amidst the tax uncertainty ahead of November’s Budget, this has not translated into a hiring upswing, the latest KPMG and REC jobs report [...]
Exclusive: Lloyd’s of London quietly shelves Blueprint Two to rethink strategy February 6, 2026 After years of delays, Lloyd’s of London’s ambitious strategy to digitalise the marketplace has been shelved, as new management under Patrick Tiernan seeks to rethink the approach. Blueprint Two, launched seven years ago, was a programme pitched as delivering a “profound” change in the London specialist and reinsurance market through digitalisation. Lloyd’s, together with the [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Starmer unease rattles markets; Big tech sell-off February 6, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog. Speculation over Keir Starmer’s future has unleashed a fresh round of market unease as investors dumped the pound, UK equities and long-dated government bonds amid rising political uncertainty. The gulf in price between the UK’s short- and long-term debt – known as the yield curve – reached [...]
China ties force co-founder exit at UK AI startup Fractile February 5, 2026 Co-founder of British AI chip startup Fractile left the company after concerns were raised internally about his links to China amid growing scrutiny of national security risks across the UK’s strategic tech sector. Yuhang Song, Fractile’s former chief technology officer, departed the business in May 2024 following questions over his academic background and earlier ties [...]
Court ruling tests Britain’s £1bn data centre power plans – and energy policy February 5, 2026 A High Court challenge to a £1bn data centre beside the M25 has exposed a glaring issue for Britain’s ambitious AI build out. Power hungry projects are effectively being approved before anyone is sure where the power will come from. The government has accepted that planning permission for a 90MW hyperscale facility at Iver in [...]
Anthropic’s new tool raises bar for legal AI startups February 5, 2026 A dramatic shift is underway in the legal tech landscape as AI advancements disrupt traditional industry leaders. This comes as the traditional research and analytics software businesses saw billions wiped out from their market share this week after Anthropic announced its new AI. San Francisco-based AI giant Anthropic, the firm behind chatbot Claude, revealed on [...]