eBay launches £3m AI programme for UK SMEs October 1, 2025 E-commerce giant eBay has unveiled a major initiative aimed at helping UK small businesses harness the power of AI and compete with larger enterprises. The company’s new programme, ‘AI activate’, is a £3m investment that will provide up to 10,000 small enterprises with fully funded access to OpenAI-powered tools and tailored training to boost productivity [...]
Close Brothers looks to ‘accelerate’ after ‘messy’ year October 1, 2025 Close Brothers is hoping to switch gears and “accelerate” after the motor finance scandal had the bank stuck in a rut. The specialist lender’s share price has swerved between a low of 185.00 and peak of 555.00 over the last 12 months. The car misselling saga has been the driving force of stock woes, sending [...]
Tax hikes push firms to automate jobs, says top UK recruiter October 1, 2025 Tax hikes and wage pressures are putting Brits at risk of losing roles to automation and offshoring, a top UK recruitment firm has warned. Hays has warned Britain is becoming “unattractive to hire people permanently” as employer costs mounted over the last year. “Wage pressures and national insurance changes are pushing employers to explore automation [...]
Government urged to prioritise UK tech amid US investment surge September 30, 2025 UK cloud provider Civo has launched its ‘tech sovereignty agenda’, urging the government to place greater emphasis on domestic technology amid an unprecedented wave of investment from US tech giants. The agenda calls for a reassessment of the UK’s approach to innovation, advocating for a balance between benefiting from global technology while ensuring that critical [...]
‘It’s risky to be in the UK’ – Cleo founder on unicorn status and City regulation September 30, 2025 Nine years ago entrepreneur Matt Clifford took a data scientist to a “terrible pub” to convince him to drop his PhD and create his own start-up. “You may as well just take the risk, the biggest risk is not taking the risk,” Clifford told a young Barney Hussey-Yeo. Almost a decade later in 2025, Hussey-Yeo [...]
UK veterans drive defence tech boom September 29, 2025 Defence tech startups are booming across Europe, powered by an influx of UK military veterans and record levels of VC investment. Yet, a new report found critical gaps in space tech and AI chips could leave the country exposed. The State of Defence Tech 2025 report has revealed that defence startups have secured $1.5bn (£1.12bn) [...]
AI agents joining London Stock Exchange Group market in partnership with Databricks September 26, 2025 The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has partnered with Databricks to deploy AI to optimise the workflow of financial teams. The Databricks agents are configured to optimise the work of agents at LSEG and bring LSEG’s financial data into the Databricks platform. Starting with Lipper fund data, analytics, and cross-asset analytics, financial teams can now [...]
AI helps drive win rates with written proposals September 26, 2025 Software firm AutogenAI has been increasing success rates for proposal writing firms, whilst the industry has grown tougher than ever in the past three years. The request for proposals (RFPs) are reported as being more complex than they were three years ago, with 75 per cent of proposal writers surveyed by AutogenAI in their upcoming [...]
UK launches national commission to fast-track AI in the NHS September 26, 2025 The UK government has established a national commission to accelerate the safe introduction of AI across the NHS. The panel, which brings together experts from big techs, researchers, and clinicians, will advise the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on a new regulatory framework for AI in healthcare, set to be published next year. [...]
‘Some of the benefits are fairly boring, but they save lives’: AI chief on transforming the NHS September 26, 2025 AI in healthcare might spark visions of robotic doctors and futuristic diagnostics. But Robbie Jerrom, senior principal technologist for AI at Red Hat, insists the real gains lie in the mundane systems that make the NHS run more efficiently. “Prioritising summarising email requests or patient call logs… they’re not very exciting, but they consume a [...]