Thursday 18/06/26

US and Iran sign deal as Donald Trump vows to release frozen funds and ease sanctions (Financial Times, Steff Chávez, Amy Mackinnon and Andrew England) heralds progress on the war front as the two sides electronically signed an interim deal extending the current ceasefire which gives Iran a number of concessions, including the release of frozen Iranian funds. The Memorandum of Understanding indicated that the US would “terminate all types of sanctions on Iran” and the country will get a waiver to export oil over the course of this ceasfire. * SO WHAT? * Is this just Trump trying to drive down petrol prices before the midterms?? It seems to me that all his war has done is created destruction, cost thousands of needless civilian deaths and removed a top layer of officials that were swiftly replaced! He’s also single-handedly managed to bring the world’s economy to the brink in the process – and for what?? Maybe I am reading this all wrong. Let’s see what happens…

Federal Reserve officials tilt towards rate rise as Kevin Warsh era begins (Financial Times, Claire Jones, Myles McCormick and Kate Duguid) shows that the Fed kept interest rates unchanged for the fourth meeting in a row and hinted that the future direction would be up because it will change focus from jobs to taming inflation. * SO WHAT? * Prior to the Iran war, investors were overwhelmingly expecting rate cuts this year. Interestingly, having spent what seems the best part of the last two years slagging off the previous Fed chief Jay Powell for not cutting rates fast enough, Trump seemed to be more relaxed about his man Kevin Warsh keeping interest rates on hold. He said “We have a very good guy over there now, so I’m guided by what he wants to do”. I wonder how he will react when the Fed increases rates…

Back home, UK inflation unchanged at 2.8%, easing pressure for rate increase (The Times, Mehreen Khan) shows that our inflation rate went against consensus that it would rise to 3% and stuck at 2.8% thanks to an easing of food price inflation last month. * SO WHAT? * This is the second consecutive month where inflation has come in lower than market expectations. Everyone will now be waiting to see what the Bank of England decides to do in terms of interest rates today although the market is expecting them to remain unchanged.

The other big “thing” going on today in the UK is the by-election that could be the beginning of the end of Kier Starmer. Five things to know about the high-stakes Makerfield by-election (Financial Times, Rachel Rees, Anna Gross, Amy Borrett and Jennifer Williams) highlights a few things to keep in mind re today’s election. Burnham is facing stiff competition from Reform; Reform is also slugging it out with Restore Britain, which has been gaining Elon Musk-powered support; that there’s likely to be a gender split after it turns out that the Reform candidate’s had allegedly made misogynistic remarks in online posts; misinformation and fake news is playing a major part; the Greens aren’t really trying all that hard after its initial candidate had to step down over past social media comments. It’s a microcosm of all sorts of things that are going on at the moment!

Anthropic boss tells G7 leaders to ‘resist the temptation to splinter’ over AI (Financial Times, Madhumita Murgia, Tim Bradshaw and Leila Abboud) shows that Dario Amodei told leaders at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains in France that they needed to stay united regarding the rollout of advanced tools, a sentiment echoed by rival Sam Altman of OpenAI. Both of them called for cyber defence tools to be provided to all of the countries in the room. Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis joined the other two in urging a US-led collaboration on development of AI models but this comes after the weekend where two of Anthropic’s new models were switched off for non-Americans. The chief exec of French AI company Mistral made a very good point when he said “When you have an intertwined supply chain, are you sure that your counterparts can’t cut you off? That was mentioned multiple times mainly by non-US participants”. * SO WHAT? * It really does pain me to say this, but the Americans just can’t be relied on any more. With the best will in the world, if you’ve got someone in the White House who is willing to cut off his closest allies it doesn’t matter what the CEOs of the respective companies say – the president’s orders will be carried out. If there’s even a whiff of this possibility happening it becomes vital that alternative routes are found, even if they take more time and a lot more money. This could ultimately hold back America’s tech growth (well, hold it back versus what could have been) as rival European companies are given more opportunities and money to develop.

Buying Cursor could be SpaceX’s Instagram moment (Financial Times, Lex) mulls SpaceX’s acquisition of Cursor and likens it to Facebook’s purchase of Instagram in 2012. In both cases, the founders of Cursor and Instagram sold out because of the need to get better access to expensive resources like, in Cursor’s case, data centres. SpaceX has tons of that. Facebook’s purchase worked as it brought a younger customer base and got them real estate on over a billion smartphones. SpaceX’s purchase of Cursor will give SpaceX access to over 50,000 businesses, bringing it closer to selling software and AI to companies. The question is whether Musk can resist the temptation to get hands on with his new purchase. Right now, customers can route tasks via other AI models but if Musk says that they can only go through xAI, then many businesses may leave.

AI medical tools match or surpass doctors for advice (Financial Times, Michael Peel) observes that two AI medical tools – Germany’s Mira and Google’s Amie – either matched or outperformed human doctors across a number of diagnostic and treatment decisions, indicating the latest advances in the technology. Inventors of the tools were quick to point out that the tests were

conducted in controlled simulations and that they’re not yet ready for the real world. * SO WHAT? * OK – so we’re not there yet but progress is being made. I do not think that human doctors are ever going to be replaced – but what it does mean is that better healthcare could potentially be more accessible to more people and ultimately, better diagnoses can be made at earlier stages when treatment can have more of an effect. If that means that I can get a GP appointment without planning to be ill two weeks in advance then I’m all for it!

Data centre investors navigate geopolitical strife as deals boom (Financial Times, Julie Steinberg and Kieran Smith) highlights the fact that investors continue to pour huge amounts of money into AI infrastructure despite all the geopolitical instability we’re seeing! According to Dealogic data, investors poured in a whopping $58bn in financing for 42 data centre transactions this year – a serious uplift from $34bn for 34 deals at the same time last year. Right now, almost 850 data centres worth about $7tn are under construction around the world, according to the consultancy Oxford Economics. The US and China account for 228 and 98 of those respectively. * SO WHAT? * As demand continues to increase and the need for finance compounds, it’s possible that some projects will become contentious because sovereignty and concerns about national security might need to be weighed against the need for money! Are projects in certain countries OK with Chinese tenants or controversial companies like Palantir or Telegram? I think we’re going to see more of this as time goes on and financing gets more difficult to come by.

In Jeff Bezos backs Cambridge start-up in $400m AI funding round (The Times, Chris Dorrell) we see that the founder of Amazon is investing in a UK start-up called CuspAI via his family firm Bezos Expeditions in its latest fund raising that will give it an implied valuation of $2.6bn – a massive increase from its implied valuation of $520m in September. * SO WHAT? * Not bad for a company that only started up in 2024! CuspAI aims to compress the discovery cycle for new materials by creating a “search engine” that can test new molecular structures using a digital simulation. Users input target properties for materials they want for new products and then CuspAI puts together new molecular and atomic structures that fulfil those criteria and tests them digitally! CuspAI worked with a Finnish chemicals company called Kemira to help it make materials that could remove “forever chemicals” from water. With CuspAI’s help, Kemira tried out 300 trillion possible structures over the last six months and is now moving forward with 20 of those! How amazing is that??

UK social media ban ‘likely to cause £1.3bn drop’ in digital advertising spend (The Guardian, Mark Sweney) reflects on the impact of the recently-announced social media ban on the under-16s. Research from eMarketer cut its forecasts for digital advertising spend for 2027 by £1.3bn to £17bn. * SO WHAT? * I really do wonder whether this is going to have a major impact on ad spend because surely teenager spending power is relatively limited versus older demographics anyway. Perhaps this will force advertisers to spend their money in other ways and on other types of campaign, or put more money into where the money really is – with those who are over 16!

New BBC boss announces 550 job cuts… while on holiday (Daily Telegraph, Anita Singh) highlights more job cuts being made at the BBC while the new director-general Matt Brittin is

off sunning himself. A number of programmes will also be axed and reporters and presenters will be encouraged to film videos on their mobile phones and discouraged from using camera crews! More job cuts are expected over the next few months. * SO WHAT? * This guy has only been in the job since May, joining from Google. Although this holiday was apparently booked before he joined this is such a tone deaf way to go about things. Morale is already bad at the beeb and then this guy just goes and swans off whilst sending loads of people their P45s. At the very least he should have stayed to make the announcement. He’d better see some quick returns otherwise I think everyone will be queuing up to stab him in the back if he fails!

In a quick scoot around some of today’s other interesting stories, Jaguar Land Rover to make more hybrid cars in US sales push (The Guardian, Jasper Jolly) highlights some lofty ambitions from the embattled JLR. It’s now saying that it will make more hybrid cars and concentrate on growing stateside. The CEO said that the company’s aim in the next few years is to “grow our US business to the size of the entire JLR business as it exists today”. Is this pie in the sky stuff or a realistic ambition? I don’t think their much-derided brand overhaul will have done them many favours in this regard…

Diageo boss Dave Lewis orders executives to cut jobs as restructuring kicks off (Financial Times, Madeleine Speed) shows CEO Dave Lewis in “drastic” axe-wielding mode as he told top execs to cut headcount and costs as part of a major restructuring. It sounds like “non-revenue-generating” teams will be hit the most. “Drastic Dave” has only been in the job for six months so far, but he specialises in major turnarounds. It sounds like this is just the beginning…

Meanwhile, Chinese universities gain ground on UK and US in global rankings (Financial Times, Chris Smyth and Andrew Jack) cites the latest QS World University Rankings which shows that Chinese universities are making ground on UK and US institutions. Britain has 93 institutions in the top 1,504 in the rankings, which is one more than last year, while China has 85 – a major increase from 13 last year. The US has 184, down from its peak of 201 in 2023. MIT is in #1 position with Imperial College London at #2. Oxford and Cambridge stick at #4 and #6 respectively, sandwiching Harvard at #5. 65% of US institutions fell in the rankings and 40% of British ones fell while China saw a 61% rise! The ranking of British universities took a hammering because of the fall in international students after the government made visa changes. * SO WHAT? * Education is supposed to be one of our strong points! If we keep falling down the rankings, fewer international students will come – and they’re the ones holding our universities’ finances together!

We’ve all been there – getting to the gym and then realising that you’ve forgotten your headphones or, perhaps even worse, they die on you. Here’s an example of a gym buddy you want beside you in such moments…