#investment

#investment

Europe is our most important trading partner,

Fei-Fei Li's World Labs has secured a $200 million investment from software design giant Autodesk. The partnership will see the two companies collaborating to explore how World Labs' models - AI systems that can generate and reason about immersive 3D environments - can work alongside Autodesk's tools, and vice versa, starting with a focus on entertainment use cases.

It will look to assess the impact of factors affecting investment in high-quality connectivity by 2030, identify actions to support the sector to achieve government objectives over the next decade, and assess how the regulatory framework can be improved to support investment, innovation and competition. As part of this, the government is announcing an action plan based on four key principles: drive investment in comprehensive, high-quality connectivity by 2030; deliver for consumers; support innovation and growth across the economy; and provide secure and resilient connectivity.

The Everett, Washington-based fusion energy startup Helion announced Friday that it has hit a key milestone in its quest for fusion power. Plasmas inside the company's Polaris prototype reactor have reached 150 million degrees Celsius, three-quarters of the way toward what the company thinks it will need to operate a commercial fusion power plant. "We're obviously really excited to be able to get to this place," David Kirtley, Helion's co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.

I want to be real hands on, I want to take the club in a direction maybe it hasn't been before. We want to take Swansea to the Premier League, and to do that we are going to need money -- that's the reality of the game these days. I want to introduce sponsorship deals and publicity that will make them a global name.

The US and Taiwan have signed an agreement that will see a multi-billion dollar investment into domestic development of semiconductors and related infrastructure. The US Department of Commerce announced that Taiwanese businesses will make an upfront investment of at least $250 billion into their US production capacity, while Taiwan's government will provide credit guarantees of at least another $250 billion in support of the semiconductor industry and supply chain in the US.

The AI-driven datacenter construction frenzy shows no signs of slowing, but neither do concerns that the whole edifice could collapse under the weight of its own hype and mounting investment demands. Moody's 2026 Outlook report on the global datacenter market, seen by The Register, forecasts business as usual, with demand for server farm capacity continuing to rise in support of AI, cloud computing, and internet services.

In the last several weeks of 2025 alone, nuclear startups raised $1.1 billion, largely on investor optimism that smaller nuclear reactors will succeed where the broader industry has recently stumbled. Traditional nuclear reactors are massive pieces of infrastructure. The newest reactors built in the U.S. - Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia - contain tens of thousands of tons of concrete, are powered by fuel assemblies 14 feet tall, and generate over 1 gigawatt of electricity each.

It wasn't that long ago that the whole narrative around a so-called "crypto winter" forming was on most investors' minds. Indeed, the decline we saw in 2022 was significant, and certainly scared plenty of investors away from this asset class altogether. Of course, the reality is that investors who stuck with the game plan and continued to hold through the volatility are most likely ahead of the game.

We are now at a level where we can't tax anybody any more, but we can't borrow any more, so we are really at the mercy of those people we've borrowed from, so if they lose confidence in us, we have serious issues.

SoftBank Group will acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge Group in a deal valued at $4bn, the companies said on Monday, as the Japanese investment firm looks to deepen its AI-related portfolio. The acquisition would expand SoftBank's exposure to digital infrastructure as the Japanese conglomerate is positioning its portfolio to focus on artificial intelligence. SoftBank's billionaire founder Masayoshi Son is seeking to capitalize on surging demand for the computing capacity that underpins artificial intelligence applications.

Austria's economy is set to grow again in 2026, but new forecasts suggest many households will see their incomes fall despite the recovery. After months of recession warnings and gloomy outlooks, Austria's economy is finally showing signs of recovery. New forecasts from the country's leading economic institutes, the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) and the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), suggest growth is picking up again in 2026.

For the last four years, the United States was ruled by politicians who fought only for insiders, illegal aliens, career criminals, corporate lobbyists, prisoners, terrorists, and above all foreign nations, which took advantage of us at levels never seen before. They flooded your cities and towns with illegal aliens. They decimated your hard earned savings. They indoctrinated your children with hate for America. Really, I mean, they just released a level of violent felons that we had never seen, to prey on the innocent.

"We need something to get it moving," he said. "The market is broken. It is not going to be able to repair itself if it's not investable."

UK GDP declined marginally by 0.1% in October, reflecting an economy that is stable but still unable to build meaningful forwards momentum. The UK is neither sliding into a clear downturn nor generating the lift needed to move into a firmer, sustainable expansion phase. Across the main sectors, October's picture is uneven. Manufacturing and construction continue to feel the weight of higher borrowing costs and muted global demand, while improvements in consumer-facing services remain hesitant despite easing inflation.

McKinlay stressed there are "no guarantees" about future donations from benefactors or fans but told BBC Scotland: "We knew the money was coming from Tony. "It's very important for us to have it this year because we don't have European football. If we didn't have that money and we didn't have European football then we would cut our cloth accordingly."

If you want to know where an automaker's priorities lie, sometimes it's better to look not at their latest cars for sale, but at where they're investing money for the future. One recent example: Hyundai expanding its manufacturing presence in the U.S., in part to deepen its customer base here. Another came at the end of November, with General Motors revealing that it will invest $550 million in two plants in Ohio and Michigan where specific components are made.

When Val Vavilov co-founded his Bitcoin mining company, Bitfury, in 2011, the original cryptocurrency was worth less than $30, a sliver of its roughly $91,000 price today. Since then, Bitfury's mining ventures spun off into two Nasdaq listed companies whose combined worth tops $9 billion, while also launching two companies that offer AI infrastructure. Bitfury's next step? It wants to use its money to invest in the next crop of ethical tech innovators.

"As Wire 3 strengthens its presence in Lake County, six communities are now on the cusp of transformation, thanks to the deployment of our future-proof network," said Jai Ramachandran, Chief Executive Officer of Wire 3. "Our local teams are proud to be building efficient, reliable, and resilient infrastructure to keep our neighbors connected, and support the growth of local businesses."

In fact, some companies have already garnered impressive traction in key markets around the world, with regulators seeming to be intrigued by the innovative technology these companies are putting forward. With these aircraft resembling a mix of airplane and helicopter technology, the idea is that urban transport between key areas (say, a large urban center and an airport) could be much quicker and more efficient in the air than on the roads.

When Trump returned to office in January 2025, his first foreign trip was to Riyadh, where he announced a $600 billion (517 billion) Saudi investment in the US. This time around in Washington, both sides are likely to discuss artificial intelligence, investment, and collaboration on defense, security, and nuclear issues, given the fragile security situation in the Middle East.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) latest report shows that growth is down to just 0.1%, unemployment is up to 5% and the expectation is it that this will not improve. The economy is in a downward spiral; Labour cannot pull the country out of the fiscal black hole with tax rises alone, ultimately, spending needs to come down and fast.

The Forecasting Research Institute (FRI) has published a report [PDF] titled "The Longitudinal Expert AI Panel" that attempts to distill the forecasts of knowledgeable folk - mainly men - in industry, academia, and policy about the capabilities, adoption, and impact of AI in the years ahead. The research project, led by Ezra Karger, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, suggests that few AI experts believe "superintelligence" as outlined by the likes of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will arrive anytime soon.