Exclusive: Lloyds in tie-up with Google to build AI agents April 30, 2026 Lloyds Banking Group has formed a tie-up with Google as the financial services giant sets its sight on building its own AI agents, City AM can reveal. The blue-chip lender is leveraging Google Cloud – the tech giant’s suite of computing services – and the bank’s existing Large Language Model to create a new internal [...]
Three reasons AI will not replace the mortgage broker April 29, 2026 Mortgage advice has never been a simple numbers game, and it is becoming even less so. Technology is speeding up sourcing, suitability checks and paperwork. Clients are also more digitally confident than ever, and lenders are ever more competitive. But for anyone advising complex borrowers, especially in the high-net-worth space, the idea that AI will [...]
‘Slightly unnerving’: Greene King enlists AI to answer pub phones April 29, 2026 Greene King has turned to AI-generated assistants to staff its bars as hospitality firms battle to absorb rising costs, City AM can reveal. The Chinese-owned pub chain, one of the UK’s largest, is using a “virtual assistant” named “Charlie” to answer the phone at a number of sites, including in London. The shift to digital [...]
UK firms unaware of how their AI data is used overseas April 28, 2026 Most large UK firms do not fully know what happens to their data once it is processed by AI systems abroad, raising compliance and security concerns as adoption continues to rise. According to a recent Harbr Data survey, 61 peer cent of senior tech and data leaders at companies worth £100m or more lack a [...]
Meet the startup backed by Peter Thiel that wants to ‘hold journalists to account’ April 28, 2026 Founder Aron D’Souza spoke to Maria Ward-Brennan about his Peter Thiel-backed startup, which aims to hold journalists accountable by providing real-time ratings and investigations into their reporting practices. There exists a lively debate about the extent to which AI could replace journalists, but before it does that – could it develop a hold over the [...]
King’s Cross puts London on the AI map April 28, 2026 A description of King’s Cross a little over 20 years ago sounds like something from a Dickens novel. It was “a place of decay, dereliction, crime and filth” – known for drugs and prostitution. Some readers may remember its rave scene but for most people it was a no-go area. That opening description comes from [...]
Big Four giant EY set to bolster AI recruitment April 28, 2026 Big Four giant EY is moving to hire a new team of senior AI recruits across the UK and Ireland to work directly with clients, in a push to meet “growing demand” to use tech across the board. EY said the new hires, known as ‘forward deployed engineers’, will be working within client teams at [...]
Big Tech earnings to test AI demand – and Nvidia surge April 28, 2026 Big Tech earnings this week are expected to provide a clearer picture of the AI state of play, with results from Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon set to offer updates on capital expenditure and AI-related revenues. The results come as Nvidia, the booming chip darling, closed last week at a record high, taking its market [...]
Former Deepmind star lands $1.1bn backing for AI startup April 27, 2026 An ex-Google DeepMind researcher has secured one of Europe’s largest AI funding rounds, as investors race to back a new generation of frontier labs beyond large language models (LLMs). David Silver has raised $1.1bn (£880m) for his London-based startup Ineffable Intelligence at a valuation of $5.1bn, in a round led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed [...]
UK eyes AI in classrooms as schools face staffing strain April 27, 2026 Advances in AI are moving higher up the UK education agenda, as ministers look for ways to manage teacher shortages without major increases in spending. While the government has so far erred on the side of caution compared to its global peers, the direction of travel is toward a wider use of AI tools in [...]