Fall overnight comes after it shrinks by $279bn on Tuesday in biggest one-day drop in value by US company * Business live – latest news Shares in the AI chip designer Nvidia have continued to slide overnight after a report said US authorities were ramping up an investigation into whether the company had breached competition laws. The company’s shares fell 2.4% in after-hours trading, exacerbating a near-10% drop in the regular trading session that slashed its value by $279bn (£212bn) to $2.6tn, marking the largest one-day drop in history for a US company. Continue reading...

Campaign group says firms such as Uber should reveal data on driver miles to help boost wages Uber and other ride-hailing apps should be forced to publish data on drivers’ workloads so that regulators can tackle exploitation and cut carbon emissions, campaigners argue. Analysis by the pressure group Worker Info Exchange suggests drivers for Uber and its smaller rivals may have missed out on more than £1.2bn in wages and costs last year because of the way they are compensated. Continue reading...

Millions of users shut out and 500,000 switch to rival platform Bluesky as providers enact supreme court ban One of the world’s most popular social networks, X, has gone offline in Brazil – the country with the fifth largest digital population – after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws saw it blocked by the supreme court. Millions of Brazilian X users found themselves unable to access the network on Saturday morning as internet providers and mobile phone companies began to enforce the ban. Continue reading...

In isolation, Alexander Grothendieck seemed to have lost touch with reality, but some say his metaphysical theories could contain wonders One day in September 2014, in a hamlet in the French Pyrenean foothills, Jean-Claude, a landscape gardener in his late 50s, was surprised to see his neighbour at the gate. He hadn’t spoken to the 86-year-old in nearly 15 years after a dispute over a climbing rose that Jean-Claude had wanted to prune. The old man lived in total seclusion, tending to his garden in the djellaba he always wore, writing by night, heeding no one. Now, the long-bearded seeker looked troubled. “Would you do me a favour?” he asked Jean-Claude. Continue reading...

Doubling of quarterly revenues fails to allay concerns about production delays to its next-generation of AI chips * Business live – latest updates Shares in the chip designer Nvidia have fallen after investors were spooked by signs of slowing growth and production issues, despite the artificial intelligence company posting a doubling of quarterly sales. The Silicon Valley company posted a 122% rise in second-quarter revenues to $30bn (£23bn) compared with the same period last year. While that beat average analyst estimates of $28.7bn, investors were spooked by signs of a slowdown in growth, particularly around its next-generation AI chips, code-named Blackwell. Continue reading...

Meta boss regrets bowing to government power and says he would not make the same choices today The Meta boss, Mark Zuckerberg, has said he regrets bowing to what he claims was pressure from the US government to censor posts about Covid on Facebook and Instagram during the pandemic. Zuckerberg said senior White House officials in Joe Biden’s administration “repeatedly pressured” Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to “censor certain Covid-19 content” during the pandemic. Continue reading...

Britain’s first next-generation supercomputer, planned by Tories, in doubt after Labour government move The new Labour government has shelved £1.3bn of funding pledged by the Conservatives for technology and artificial intelligence projects, putting the future of the UK’s first next-generation supercomputer in doubt. The projects, announced last year, include £800m for the creation of an exascale supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh and a further £500m for the AI Research Resource, which funds computing power for AI. Continue reading...

Billionaire says Optimus will start performing tasks for carmaker in 2025 and could be ready for sale in 2026 * Business live – latest updates The Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, has claimed the company will produce “genuinely useful” humanoid robots to start working in its factories next year. The world’s richest person, who has a penchant for making overambitious claims on social media, posted on his platform X, formerly Twitter, that he also hoped to expand into “high production” mode to make robots with a humanlike form available sell to other companies in 2026. Continue reading...

Israeli company aims for stock market flotation after spurning biggest deal in tech group’s history The cybersecurity firm Wiz has turned down a $23bn (£18bn) takeover bid from Google’s parent, Alphabet, spurning what would have been the tech company’s biggest ever acquisition and seeking a stock market flotation instead. Alphabet had been in talks with Wiz, founded by alumni of Israel’s cyberintelligence unit, as it seeks to catch rivals Microsoft and Amazon in the hyper-competitive cloud services market. Continue reading...

Internet betting tycoon Teddy Sagi’s multimillion-pound acquisition of a gaming firm now allegedly worth nothing is the subject of a court case involving heavily contested claims of fraud and physical threat Ensconced within the luxury of his £30m Knightsbridge pad overlooking Hyde Park, the billionaire Teddy Sagi laid his cards on the table. “I have a big pair of balls,” he proclaimed, according to documents filed at the high court. “I lost £300,000 in the casino last night. I will buy your business for £53m.” For the man on the other side of the negotiating table, the online gambling entrepreneur Simon Wilson, the stakes had never been higher. Continue reading...