Billion-dollar regulatory fines fail to dent Big Tech January 29, 2026 For the world’s biggest tech firms, regulatory penalties are no longer a consequential financial event. Alphabet, Apple, Meta and Amazon were fined a combined $7.8bn (£6.2bn) in 2025 for breaches of competition and privacy rules, according to a new Proton report. And while that sounds like a hefty number, in practice, it would have taken [...]
Meta surges, Microsoft stumbles as Big Tech doubles down on AI spend January 29, 2026 Three members of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ Big Tech stocks – Meta, Microsoft and Tesla – gave investors an early read on the health of the AI boom after US markets closed on Wednesday. Meta shares jumped as much as nine per cent in after-hours trading after the Facebook owner posted record revenues and issued an [...]
Big Tech’s AI borrowing boom tests US bond market January 27, 2026 Big Tech is on track to become the dominant force in the US corporate bond market, as the race to build AI infrastructure drives an unprecedented surge in borrowing that is beginning to worry investors. By the end of the decade, around half of the 10 largest borrowers in the US bond market will be [...]
Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla: Big Tech earnings set to test AI bets January 27, 2026 This week marks one of the most consequential stretches of tech earnings season, with results due from Meta, Microsoft, Tesla and Apple, four giants that sit at the heart of both the market rally and the debate over whether Big Tech’s vast AI spending will ultimately pay off. It is the second-busiest week of the fourth-quarter earnings season, with 103 [...]
WhatsApp probe casts shadow ahead of Meta earnings January 26, 2026 Meta heads into a crucial earnings week under mounting regulatory pressure, after the UK watchdog, Ofcom, opened a formal investigation into WhatsApp’s data handling. This comes just days after Meta paused access to its AI chatbots for teenagers worldwide, Britain’s communications regulator, Ofcom, said it is looking into whether the social media giant provided “incomplete or inaccurate” [...]
King’s Cross retail sales boom as reinvention continues January 22, 2026 King’s Cross retail sales rose by double digits last year as the zone’s reinvention attracts significant retail and leisure investment. Total sales across the King’s Cross estate climbed by 13.5 per cent year on year, with retail sales up by 16 per cent and food and drink sales also climbing by 10 per cent. [...]
The Debate: Should the UK ban social media for under-16s? January 21, 2026 As the UK launches a consultation into a social media ban for under-16s, we hear the arguments for and against in this week's Debate.
After Grok, should the UK opt for an Australia-style social media ban? January 13, 2026 When, in December, Australia enacted a nationwide ban of social media platforms for under-16s, critics called it heavy-handed, and easy to bypass. This week, as Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok flooded the social media platform, X, with AI-generated explicit photos of women and girls, some even involving minors, that argument begins to lose its legs. [...]
Grok scandal exposes Online Safety Act flaws January 7, 2026 The UK’s relatively new Online Safety Act was sold as its long-overdue answer to the alarming harms of social media. Brits were promised a framework tough enough to bar Silicon Valley access, tough enough to promote innovation, and strong enough to keep its users, particularly children, from digital abuse. Barely months into its rollout, controversial [...]
The Magnificent 7 in 2025 – and the survival of the richest December 31, 2025 In the spirit of end-of-year round-ups, it is worth scrutinising the fortunes of the so-called Magnificent Seven: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, and Tesla and their dominance of global equity markets, which shows no signs of abating. Yet 2025 was a year that highlighted both the extraordinary influence and the vulnerabilities of these mega-cap [...]