📌Technology – Oliver Tipping
- There has been no let-up in the cyber security landscape. The institution that is Land Rover Jaguar was almost shattered by a cyber attack at the start of the month, with manufacturing is expected to partially resume next week. The firm required a £1.5bn loan to still fears of a worst-case scenario, and it is not yet fully out of the woods. In the past few days, it has also come to light that Harrods has become the latest in the list of retail name to succumb to a breach. Data from over 400k customers was swiped. It’s no surprise that in the recent Boardroom Bellweather survey three quarters of board see this risk as increasing!
- EA announced this week that it is to be acquired for $55bn. This makes it the largest all-cash sponsor take-private investment in history. The buying group is composed of investor group composed of PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. It is further evidence that the Gaming Sector is back on the up-and-up again after a challenging couple of years. In the UK, everplay +66%, Frontier Developments +131%, Tinybuild +63% and Devolver Digital +8% have evidenced this sector re-rating.
- Apple showed off its latest innovations for the coming year which included 1) real-time translation through its latest air pods, 2) a watch that tracks hypertension, and 3) its thinnest ever iPhone. Interestingly, the initial signs were that the iPhone 17 has had a strong launch in China. JD.com reported that it took just one minute to surpass the total sales in the first day of last year’s model.
📌Media – Jessica Pok, CFA
- Consolidation and M&A have been part of the picture forever in marketing services, but the big holding companies have always been a solid presence. That is starting to change. Back in December, Omnicom and IPG announced a merger that’s set to create the largest global holding company. WPP, meanwhile has just appointed a new CEO, with strategic shifts expected to follow. And now rumours have surfaced that Dentsu has brought in bankers to explore a possible sale of its overseas assets.
- President Trump announced that a ‘framework’ agreement is in place for the sale of TikTok in the US. The deal will shift TikTok’s US operations to American ownership, with c.80% reportedly held by US investors such as Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz. Oracle is expected to manage US user data to address security concerns. However, TikTok would continue licensing ByteDance’s algorithm, raising questions about potential Chinese influence over content recommendations.
- According to Similarweb, ChatGPT drove up to 20% of Walmart’s referral traffic in August and more than 20% for Etsy. While referrals still make up a small slice of retailers overall traffic, the growth is remarkable given AI-driven referrals were almost non-existent a year ago. OpenAI’s ambitions extend well beyond referrals: the company is now piloting a native checkout system within its app. This signals a new competitive landscape, AI platforms versus publishers for affiliate revenue and advertising spend. The landscape is shifting fast, forcing marketers to rethink budgets, attribution, and strategy.
📌FinTech - Barun Singh
- Revolut is reportedly exploring a dual listing in London and New York that could value the company at $75B (£55B), making it one of the largest companies to list on the LSE and potentially the first ever to join the FTSE 100 while simultaneously listing in New York. With 65M users worldwide, 12M of them in the UK, and strong political backing after recent reforms to London’s listing regime, the move would mark a landmark moment for both financial hubs and cement Revolut’s status as Europe’s most valuable FinTech.
- Stablecoins are accelerating into mainstream finance, with global supply up 57% YoY to nearly $200B in circulation and already moving trillions of dollars annually on-chain. Visa will pilot a pre-funded stablecoin platform on Visa Direct, letting banks cover cross-border payouts instantly without relying on legacy rails, with limited rollout expected by April 2026. Stripe has launched Open Issuance, enabling firms to mint and manage their own stablecoins with reserves managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, and Superstate, while Brex will let clients accept, send, and settle expenses in stablecoins directly from USD accounts. Together these moves signal that stablecoins are shifting from crypto-native use cases to the backbone of global liquidity and cross-border money movement.
- OpenAI has launched Checkout in ChatGPT, letting US users buy directly from Etsy sellers, with Shopify’s million-plus merchants next in line. The service is built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), co-developed with Stripe, which issues a new Shared Payment Token (SPT) to complete purchases securely without exposing card details. Stripe frames this as “commerce for agents,” while OpenAI calls it the start of agentic commerce: where AI not only suggests what to buy but also handles the transaction. The protocol is open-sourced to encourage adoption, yet competition is emerging: Google has rallied 60+ partners, including Adyen, Coinbase, Mastercard, and PayPal, behind its rival Agent Payments Protocol.
