Elon Musk (pictured) revealed plans to give a SpaceX share to every child in the US next year, making the pledge a day after AI company Anthropic outlined plans to dedicate part of its equity to public benefit initiatives.
“Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America,” Musk posted on social media platform X, adding: “This will be the first of many.”
He provided no details on how the shares would be distributed or how the plan would be funded. According to Census Bureau data, around 73 million children live in the US. This would put the potential value of the giveaway at approximately $10.7 billion based on SpaceX’s closing share price of $146.03 on 16 October.
A regulatory filing made in August showed the billionaire held a 48.4% stake in SpaceX as of 30 June. The company went public earlier this year, raising $75 billion in a record-breaking IPO which briefly made the tech mogul the world’s first trillionaire.
Public BenefitFund Separately, Anthropic announced on Sunday (18 October) that it would commit 5% of its shares to a new Public Benefit Fund, with the potential for the allocation to grow as the company’s valuation increases.
The AI player stated the fund could receive an additional 2% of its shares for every 50% increase in its valuation above a baseline yet to be disclosed. Additional allocations would be made at the board’s discretion.
Anthropic stated the fund would give it “increased flexibility and scale” to pursue its mission, including “large donations to traditional non-profits or direct distributions to specific populations”.
One potential focus is AI-driven disruption to employment. The company stated that, although the technology could generate “enormous economic value”, it could “cause instability for many workers”. It has already committed $200 million to research and initiatives addressing the issue, “but given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed”.
“The Fund will have the versatility to pursue them.”
Anthropic, which has confidentially filed for an IPO, stated further details on the fund’s governance and valuation thresholds would follow in the coming months.
stc Group seized the initiative on AI-native networking, setting a target of employing the technology directly in its core infrastructure by 2030.
The operator believes placing the technology at the heart of its infrastructure is essential to keep pace with growing demand for AI services and the resulting changes to connectivity requirements.
stc detailed its ambitions and approach in a white paper released during the Network X event in Austria last week in which it argued AI is essential to handle the complexity of modern telecoms networks.
In a statement publicising the white paper, stc explained the evolution to 5G-Advanced is a principal driver of increased operational complexity. It also pointed to “AI-enabled calling and immersive communications” as factors necessitating the technology.
stc argued operators are set to become essential providers of connectivity as AI services take-off, stating agents and automated systems “need networks to coordinate communications and computing resources”.
It believes an AI-native network is essential in this regard because of the greater levels of automated decision making and resource allocation the technology should afford.
stc is also seeking to improve network maintenance and reliability.
Microsoft reportedly withdrew from a deal to lease computing capacity at AI infrastructure player Nscale’s planned data centre in the UK due to delays related to power supply, adding to mounting concerns around the status of the country’s AI projects.
According to The Telegraph, the US technology giant pulled the plug on the mooted data centre to be constructed in Loughton, Essex, which was originally expected to receive a grid connection by the end of 2026.
However, it now faces a wait until the following decade for supply.
“Our relationship with Microsoft remains strong and long-term, and this unfortunate London-wide grid issue has no impact on our other contracts,” an Nscale spokesperson told Reuters. The pair are still collaborating across other projects, including developments in Norway, Portugal and the US.
The company reportedly added it remained “committed to both the Loughton project and the UK” and was exploring alternative power sources.
Announced last year, the Loughton development was backed by a £2.5 billion investment commitment from Nscale and formed part of a wider UK push to attract AI infrastructure spending. Microsoft had planned to lease the site’s entire 50MW capacity and deploy an AI supercomputer equipped with around 23,000 Nvidia GB300 chips.
The setback revives questions about the delivery of the UK’s headline AI investment pledges. A Guardian investigation in March raised concerns over the status of major announced projects, including the Loughton site, which was still being used as a scaffolding yard when visited by reporters in February. Nscale subsequently said it had purchased the site in September 2025 and was targeting delivery in 2027.
Power availability remains a wider constraint for UK data centre development, as growing demand from AI workloads puts pressure on grid infrastructure.
Nscale, which is backed by Nvidia, filed for a US IPO last month and raised $3.4 billion in pre-IPO financing. The UK-based company named Microsoft and Anthropic as expected major customers in its prospectus.
Global telecom employment fell 2.1% year-on-year in Q2 2026, extending a decline dating to 2016, according to a report by MTN Consulting.
The report’s author, Matt Walker, chief analyst at MTN Consulting, said the panel of 145 operators employed about 4.2 million people, down from 4.3 million a year earlier. The 2.1% fall exceeded the decade-long annual average of 1.7%.
The job cuts did not consistently reduce labour costs or establish a direct link between AI adoption, smaller workforces and wider margins. Among 72 sizable operators, MTN Consulting found no measurable relationship between headcount changes and trailing four-quarter EBIT margins.
It also found no consistent link between AI-related news and restructuring. Telefónica cut its headcount by 19.3%, the steepest reduction in the industry, yet had no tagged AI-automation news, while SK Telecom drew the most AI coverage and reduced headcount by 6.2%.
The findings were less positive than those in other industry surveys. Nvidia’s fourth annual State of AI in Telecommunications report stated about 65% of respondents reported AI-driven revenue gains or annual cost reductions above 5%.
MTN Consulting found fewer than 20% of global operators increased revenue by more than 5% a year, while fewer than 20% cut operating expenses by over 5%. Only BSNL, Iliad and MTN Group achieved both, representing less than 2% of the global market.
MTN Consulting said the gap suggested survey responses reflected industry optimism rather than audited operating results.
Labour costs per employee across the global panel rose 6.8% year-on-year to about $62,500. Higher compensation per worker more than offset savings from job cuts, increasing the industry’s total labour bill.
Asia was the only region to add workers during the quarter, with headcount up 0.6%, largely due to hiring by operators including KDDI. Europe posted the largest decline at 3.4%, partly reflecting Telefonica’s 19.3% reduction. Employment fell 2.8% in the Middle East and Africa and 1.2% in the Americas.
Operators who cut staff were more likely to improve operating margins, but better performance was not assured. Event studies dating to 2011 found they outperformed operators which did not cut staff in about 57% to 67% of cases.
MTN Consulting advised operators, vendors and investors to assess workforce changes and automation returns using detailed financial data rather than broad technology claims.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar reportedly warned businesses using low-cost Chinese AI models could face cybersecurity risks and said Western alternatives offered greater protection.
Speaking to Bloomberg at the International AI Summit in Dublin, Friar urged companies considering Chinese models to assess the safety and security risks.
OpenAI and rival Anthropic face growing competition from open-weight AI models, particularly those developed in China. Users can download and run them on their own hardware, often at a lower cost than leading US alternatives, with comparable performance on some tasks.
Chinese releases accounted for the largest share of generative AI model downloads on hosting platform Hugging Face in August, reported the outlet.
OpenAI and Anthropic mainly offer closed models which cannot be downloaded or modified. Both companies have argued open alternatives pose greater risks.
Anthropic head of international Guillaume Princen voiced similar concerns about open-weight models at the event.
“I can’t talk for open models. But by definition, there’s more risk with them,” he said.
The comments follow several cases of advanced AI systems behaving unexpectedly during cybersecurity tests.
In July, OpenAI disclosed its models had breached systems operated by AI start-up Hugging Face during an authorised cybersecurity evaluation.
Anthropic has also disclosed examples of model misbehaviour, including a Claude model submitting a false tip related to a homicide investigation, Bloomberg reported.
Friar nevertheless cautioned US AI companies against slowing releases.
“I do think that we need to pace it but not slow it down so much that we get this imbalance on who has access to the tools that potentially, from a cyber perspective, create real mission-critical issues in the world,” she said.
Katti plans exit Also yesterday, Sachin Katti, OpenAI’s infrastructure lead, stated on LinkedIn he plans to leave his position on 15 November but will continue to support the company as an advisor.
“After an incredible year at OpenAI, I’ve decided to move on to build something new,” he stated.
Prior to joining OpenAI in November 2025, he held various technology roles at Intel, including Chief Technology and AI Officer.
CNBC reported Uday Ruddarraju, who has been serving as OpenAI’s CTO of compute, will replace Katti and lead the company’s overall compute organisation.
Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis cautioned that recent AI-driven cyberattacks were “early warning shots”, as more serious incidents could emerge over time unless companies and governments stepped up efforts to secure AI systems.
Speaking at the International AI Summit in Dublin, Hassabis said the industry needs to adopt safety practices used in sectors such as biology and nuclear technology, calling for secure, isolated sandboxes to test AI agents before they are connected to the internet, alongside stronger cybersecurity measures.
“We’ve got to kind of asymmetrically power up our defensive side to keep ahead of the attackers,” he said, arguing banks and governments could deploy AI to identify and fix software vulnerabilities before systems are widely released.
He also renewed calls for an international standards body to oversee AI safety, but clarified any framework must be flexible enough to keep pace with technological developments without stifling innovation.
Microsoft president and CEO Brad Smith also advocated for stronger safeguards, describing 2026 as a “sobering year” for AI safety. “No company or technology should be above the law,” he said, adding that regulation needed to be “sensible” and “balanced” while accounting for innovation.
Smith added that companies should be prepared to slow development when necessary, citing Microsoft’s decision to move 34,000 engineers from product development to cybersecurity two and a half years ago. “It was painful, but it was the right thing to do.”
“This allergy that some in the industry have to regulation is frankly something we need to get over,” he quipped.
European AI research Separately, Google DeepMind and Google Cloud announced plans to provide up to 200 European scientific researchers with access to their frontier AI models, alongside $3 million in compute credits.
The initiative will support the European Union’s AI for Science agenda through the Resource for AI Science in Europe (RAISE), which aims to address computing resource gaps faced by researchers.
The companies will provide researchers with access to AI tools including AlphaFold 3, WeatherNext, AlphaGenome, AlphaEvolve and AlphaEarth Foundations. Google said the programme would equip researchers to tackle complex scientific challenges, including predicting extreme weather patterns and mapping molecular structures.
Telus Digital is now a deployment partner for Germany-founded AI customer service specialist Parloa, expanding its enterprise services portfolio with support for the latter’s AI agents.
Under the agreement, businesses will buy the platform directly from Parloa and use Telus Digital for integration, change management, managed services, and other professional work. Telus Digital will also introduce Parloa’s technology to existing and prospective clients.
Parloa’s agents handle authentication, bookings, payments, and order enquiries, transferring conversations to a human when personal assistance is needed.
The company cited its own research to illustrate the shortcomings of existing customer-service tools. Its study of 10,000 enterprise websites and 4,000 chat interactions found fewer than 9% of chatbot conversations reached a resolution, while only about 10% of escalation attempts connected users with a person.
Separately, its Consumer Patience Index, a survey of 1,001 US consumers conducted by Propeller Insights, found nearly a third would switch brands to avoid being put on hold.
“Consumer expectations are high, and brand loyalty is fragile,” stated Parloa CRO Chris Silver. “They need to have their issue solved, the first time, on their preferred channel and with no unnecessary delays.”
The agreement expands Parloa’s delivery capacity in North America and Europe. Its platform runs on Microsoft Azure and supports multiple AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT series. The company stated it complies with GDPR and meets ISO 27001 and SOC 2 standards.
Telus Digital global SVP of growth Will Mayo framed the partnership around cost, arguing high volumes of repetitive contact-centre interactions can increase the cost to serve without improving customer experience. He said Parloa’s agents could handle routine requests and transfer more complicated cases to a person.
Telus Digital stated Parloa will complement rather than replace its existing tools because no single product is likely to cover every client requirement. Its portfolio already includes conversational AI combining voice, generative AI and agentic automation.
Backed by parent company Telus, the digital services division operates with more than 83,000 employees across over 35 countries.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (pictured) reportedly outlined plans to invest $2 billion across Europe to ramp adoption of AI technology and the company’s products.
Bloomberg reported Huang revealed the plan yesterday (13 October) during an event in Paris, which is part of a tour including stops in London and Berlin.
Huang said the fresh investments, to be announced in the next week, are on top of $8 billion the company previously committed to the continent, according to the news agency.
He also announced new funding for French start-ups Doctolib, Genesis AI, Pigment and Entalpic.
Nvidia’s founder also promoted open-source models, arguing their lower costs and greater flexibility could help Europe close the gap with the US on advanced AI.
The chipmaker is a major partner of French company Mistral AI, which develops open-weight AI models. It has invested in Mistral and supplies accelerators for its data centres.
“Open models are important as they can be customised for languages and for your own sovereignty,” he said, according to Bloomberg.
Nvidia’s GTC Berlin conference is schedule for 20-22 October.
India’s Adani Enterprises Limited and Apple supplier Jabil signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to form a 50:50 joint venture, tasked with manufacturing AI and data centre equipment in the country.
The JV is the next step on from a deal struck by the duo in June 2026 to form a strategic alliance to develop an AI and data centre infrastructure manufacturing ecosystem.
Once established, the pair stated the venture will supply hyperscalers, neoclouds, data centre operators and enterprises, serving accelerating data centre demand.
The companies cited industry forecasts which project India’s AI capacity will reach between 5 gigawatts to 8 gigawatts by 2030 and more than $50 billion in planned hyperscale spending across data centre, cloud and AI ecosystems.
In total, the pair peg the global market opportunity at more than $3 trillion over the next seven years, driven by investment in AI computing.
The duo will look to cash in on this demand by providing a manufacturing base in the country to serve domestic demand and support exports.
Adani Group, which runs the enterprise division, has made a $100 billion commitment to develop 5 gigawatts of green-energy powered, hyperscale AI-ready data centres by 2035, and the proposed venture adds hardware manufacturing to the group’s presence across infrastructure, energy and logistics.
Jabil makes components for Apple and will use the JV to expand its engineering footprint across India. It reported revenue of $36 billion in fiscal 2026.
Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Group, said “the AI revolution will demand far more than just breakthroughs in algoritms” and the proposed JV would “help build the physical backbone of the global AI economy”.
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) reportedly claimed the company had reached the “frontier” of AI, as it unveiled two new models designed to handle complex personal and professional tasks.
Following hefty investments in computing infrastructure and research, the technology giant said Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full AI mark “our most capable models to date”.
The models can handle tasks ranging from coding and document analysis to interpreting legal information, personal finance and health data.
Among key features is Active Memory, enabling the retention of relevant user information across conversations. The agents are also equipped with Active Focus to help them continue pursuing longer tasks, adapt to new information, recover from errors and ask users for clarification before taking important actions.
Meta claimed its evaluations showed strong results across benchmarks covering agent performance, memory and coding, adding the advanced Muse Wonder Full version performs better on unfamiliar tasks.
Built responsibly Unlike its earlier open-source strategy, Meta is offering Muse Wonder through its own developer and subscription channels in a direct challenge to AI chatbots from rivals including OpenAI and Anthropic. According to the Financial Times (FT), Meta said it would charge companies from between 20 cents per million tokens for basic access to as much as $200 a month for the more powerful Muse Wonder Full.
Speaking to the publication on the launch in which he made the comment about frontier AI, Zuckerberg added the new models would enable “much more sophisticated behaviours that are at the frontier of what is being done in the AI field”.
Meta claims Muse Wonder surpasses Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1 and OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra on certain technical measures.
Zuckerberg added that reaching this point required “a large amount of compute and investment” alongside sustained research. He told the FT that further model development and spending was under way, stating the company was “already working on the next step up”.
The chief also played down mounting concerns about increasingly capable AI systems escaping human control, declaring: “I’m much closer to the belief that AI is a technology that can be engineered with normal guardrails and built responsibly.”
Meta said its new models were trained to prevent unauthorised disclosure of private information and reject requests to facilitate harmful actions, while retaining agentic capabilities for defensive cybersecurity work.
Microsoft took the wraps off the third-generation of its in-house AI chip, as part of a plan to reduce its reliance on buying processors from Nvidia.
The Maia 300 chip will be used for the tech giant’s multi-gigawatt deployments in 2027, making it the primary inference system for Microsoft products and services. Reuters reported it plans to potentially deploy more than 1 million of the chips next year.
According to a blog post from EVP Scott Guthrie, the company expects Maia 300 to deliver 40% more tokens per megawatt compared to leading GPU-based systems without naming Nvidia.
The Maia 300 is built as a single system, with software, silicon, physical rack infrastructure, networking, and data centres co-designed to operate as a single platform.
Guthrie noted a 96-chip rack offers seven times the rack-scale token throughput of Microsoft’s Maia 200. He said the new chip is “designed with an inference-first architecture optimized for long-context, memory-intensive and decode-heavy AI workloads”.
The Maia 200 chip powers the company’s production workloads, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, as well as OpenAI models running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service.
Indian IT firm HCLTech struck an agreement with Anthropic to establish a separate business unit designed to accelerate enterprise adoption of agentic AI, with a focus on safety, cybersecurity and governance.
HCLTech stated its services team will build industry solutions and offerings powered by Anthropic’s Claude, Cowork and Claude Code, while its HCLSoftware business unit will embed these capabilities into select enterprise products.
The company will further establish a dedicated “Anthropic Business Unit and Centre of Excellence” to accelerate use of Claude in enterprise environments, providing secure sandbox environments to enable development.
Clients will also be aided by the partnership with the adoption of AI-native engineering practices, training workforces and building organisational capabilities to operate agentic AI safety at scale.
As what is known as an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner, HCLSoftware will be given access to advanced models. It cited select products across cybersecurity, automation, business process application and application development as services that will benefit from advanced Claude capabilities.
Claude will also be used across IT support and for digital employee services, workflows supported by policy guardrails, exception handling and human oversight for high-impact changes.
CEO and managing director at HCLTech, C Vijayakumar, said few technology companies can combine the scale of a global systems integrator with the product depth of an ISV.
“That gives us a rare advantage to securely engineer and deploy Agentic AI at scale and deliver the business outcomes that matter most to our clients.”
HCLTech’s deal with Anthropic follows an agreement worth $1.1 billion in July with a major unnamed European company to deploy AI services and boost enterprise services for the business.
Nvidia is reportedly in talks to either acquire or increase its investment in open-source start-up Reflection AI, as it seeks to strengthen its position in open-weight AI models and challenge lower cost Chinese rivals.
Sources told the Financial Times (FT) discussions remain at an early stage and could lead to a full acquisition, further equity investment or a deal covering chips and computing capacity. An acqui-hire, under which Nvidia would recruit staff and license technology, is another option.
A deal could apparently be reached in the coming weeks, though the terms under discussion remain unclear.
According to the report, Nvidia has already invested $800 million in Reflection AI, which was valued at $25 billion in a March funding round. Founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers, the start-up develops AI models and tools for software development.
Reflection launched its first open-weight model, Beam, last week, targeting coding and agentic tasks as it looks to compete with Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Kimi.
Open-weight models allow businesses and developers to customise AI systems and run them on their own infrastructure, potentially cutting costs compared with closed services such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
Although Nvidia has its own Nemotron family of open-weight models, FT said it lacks a frontier-scale model of its own. In an essay published in July, CEO Jensen Huang called for a domestic open-weight “ecosystem” across the US, arguing it was essential for “creating opportunities for innovation and prosperity across the country”. “In fact, openness may be one of the most important paths to AI safety and security,” he argued, adding “relying solely on closed models is not inherently safe” as “they can be breached, misused, or fail in ways that outsiders cannot detect”.
Reflection AI has also secured substantial computing capacity from SpaceX. The deal, struck in June, gives the start-up access to Nvidia’s GB300 chips at SpaceX’s Colossus 2 facility in Memphis, Tennessee, for $150 million per month through 2029.
Spain-based CaixaBank and Google Cloud extended their partnership to 2033 as the bank looks to expand its use of AI and cloud technologies to serve 13 million customers.
Under the agreement, CaixaBank will deploy Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise platform to develop and manage AI agents. The bank expects the agents to help employees analyse complex financial information, automate repetitive tasks and streamline everyday workflows.
The companies identified three areas for the expanded partnership. CaixaBank plans to use Gemini Enterprise to analyse large datasets and deploy specialised AI agents for document management, classification and summarising complex content.
CaixaBank will combine its private systems with Google Cloud infrastructure to increase resilience, scalability and service availability. The agreement also covers threat detection and security monitoring.
The agreement includes professional services, joint projects and training to help employees use the new technology. The work will operate under CaixaBank’s security, privacy and responsible AI policies.
CaixaBank first partnered with Google Cloud in 2023. The bank stated it has the largest digital customer base in Spain’s financial sector.
SoftBank Group founder and CEO Masayoshi Son (pictured) is reportedly targeting up to $100 billion in funding to scale up the company’s AI ambitions, with a number of investors in the Gulf in line to strike partnerships.
The Financial Times (FT) reported Son has been in discussions with senior figures across the Middle East including in the UAE over possible fundraising, although the outlet added there is no guarantee talks with the investors will amount to anything.
It also did not name any companies or specific individual investors.
FT sources claim Son is looking to use the cash to set up a fund to buy companies and then use AI and other advanced technology to improve operations.
SoftBank’s AI and robotics business Roze is expected to play a key role in the process should it come to fruition, with the company planning to take the unit public.
Raising $100 billion to fuel its AI ambitions adds to a $65 billion bet SoftBank has made on OpenAI.
There is also notably a drive across the Gulf nations to invest in the AI sector and diversify economies into technology-related fields, with UAE-based G42 and MGX pumping big sums of cash into development.
Son has a history of courting Gulf investors, with UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund partnering with the Japanese company on its original Vision Fund in 2017.
OpenAI’s annualised revenue reportedly reached $50 billion in September, falling $20 billion short of estimates due to accounting discrepancies rather than a slowdown in demand.
The Financial Times (FT) reported financial documents viewed by investors put its annual revenue at $50 billion in September instead of the widely reported $70 billion.
The news site noted the shortfall was due to attempts by OpenAI’s own investor to provide a comparison to rival Anthropic’s annualised revenue run rate. CNBC reported Anthropic’s annualised run rate hit $65 billion by late July 2026.
While the $20 billion gap sounds like a sudden drop, OpenAI clarified to investors its direct revenue still grew by over 70% in Q3 2026 alone, according to FT.
Reuters and other news outlets reported OpenAI was approaching $70 billion in late September based on a more than twofold increase in enterprise sales since July.
FT explained the two AI players calculate revenue in different ways, with Anthropic including sales from cloud partners such as Amazon Web Services and Google while OpenAI does not.
Anthropic is reportedly targeting an IPO in November after the US midterm elections while OpenAI is targeting a listing next year.
Mobile World Live (MWL) brings you our top three picks of the week as Indian authorities rejected Elon Musk’s allegations about Starlink’s regulatory roadblocks, BT rescued TalkTalk in a £400 million deal and Deutsche Telekom (DT) looked to capitalise on sovereign AI demand.
India hits back at Musk over Starlink oligarch claims
What happened: India’s Ministry of Communications rebuked Elon Musk’s accusation that Indian oligarchs were blocking Starlink’s launch in the country and seeking to preserve a “monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people”, stressing its satellite communications framework is “fair and non-discriminatory”.
Why it matters: The watchdog explained Starlink, along with Indian telecom incumbents Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, are all at the same stage of the regulatory process. Each operator must complete security assessments before they can seek spectrum, with final clearances pending. Musk has previously clashed with Reliance Jio owner Mukesh Ambani over satellite spectrum access in the country. Starlink’s protracted approval process in India has lasted four years, with security requirements and spectrum access among key issues. Its presence in the country has also been complicated by reports that Starlink equipment was recovered across parts of the country, claims Musk said do not indicate an illegal active service in India.
Manas Mody, founder of business consultancy FX & Float, said the regulatory debate was “broader than a contest between Musk and operators” because “there could be legitimate regulatory and security considerations behind the resistance”, adding India “has done considerable work to secure its critical digital infrastructure”. “While Musk’s concerns may have some merit, I believe there’s likely more to this than just a conspiracy involving oligarchs,” he argued, adding Starlink is “unlikely to make a significant dent in India’s consumer telecom market” at its planned pricing as its “real opportunity lies in improving connectivity in underserved regions and remote hubs”.
What happened: BT Group agreed a £400 million deal to acquire TalkTalk’s consumer and wholesale businesses out of administration, bringing 2.5 million customers and around 900 employees under its ownership.
Why it matters: The acquisition prevents the UK broadband provider from folding and potentially disrupting services for millions of customers. TalkTalk reported £1.2 billion in revenue in the past 12 months but was loss-making following a prolonged, unsuccessful sales process. BT CEO Allison Kirkby called the situation “genuinely unprecedented”, warning millions of citizens, businesses and public services were at risk if TalkTalk collapsed. She said the acquisition was “the only viable option to keep millions of customers connected and supported”, with the BT adding the business can become value accretive if it is stabilised.
Kester Mann, director of consumer and connectivity at FDM CCS Insight, said the deal “will inevitably also evoke scrutiny from regulators keen to ensure a fair and competitive playing field”, given BT’s “strong position in the broadband market”. He added that this was particularly relevant after competition authorities raised concerns over Nexfibre’s planned acquisition of fellow broadband player Netomnia.
For TalkTalk, Mann said the deal “cements a painful decline” as the company “failed to respond sufficiently to a fast-changing and increasingly competitive market”. Its demise, he warned, should be “a stark warning to any value-focused telecom provider”.
What happened: DT set out plans to turn rising demand for sovereign AI into a new revenue stream, targeting around €250 million in non-US AI-related revenue this year and approximately €800 million by 2030.
Why it matters: The German operator noted European businesses and public institutions seeking AI capabilities while retaining control of data and operations presented a key opportunity, describing sovereign AI as a “growth business”.To that end, DT said it is developing an automation platform for SMEs and expanding AI customer service offerings. CEO Timotheus Hoettges stressed it is crucial AI “delivers measurable value” across the business.
Jamie Escott, account director at Vodafone Business Security Enhanced, said DT’s projected €2.5 billion reduction in indirect costs by 2030 highlights “the growing importance of AI moving beyond experimentation and into large-scale operational deployment”. He added organisations are increasingly focusing on “measurable outcomes such as productivity, efficiency and service quality”. Meanwhile, Jean-Philippe Romieu, executive director for cloud and AI professional services at Microsoft Germany, described DT’s strategy as a “telco blueprint”, pointing to use cases included network integrated AI, autonomous infrastructure and AI-assisted operations. However, he flagged issues including volatile compute costs and market adoption, warning DT’s success “relies heavily on European enterprises prioritising data localisation over hyperscaler pricing and performance”.
US non-profit Common Sense Media’s Youth AI Safety Institute declared OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Teens an “unacceptable risk” and called for the company to halt access for users aged under 18-years until safeguards are independently tested and improved.
The institute tested more than 4,000 prompts across ChatGPT accounts registered to users aged 13 to 17 years-old before and after the teen-focused service launched in August.
Although some safeguards including the chatbot’s refusal to engage in explicit sexual roleplay functioned as expected, several other protections failed to operate.
“We call on OpenAI to pause marketing the product and to keep teens off of ChatGPT until it can offer a safe, developmentally appropriate experience,” the institute stated.
The biggest concern were parental notifications. In dedicated tests, parent-linked accounts generated no alerts during conversations involving high-risk topics including suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, including sessions lasting up to an hour. Broader testing triggered four notifications which only appeared on older accounts with weeks of sensitive history, with some arriving hours or days after crisis-level disclosures.
In addition, ChatGPT for Teens did not reliably refer high-risk accounts to a crisis hotline or professional help. The AI chatbot missed more than one-in-four situations where a crisis referral was warranted, falling below its 95% threshold in three-of-five severe harm categories.
The institute further claimed OpenAI’s age estimation technology repeatedly failed to shift adult-registered test accounts into the teen experience. It also found ChatGPT continued to use language which “simulates preferences and feelings, validates and engages, and continues engagement”, despite the AI company’s updated guidelines for those aged under 18-years.
Mental health The AI player introduced parental controls and safety notifications to ChatGPT in 2025, stating its systems could identify potential signs of self-harm and alert parents in cases of acute distress.
ChatGPT For Teens emphasised learning, age-appropriate safeguards and parental controls designed to limit exposure to sensitive content.
OpenAI has been hit with a number of lawsuits from parents across the US alleging its chatbot encouraged at-risk teenagers to engage in self-harm, suicide or violent crimes.
In 2025, the US Federal Trade Commission reportedly launched an investigation into OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Character.AI over concerns chatbots were affecting children’s mental health.
Finnish authorities told Google to suspend preparatory work on two planned data centres pending environmental reviews, after the company unveiled a €13 billion investment in the country’s AI infrastructure.
The Finnish Licencing and Supervision Agency (LVV) issued a notice to Google subsidiary Tuike Finland Oy to immediately suspend the data centre projects in Kajaani and Muhos regions “until the environmental impact assessment procedures for the projects have been completed”.
Tommi Muilu, head of the authority’s environmental department, stated available reports indicated extensive preparatory work had already taken place at the project sites, including tree and topsoil removal, construction of site roads and storage areas, alterations to ditches and culverts, and stormwater works.
“In our opinion, the measures in question will change the environment and cause impacts, the identification and assessment of which are among the key objectives of the EIA procedure,” he stated.
The suspension request applies, among other things, to the removal of trees, removal of topsoil, excavation, quarrying, crushing, transfer of soil masses, drainage and the construction of construction site roads and storage areas.
The request does not apply to planning, measurements, soil surveys or other measures with minor impacts and that can be easily restored.
The notice to Tuike Finland Oy ordered it to suspend work no later than 23 October until the environmental impact assessment procedures have been completed.
“We understand the concerns and have fallen short of our own high standards in this instance,” a Google representative told CNBC, adding it will follow the LVV’s guidance.
In addition to the data centres, the digital infrastructure project also includes AI facilities, nuclear power and renewable energy as part of Google’s largest single outlay in Europe.
Elon Musk (pictured) ruled out Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) taking an operational role in Terafab, the billionaire’s advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility in the US state of Texas.
The tech mogul explained TSMC’s only potential involvement under discussion is leasing part of the planned site. “Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that,” he said in a post on X. He added: “No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be zero doubt about that.”
The comments clarify Musk’s earlier remarks on X that he was in discussions with TSMC and that “something may come of it”, which fuelled speculation that the Taiwanese chipmaker could become involved in operating the facility being developed by SpaceX and Tesla.
Meanwhile, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg the company will continue working with Musk on Terafab, following questions over Intel’s role in the project after Musk disclosed discussions with TSMC. The chipmaker signed up as a development partner in April, working with SpaceX, Tesla and xAI on silicon fab technology for the project.
SpaceX and Tesla announced the Terafab project in August, stating it would combine chip manufacturing, advanced packaging and testing for logic and memory devices at a site projected to exceed 100 million square feet. The facility will produce chips for Musk’s companies, including processors for Tesla’s humanoid Optimus robots and self-driving Cybercabs, alongside high-power chips for SpaceX’s ambitious orbital AI data centres.
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