The Week in Business: is Reeves right to be an optimist? January 31, 2025 Rachel Reeves has been reset, but should we buy into this new optimistic Chancellor?
St James’s Place and Next help FTSE 100 to another all-time high January 31, 2025 The FTSE 100 has hit another all-time high this morning, with the index up five per cent since the start of 2025. London’s main index rose 0.46 per cent this morning before dropping back slightly, while the more domestically focused FTSE 250 jumped 0.53 per cent. “Given the volatility this week on Wall Street as [...]
Apple reports strong revenue despite iPhone sales decline January 31, 2025 While Apple’s iPhone sales dropped last quarter, the tech giant’s services division more than made up for the decline. The company, which reported results after the market closed on Thursday, said sales grew 3.9 per cent year over year to $124.3bn (£100bn) inline with Wall Street expectations. Net income rose 7.1 per cent to $36.3bn, [...]
Samsung misses estimates as chip demand dwindles January 31, 2025 Samsung Electronics missed chip profit estimates in its fourth quarter, falling short of market expectations of 3 trillion won (£1.68bn) as competition heightened and demand plateaued. In Friday’s report, Samsung Electronics announced a 22 per cent year over year increase in net profit for its fourth quarter, reaching 7.754tr won (£4.65bn). However, this represented a [...]
Microsoft and Meta defend AI spend post DeepSeek shock January 30, 2025 Tech giants Microsoft and Meta both addressed and defended their substantial investments in artificial intelligence (AI), despite recent headwinds. Both firms kicked off the earnings season on Wednesday, just days after Chinese startup DeepSeek broke the internet, as well as the market, on Monday. Its recent global traction followed the release of its new AI [...]
Stokes and Gakpo part of £4m funding round for AI wealth firm Prosper January 30, 2025 England cricket captain Ben Stokes and Liverpool forward Cody Gakpo are part of a £4m funding round for a wealth management platform leveraging AI. The sportsmen joined Fuel Ventures, who led the round with a £2m investment, in London-based FinTech Prosper. Olympians Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, Dame Sarah Storey and Tim Podcock, and footballers Ben White [...]
UK’s small businesses underestimating risk of cyber attacks January 30, 2025 Small businesses (SMEs) consider themselves too small to be targeted for data theft, severely exposing themselves to cyber attacks. According to a new Association of Business Insurers (ABI) report, SMEs generally consider themselves too small to be targeted by cyber criminals and, as a result, are not using cyber insurance to help mitigate these risks. The [...]
Is Deepseek more an attack on Wall Street than an AI innovation? January 30, 2025 The launch of Deepseek has been framed as the AI race’s Sputnik but the timing is dubious and questions are being asked about whether the tech is really as game-changing as its creators claim. Either way, America must stay vigilant, says Mark Minevich It started with a single, seismic headline: China builds an AI model [...]
The Debate: Should businesses have DEI quotas? January 30, 2025 Trump's America is turning the tide on woke, but are DEI quotas good for business? Our writers hash it out in this week’s Debate.
DeepSeek accused of using OpenAI’s models to train its viral bot January 29, 2025 OpenAI has accused Chinese competitor DeepSeek of using its models to train the competing system, violating its property rights. The ChatGPT maker claimed that its new Chinese competitor employed a technique called ‘distillation’ – when a smaller model learns from its larger counterpart – to develop its new chatbot. Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence adviser, David [...]