👔 AI Will Handle It
Turns out, AI just wants to make more slides.
Good morning!
Burger King's vice president of brand technologies told an industry conference in late September that customers were driving off rather than talk to the chain's ordering bot. Only 23% of consumers like the idea and 46% find it a turn-off, so Burger King is building a way to ask for a human, a feature formerly known as an employee. McDonald's, undeterred, spent the summer testing Archy, a voice assistant built with Google, in a handful of US restaurants. Its predecessor, built by IBM, was switched off in 2024 after three years in more than 100 drive-thrus, having put bacon on an ice cream and 9 sweet teas on an order that contained none. The Museum of Failure, which exists, now exhibits it.
Elsewhere nobody drives off. Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta will spend more than $700B on capex this year, against about $410B in 2025. Last year IBM polled 2,000 CEOs: only 25% of their AI projects had delivered the expected return, 16% had been scaled across the company, and 64% of the CEOs admitted buying technology before understanding its value, for fear of falling behind. IBM, then, built the bacon ice cream, sells the consulting that promises to make AI pay and publishes the survey that counts the projects that don't. Its 2026 edition finds one AI deployment that did scale: the Chief AI Officer, present in 76% of organisations against 26% a year earlier. Every CEO who has one expects the panjandrum's influence to grow by 2030.
Klarna, the Swedish buy-now-pay-later lender, spent 15 months boasting that its OpenAI chatbot did the work of 700 customer service agents. In May 2025 its chief executive, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, told Bloomberg that cost had weighed too heavily, that quality had suffered and that humans were being hired again. A spokesperson later explained that the problem was outsourced humans, not the bot. The technology does work where nobody films it: fraud screening, scan triage, invoice matching. None of that fills a keynote, so the pitch moved on to agents. Gartner expects over 40% of agentic AI projects to be cancelled by the end of 2027 and counts about 130 genuine vendors among the thousands selling the word.
The vendors already have their explanation: the model works, the client doesn't. Dirty data, unreformed workflows, middle managers slated for automation who turned out to be the only people who understood the process. The cure, invariably, is a bigger contract. The motorists fleeing Burger King are the reassuring part: they at least distrust the machine. Automation bias, the documented habit of accepting an output because a machine produced it, is what happens to everyone else. A driver who trusts a wrong GPS ends up in a ditch. A loan officer who trusts a wrong score puts someone else there, and that someone cannot drive off.
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🗞️ Top Story
- 🇬🇧 Base Instincts. Two Latvian men were arrested after breaching the fence at RAF Molesworth, a US and Nato intelligence hub, triggering a counter-terrorism investigation and heightened security scrutiny. (BBC)
- 🇫🇷 Bank Shot. The FBI has identified a pro-Iranian group member as the mastermind behind a foiled bomb attack on Bank of America’s Paris branch in March, linking him to a wider campaign against US and Jewish targets. (Le Monde)
- 🇮🇹 Majority Rules. Italy’s parliament approves Giorgia Meloni’s controversial electoral reform, handing a seat bonus to any coalition topping 42% and paving the way for early elections. (El Pais)
- 🇪🇺 Mission: Prolongable. The backs extending the UNIFIL peacekeeping mandate in Lebanon beyond 2026, hoping one last renewal will hold the line a little longer. (Ouest-France)
- 🇺🇸 Prize and Prejudice. President Trump handed the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sergey Brin, and Lisa Su, all major donors to his administration, proving that in this golden age, generosity is the mother of invention. (TechCrunch)
- 🇺🇸 Pause and Effect. President Trump says there will be no military action against Iran ahead of the midterm elections, preferring diplomacy over fireworks until the votes are counted. (Washington Post)
- 🇻🇪 Due Process Denied. Maria Corina Machado's party demands her political ban be lifted after a former judge reveals she was coerced into signing the order by threats to her family. (Le Monde)
- 🇵🇭 Memory Lane. Despite his legal team's insistence on memory troubles, Rodrigo Duterte will stand trial at the ICC for crimes against humanity linked to his anti-drug campaign. (Le Monde)
- 🇹🇷 Cease and Resist. The PKK claims it fulfilled its side by pulling out of Turkey, but Ankara has yet to deliver on its end of the peace deal. (Libé)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Staying Power. Labour holds onto Holborn and St. Pancras as Sagal Abdi-Wali defeats Green Party leader Zack Polanski, giving Andy Burnham a reassuring start. (New York Times)
- 🇬🇧 Secret Service. Teddy Young is charged under the National Security Act for allegedly abusing his Royal Navy clearance to obtain and attempt to share classified material with Russian authorities. (The Guardian)
- 🇬🇧 Royal Flush. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor successfully overturns police search warrants, forcing investigators to rethink their strategy in the ongoing Epstein files case. (Financial Times)
- 🇮🇱 Mission Accomplished. Israel and the UK struck a last-minute deal to keep the British Consulate in East Jerusalem open, rebranding it as the UK Mission while scaling back its role with Palestinians. (New York Times)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Gone Greek. Konstantinos Diamantis, Connecticut’s former school construction chief, skipped his sentencing for bribery and extortion by fleeing to Greece and now won’t stop talking to the press. (Wall Street Journal)
🏛️ Economy
- 🇫🇷 Gilt Trip. Investors are demanding higher yields to lend to France, signaling deepening fears about the country’s $3T debt and warning of a potential crisis. (New York Times)
- 🇪🇺 Stuck in the Middle. Despite Irish efforts to broker a deal, budget talks for 2028-2034 have stalled as member states dig in their heels. (Les Echos)
- 🇪🇺 Reserve Judgement. ECB board member Pierre Wunsch warns that raising mandatory bank reserves could hurt the central bank's credibility and blur the line with fiscal policy. (Boursier)
- 🇪🇺 Frozen Assets. leaders agree to send Ukraine €90B over the next two years, even as tight budgets and high borrowing costs make every euro count. (Le Parisien)
- 🇺🇸 Betting on the Street. Wall Street fund managers are racing to launch ETFs tied to individual pro sports teams, blurring the line between investing and gambling for fans and traders alike. (CNBC)
- 🌍 Chip Shot. The WTO nearly doubles its global trade growth forecast to 3.9% for 2026, crediting a surge in A.I. hardware demand for offsetting war and tariff headwinds. (New York Times)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Diagnosis Pending. A government-commissioned review warns the NHS faces "system failures" as demand for ADHD and autism care surges, urging a shift to needs-based support before the waiting lists break the system. (The Guardian)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Gift Economy. Nearly 70M children are now enrolled in Trump Accounts, as new rules let donors contribute stock and turbocharge private giving for the next generation. (CNBC)
- 🇺🇸 Wait and See. The latest Fed minutes reveal policymakers feel no pressure to raise rates in October, preferring patience over another quick move. (Wall Street Journal)
🏢 Real Estate
- 🇺🇸 Rate Race. mortgage rates have climbed for the seventh consecutive week, reaching 7.4 percent and hitting their highest level since 2023, just as midterm elections approach. (Financial Times)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Rate Expectations. Real estate investment trusts are defying the usual script as rising interest rates fail to drag down their returns, which are up over 6% this year. (CNBC)
🔗 On-chain
- 🇬🇧 Trust Issues. DWF Maas and Falcon Digital allege BitGo 🇺🇸 breached contract by offloading tokens too soon, triggering a $141M court fight that exposes the risks of opaque crypto agreements with political ties. (Financial Times)
- 🇺🇸 Liquid Assets. Nasdaq's Adena Friedman touts tokenization as the key to unlocking tens of billions in idle capital, because apparently money hates being bored. (CNBC)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Flag on the Play. The NFL wants the Supreme Court to allow state oversight of prediction markets, clashing with federal regulators over the risk of insider trading. (Bloomberg)
💱 Listed Markets
- 🇮🇹 Banking on. Intesa Sanpaolo 🇮🇹 has launched a takeover bid for Monte dei Paschi di Siena 🇮🇹, aiming to create the eurozone's second-largest listed bank and leaving the Tuscan lender scrambling for survival. (Le Figaro)
- 🇺🇸 Vertical Integration. David Ellison tells CNBC the newly merged Skydance company is "positioned to win in every single vertical," promising dominance across the entertainment spectrum. (CNBC)
- 🇺🇸 Agent of Change. Google Cloud unveils Gemini, an AI agent that writes, codes, and manages tasks across Workspace apps, as the AI arms race intensifies. (CNBC)
- 🇯🇵 Vision Quested. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is chasing up to $100B from Gulf investors to double down on his already massive AI ambitions, because apparently one Vision Fund just was not enough. (Financial Times)
- 🇯🇵 Convenience Fee. Despite stronger fuel sales in North America, Seven & i Holdings 🇯🇵 saw quarterly profit fall as its home turf convenience stores lost steam. (Wall Street Journal)
- 🇹🇼 Chip Happens. TSMC smashed Q3 revenue forecasts with $47B as AI demand sent sales soaring 50%, leaving analysts scrambling to catch up. (Boursier)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Silent Auction. The London Stock Exchange’s Private Securities Market held another low-profile share sale, with Veremark raising $8.6M and the city hoping someone is watching. (Wall Street Journal)
- 🇬🇧 Pump Fiction. Google Maps now displays live UK fuel prices using government data, letting drivers hunt for the cheapest petrol or diesel as costs hit record highs. (The Guardian)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Flat Fizz. PepsiCo 🇺🇸 lowers its full-year earnings forecast as North American sales lag and rising costs swallow up any turnaround fizz. (Wall Street Journal)
- 🇺🇸 Space Invader. Trump scooped up $5M in SpaceX 🇺🇸 debt two days before announcing a policy boost for commercial spaceflight, proving his market instincts are never on autopilot. (CNBC)
🛎️ Big Deals (M&A)
- The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority 🇬🇧 says Brink’s 🇺🇸's proposed disposals could clear its $4B acquisition of NCR Atleos 🇺🇸.
- Crédit Agricole 🇫🇷 has rejected Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena 🇮🇹’s offer for Banco BPM 🇮🇹, in which it holds nearly 30%.
- RWE 🇩🇪 plays down prospects of taking a major role in Uniper 🇩🇪 amid its partnership with KKR 🇺🇸 on a bid.
- Rosatom 🇷🇺 will acquire Sergey Shishkarev’s stake in transport and logistics group Delo 🇷🇺 for $900M, taking full control.
- Starbucks 🇺🇸 is reported to have worked with advisers on a takeover proposal for Chipotle Mexican Grill 🇺🇸 in recent months.
- Apollo Global Management 🇺🇸 has agreed to acquire low-cost airline easyJet 🇬🇧 for £5.7B, with completion expected early next year subject to regulatory approval.
- Viatris 🇺🇸 has agreed to acquire pain-drug maker Pacira BioSciences 🇺🇸 for $1.65B.
- Apollo 🇺🇸 submitted a non-binding offer for the privatization of state-owned energy firm Uniper 🇩🇪, valuing it at $11.2B.
- Carlyle Group 🇺🇸 says its agreement to acquire most of Lukoil International 🇷🇺’s foreign assets has expired after the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control 🇺🇸 failed to approve the deal. It is no longer pursuing the assets.
- Weston family 🇨🇦 has agreed to acquire UK pharmacy chain Boots 🇬🇧 from Sycamore Partners for $8.9B including debt.
- Brookfield 🇨🇦 will acquire and develop ESR Indian 🇮🇳's industrial parks portfolio for $444M.
- Moussa Diao 🇸🇳 and Hervé Bouvet 🇫🇷 acquired a majority stake in Oryx Energies 🇨🇭 in a management buyout valued at about $1B.
- Sanlam 🇿🇦 offered to acquire the 37% stake it does not already own in Santam 🇿🇦 for $1.2B in cash.
🇺🇸 United States
- Devon Energy 🇺🇸 has agreed to sell its Eagle Ford assets 🇺🇸 to Crescent Energy 🇺🇸 for $4.2B.
- U.S. Navy 🇺🇸 has executed a $150M agreement modification with Shield AI 🇺🇸 for the X-BAT aircraft, matched by $150M in company capital. Total public and private commitments reach $400M.
- Kian Capital Partners 🇺🇸 has completed the acquisition of commercial landscape services provider Integrity Landscape 🇺🇸.
- Monomoy Capital Partners 🇺🇸 has completed its investment in Creedence Energy Services 🇺🇸, a specialty chemicals distributor serving the oil and gas sector.
🧳 Private Markets & VC
- 🇬🇧 Licence to Bill. Wooshpay 🇬🇧, FCA-registered and based in London, appeared in leaked documents as a payment route for A7, a Russian criminal network moving billions under the regulator’s nose. (Financial Times)
- 🇬🇧 Silent Roar. Jaguar returns from its two-year pit stop with the electric Type01, betting its future on quiet power and luxury nostalgia. (Les Echos)
- 🇪🇺 Growth Spurt. European startups like Sun.store are posting triple-digit revenue growth year after year, turning early-stage hustle into multi-million euro paydays. (Sifted)
- 🇪🇺 Extra Time. Aleksander Ceferin will run for a fourth term as Uefa president, reversing his earlier promise to step down and extending his reign over European football. (BBC)
- 🇺🇸 Cruel Intentions. Anthropic will ban users from gratuitous or sustained abuse toward its AI Claude, citing concerns about the model’s potential well-being and even consciousness. (Le Parisien)
- 🇺🇸 Club Fed. Richard Bronson, ex-Stratton Oakmont partner and federal inmate, launches Commissary Club: a social network using AI to help ex-cons find jobs, housing, and community, with a for-profit twist. (TechCrunch)
- 🇺🇸 Puppy Millennial. Corgi Invest is flooding the market with over 200 AI-driven ETFs and aims to outnumber BlackRock, hoping quantity beats pedigree. (Bloomberg)
Fundraising
- Manus 🇨🇳 (AI): More than $500M (Boyu Capital, IDG Capital, Tencent, HSG Capital, ZhenFund)
- Oratomic (Quantum computing): $475M (ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Bezos Expeditions)
- Voltus 🇺🇸 (Energy): $225M (Generation Investment Management, Activate Capital, Vitol, Broadscale Group, Climate Investment, NGP, Ajax Strategies, All Aboard)
- Arena Intelligence 🇺🇸 (AI): $200M (Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital)
- VEIR 🇺🇸 (Energy): $110M (Matter Venture Partners, Tyche Partners, LG Technology Ventures, Gates Frontier, Sabanci Climate Ventures, Hui Capital, Engine Ventures, Galvanize Climate Solutions, Piva Capital, Congruent Ventures, VXI Capital)
- Universal Quantum 🇬🇧 (Quantum Computing): $100M (DCVC, Firgun Ventures, EDBI, David Baszucki)
- Yazen 🇸🇪 (Healthcare): €50M (Verdane)
- Gallatin AI 🇺🇸 (AI): $50M (8VC, Silent Ventures)
- Vesta 🇺🇸 (Proptech): $30M (Conversion Capital, Pennymac, New American Funding, Citi Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz)
- Fortastra 🇺🇸 (Space): $30M
- TrueLayer 🇬🇧 (Fintech): $27M (CDP Venture Capital)
- Rein Security 🇮🇱 (Cybersecurity): $25M (Glilot Capital, Sienna Venture Capital, Corner Ventures, Atlacle, RNP Capital Advisors)
- Meticulous 🇺🇸 (Cybersecurity): $15M (Chemistry, Menlo Ventures, Lachy Groom, Jason Warner, Arash Ferdowsi, Scott Belsky, Guillermo Rauch, Calvin French-Owen, Caitlin Colgrove, Jason Ginsberg)
- Persona 🇺🇸 (AI): $10M (Vine Ventures, Cory Levy, Collective Global)
- Quanfluence 🇮🇳 (Quantum): $10M (Chiratae Ventures)
- Authors First (Media): $10M (Brand Foundry, Robert Hamwee, The Family Office of David Blitzer)
- Rebel Audio 🇺🇸 (AI): $10M (HardScope)
- Gudea 🇺🇸 (AI): $7M (Mudita Venture Partners, Silicon Road Ventures)
- Altro Health (Healthcare): $7M (NFX)
- Verso 🇫🇷 (AI): $6M (Angular Ventures, 100in, Kima Ventures, Olympe Capital, Sharpstone Capital, business angels)
- Phantom GI 🇮🇱 (Healthcare): $5M (Pitango HealthTech, RAD Biomed, RUNI Ventures)
- IMMIX 🇬🇧 (Fintech): €3.12M (Crane Venture Partners, BTSE, Portfolio Ventures)
- TODAY 🇩🇰 (Fintech): €2.8M (High-Tech Gründerfonds, InsurTech Gateway, SeedX, Lucid Capital, Herbert Rogenhofer, Pierre Dubosq)
- Neela Biotech 🇬🇧 (Biotech): £2.1M (Elbow Beach, Ascension, Cambridge Enterprise, Ventures Together, strategic angel investors)
- Welltory 🇺🇸 (Healthcare): $2M (Braavo Capital)
- Innercrowd 🇳🇱 (Marketing): €750K
Fund Watch
- Disruptive 🇺🇸: $10B (new venture capital fund, raising)
- Spectrum Equity 🇺🇸: $2.5B (Fund XI, oversubscribed growth equity fund, closed)
- Balerion Space Ventures 🇺🇸: $200M (Fund II, space and defense tech venture fund, oversubscribed)
- Parallel Systems 🇺🇸: $100M (Series C funding for battery-electric autonomous freight rail)
- Korea Quantum Computing 🇰🇷: $80M (merger with Charlton Aria Acquisition Corp. at pre-money equity value)
- Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures 🇺🇸: $11M (MSIV Fund II, regional venture capital fund, closed)
🔔IPO
- Imperial Brands 🇬🇧 (Tobacco): plans a £1.5B ($2B) share buyback in fiscal 2027.
- Abenojar Tungsten 🇪🇸 (Mining): planning a London IPO.
- ABN Amro Bank 🇳🇱 (Banking): the Netherlands plans to halve its stake to 10.5%.
- Centinel Spine 🇺🇸 (Medtech): filed for an IPO.
- FireFly Robotics 🇺🇸 (Robotics): filed for a direct listing.
- Blue Origin 🇺🇸 (Aerospace): likely to go public in the coming years.
- Biren 🇨🇳 (Semiconductors): seeking to raise $515M in another Hong Kong share sale.
- Transsion 🇨🇳 (Technology): seeking to raise $430M through a Hong Kong IPO.
- Vietnamese banks 🇻🇳 (Banking): planning $7B in share sales.
- Trinity Metals 🇷🇼 (Mining): in talks for a US IPO.
🧳 Debt
- Paramount 🇺🇸: its $52B debt deal for Warner Bros. offers few investor safeguards.
- Morgan Stanley 🇺🇸: offloading part of a $3B loan financing Royal Caribbean’s Sandals acquisition.
- Waymo 🇺🇸: raised a $5B loan from PIMCO 🇺🇸, Blackstone 🇺🇸 and other lenders.
- AirTrunk 🇦🇺: raised a $1B green loan led by SMBC, MUFG, and UOB.
- QatarEnergy 🇶🇦: secured a $3B loan from Chinese banks.
- Ghana 🇬🇭: raised $290M in its first cocoa bills sale since a debt default.
🇺🇸 United States
- Stord 🇺🇸: secured a $400M credit facility led by Citi.
- Pivot Energy 🇺🇸: raised $173M in term financing for a 135 MWdc solar portfolio.
❌ Failures
- ION 🇬🇧: the financial software firm is struggling with $11B in debt but will avoid aggressive tactics and seek to repay all creditors.
- First Brands 🇺🇸: the co-founder brothers of the collapsed auto parts supplier will blame each other for fraud in federal court.
- Hertz Global 🇺🇸: creditors are forming groups ahead of potential debt negotiations.
- LIV Golf 🇸🇦: Jon Rahm’s departure dealt a blow to the league’s Chapter 11 exit plan.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- Harvey Nichols 🇬🇧: its Birmingham store will close in January, eliminating at least 60 jobs, after Frasers Group bought the chain for £43M.
🎯 For a Few More Minutes…
- 🇬🇧 Cash of the Wild. British banknotes will soon feature a puffin, barn owl, bumblebee, and hedgehog instead of historic figures, as 500,000 voters choose wildlife over Winston. (Libé)
- 🇫🇷 Cipher in the Sky. Napoleon’s long-unsolved war letter fell to OpenAI 🇺🇸 GPT-6 Astra, which cracked the code from a single image in under a workday. (Ouest-France)
- 🇸🇪 Red Letter Day. Anne Carson, author of "Autobiography of Red," takes the Nobel Prize in Literature for her bold, playful reshaping of literary forms and traditions. (Boursier)
- 🇺🇸 Streaming for Good. Netflix drops the trailer for "The Altruists," a new drama about Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, and the FTX collapse, just in time for Thanksgiving binge-watching. (TechCrunch)
- 🇺🇸 Code Red. Margaret Hamilton, the pioneering software engineer whose code helped Apollo 11 land on the moon, has died at 90, leaving a legacy that powered history. (Washington Post)
- 🇲🇳 Bear Market. After a fatal bear attack in a Ulaanbaatar suburb, Mongolian authorities launch an emergency hunt as bear sightings in urban areas hit record highs. (Ouest-France)
