Nebius Group, the Dutch cloud computing company that split from Russian internet provider Yandex in 2024, has agreed to acquire Eigen AI for approximately $643 million in stock and cash. The deal, announced on 1 May, is for a 20-person startup founded by alumni of MIT’s HAN Lab. In a market where the largest AI […]

The Pentagon announced on 1 May that it has signed agreements with Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Reflection AI for expanded use of advanced artificial intelligence on classified military networks. The deals bring the total number of companies with such agreements to seven, following similar arrangements with SpaceX, OpenAI, and Google, which signed its own […]

Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, closed a $6 billion growth fund on 1 May, its largest ever and its fourth dedicated late-stage vehicle. The majority of the capital, $4.5 billion, came from limited partners including sovereign wealth funds. The remaining $1.5 billion came from the firm’s own partners and employees, […]

When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz on 27 March, following weeks of US and Israeli air strikes, Brent crude hit $126 a barrel and the World Bank warned that energy prices would surge by 24 per cent, the largest increase since the Russia-Ukraine shock of 2022. For most oil-importing nations, this was an economic […]

For the first time in the 25-year history of the World Press Freedom Index, more than half of the world’s countries now fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom. The share is 52.2 per cent, up from 13.7 per cent when Reporters Without Borders first published the index in 2002. The […]