The FCA has lifted the ban on retail access to certain crypto exchange trade notes (cETNs), effective 8 October. UK consumers can now invest in cETNs listed on the Official List and traded on a Recognised Investment Exchange.
Firms offering cETNs must meet strict requirements. Products are categorised as Restricted Mass Market Investments (RMMIs), meaning financial promotions cannot include incentives, and firms must carry out appropriateness assessments, client categorisation, and risk disclosures.
Compliance with the Consumer Duty is also required, including acting in good faith, avoiding foreseeable harm, and ensuring products meet the needs of the target market.
The FCA emphasises that cETNs are complex products, and firms should have the correct permissions to offer them. Those seeking authorisation or new permissions can request pre-application support meetings.
The regulator is also advancing its crypto roadmap to integrate crypto assets more fully into its regulatory framework, with ongoing consultations on applying Handbook rules to crypto activities.
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AI could shorten the workweek, says Zoom’s Eric Yuan. At TechCrunch Disrupt, he pitched AI ‘digital twins’ that attend meetings, negotiate drafts, and triage email, arguing assistants will shoulder routine tasks so humans focus on judgement.
Yuan has already used an AI avatar on an investor call to show how a stand-in can speak on your behalf. He said Zoom will keep investing heavily in assistants that understand context, prioritise messages, and draft responses.
Use cases extend beyond meetings. Yuan described counterparts sending their digital twins to hash out deal terms before principals join to resolve open issues, saving hours of live negotiation and accelerating consensus across teams and time zones.
Zoom plans to infuse AI across its suite, including whiteboards and collaborative docs, so work moves even when people are offline. Yuan said assistants will surface what matters, propose actions, and help execute routine workflows securely.
If adoption scales, Yuan sees schedules changing. He floated a five-year goal where many knowledge workers shift to three or four days a week, with AI increasing throughput, reducing meeting load, and improving focus time across organisations.
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NextEra Energy and Google have launched a major collaboration to accelerate nuclear energy deployment in the United States, anchored by the planned restart of the Duane Arnold Energy Centre in Iowa. The plant has been offline since 2020 and is slated to be back online by early 2029.
Under their agreement, Google will purchase the plant’s energy output through a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA). Additionally, NextEra plans to acquire the remaining minority stakes in Duane Arnold to gain full ownership.
Central Iowa Power Cooperative, which currently holds part of the facility, will secure the output under the same terms.
As the energy needs of AI and cloud computing infrastructure surge, the Duane Arnold partnership positions nuclear power as a reliable, carbon-free baseload resource.
The revival is expected to bring substantial economic benefits: thousands of direct and indirect jobs during construction and operation, and over US$9 billion in regional economic impact.
Beyond Iowa, Google and NextEra will explore broader nuclear development opportunities across the US, including next-generation technologies to meet long-term demand.
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IBM has introduced Digital Asset Haven, a unified platform designed for banks, corporations, and governments to securely manage and scale their digital asset operations. The platform manages the full asset lifecycle from custody to settlement while maintaining compliance.
Built with Dfns, the platform combines IBM’s security framework with Dfns’ custody technology. The Dfns platform supports 15 million wallets for 250 clients, providing multi-party authorisation, policy governance, and access to over 40 blockchains.
IBM Digital Asset Haven includes tools for identity verification, crime prevention, yield generation, and developer-friendly APIs for extra services. Security features include Multi-Party Computation, HSM-based signing, and quantum-safe cryptography to ensure compliance and resilience.
According to IBM’s Tom McPherson, the platform gives clients ‘the opportunity to enter and expand into the digital asset space backed by IBM’s level of security and reliability.’ Dfns CEO Clarisse Hagège said the partnership builds infrastructure to scale digital assets from pilots to global use.
IBM plans to roll out Digital Asset Haven via SaaS and hybrid models in late 2025, with on-premises deployment expected in 2026.
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Plans are being rolled out for a €1 billion data centre in Germany to bolster Europe’s AI infrastructure, with Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom set to co-fund the project.
The facility is expected to serve enterprise customers, including SAP SE, Europe’s largest software company, and to deploy around 10,000 advanced chips known as graphics processing units (GPUs).
While significant for Europe, the build is modest compared with gigawatt-scale sites elsewhere, highlighting the region’s push to catch up with US and Chinese capacity.
An announcement is anticipated next month in Berlin alongside senior industry and government figures, with Munich identified as the planned location.
The move aligns with the EU efforts to expand AI compute, including the €200 billion initiative announced in February to grow capacity over the next five to seven years.
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Citi and Coinbase have announced a strategic partnership to enhance digital asset payment capabilities for institutional clients. The collaboration will begin by streamlining fiat transactions and strengthening links between traditional banking and digital assets via Coinbase’s on/off-ramps.
Both firms plan to introduce further initiatives in the coming months aimed at simplifying global access to crypto payments.
According to Citi’s Head of Payments, Debopama Sen, the partnership supports Citi’s goal of creating a ‘network of networks’ that enables borderless payments. Operating across 94 markets and 300 networks, Citi sees the move as progress towards integrating blockchain into mainstream finance.
Coinbase’s Brian Foster said the partnership merges Citi’s payments expertise with Coinbase’s digital asset leadership. Together, they aim to build next-generation infrastructure enabling seamless, round-the-clock access to crypto services for institutional clients.
The partnership builds on Citi’s ongoing investment in digital finance, including its Citi Token Services and 24/7 USD Clearing system. By aligning with Coinbase, the bank reinforces its commitment to innovation and positions itself at the forefront of the evolving digital money landscape.
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Elon Musk has launched Grokipedia, an AI-driven online encyclopedia developed by his company xAI. The platform, described as an alternative to Wikipedia, debuted on Monday with over 885,000 articles written and verified by AI.
Musk claimed the early version already surpasses Wikipedia in quality and transparency, promising significant improvements with the release of version 1.0.
Unlike Wikipedia’s crowdsourced model, Grokipedia does not allow users to edit content directly. Instead, users can request modifications through xAI’s chatbot Grok, which decides whether to implement changes and explains its reasoning.
Musk said the project’s guiding principle is ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ acknowledging the platform’s imperfections while pledging continuous refinement.
However, Grokipedia’s launch has raised questions about originality. Several entries contain disclaimers crediting Wikipedia under a Creative Commons licence, with some articles appearing nearly identical.
Musk confirmed awareness of the issue and stated that improvements are expected before the end of the year. The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, responded calmly, noting that human-created knowledge remains at the heart of its mission.
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OpenAI has updated ChatGPT’s default model after working with more than 170 mental health clinicians to help the system better spot distress, de-escalate conversations and point users to real-world support.
The update routes sensitive exchanges to safer models, expands access to crisis hotlines and adds gentle prompts to take breaks, aiming to reduce harmful responses rather than simply offering more content.
Measured improvements are significant across three priority areas: severe mental health symptoms such as psychosis and mania, self-harm and suicide, and unhealthy emotional reliance on AI.
OpenAI reports that undesired responses fell between 65 and 80 percent in production traffic and that independent clinician reviews show significant gains compared with earlier models. At the same time, rare but high-risk scenarios remain a focus for further testing.
The company used a five-step process to shape the changes: define harms, measure them, validate approaches with experts, mitigate risks through post-training and product updates, and keep iterating.
Evaluations combine real-world traffic estimates with structured adversarial tests, so better ChatGPT safeguards are in place now, and further refinements are planned as understanding and measurement methods evolve.
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Qualcomm unveiled AI200 and AI250 data-centre accelerators aimed at high-throughput, low-TCO generative AI inference. AI200 targets rack-level deployment with high performance per pound per watt and 768 GB LPDDR per card for large models.
AI250 introduces a near-memory architecture that boosts adequate memory bandwidth by over tenfold while lowering power draw. Qualcomm pitches the design for disaggregated serving, improving hardware utilisation across large fleets.
Both arrive as full racks with direct liquid cooling, PCIe for scale-up, Ethernet for scale-out, and confidential computing. Qualcomm quotes around 160 kW per rack for thermally efficient, dense inference.
A hyperscaler-grade software stack spans apps to system software with one-click onboarding of Hugging Face models. Support covers leading frameworks, inference engines, and optimisation techniques to simplify secure, scalable deployments.
Commercial timing splits the roadmap: AI200 in 2026 and AI250 in 2027. Qualcomm commits to an annual cadence for data-centre inference, aiming to lead in performance, energy efficiency, and total cost of ownership.
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Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed a generative AI model designed to prevent sports injuries and assist rehabilitation.
The system, named BIGE (Biomechanics-informed GenAI for Exercise Science), integrates data on human motion with biomechanical constraints such as muscle force limits to create realistic training guidance.
BIGE can generate video demonstrations of optimal movements that athletes can imitate to enhance performance or avoid injury. It can also produce adaptive motions suited for athletes recovering from injuries, offering a personalised approach to rehabilitation.
The model merges generative AI with accurate modelling, overcoming limitations of previous systems that produced anatomically unrealistic results or required heavy computational resources.
To train BIGE, researchers used motion-capture data of athletes performing squats, converting them into 3D skeletal models with precise force calculations. The project’s next phase will expand to other types of movements and individualised training models.
Beyond sports, researchers suggest the tool could predict fall risks among the elderly. Professor Andrew McCulloch described the technology as ‘the future of exercise science’, while co-author Professor Rose Yu said its methods could be widely applied across healthcare and fitness.
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