Tech companies are approaching terminal velocity on capex, which will surpass a $500 billion annual run-rate in early 2026. Apple is out of position on AI; CEO Tim Cook has signalled a willingness to consider M&A yet also faces acute political strain in the US

Despite revenues surpassing $2 trillion in 2025, tech is in a fragile transition as most cloud growth is still not driven by gen AI—tariffs, uneven compute build-out and US economic impacts may deliver a bumpy landing in quarters ahead

European tech sovereignty is a mounting political issue, as the continent fights the White House on its regulatory red lines. The financial and cultural impacts of Europe’s lack of tech champions remain intractable

Enormous AI capacity unlocked by 2026, combined with investor pressure for returns, is stimulating a rapid escalation in AI products that could spawn an AI ‘super app’ ecosystem that supplants the world of search and links

There is no turning back: Google is transforming search and YouTube while OpenAI and Perplexity launch AI browsers to capture user attention. OpenAI’s ChatGPT agent moves it further from Microsoft, who is yet to finalise their long-term relationship

Meta may pivot to a closed AI model without an ‘anchor tenant’—feeding Mark Zuckerberg’s ambition to revolutionise advertising. Meta is positioning new AI supercharged hardware in the consumer space designed to eclipse the smartphone

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The UK’s creative industries are a £124 billion economic powerhouse, and a major net exporter bringing British content to global audiences.

Copyright protection is core to this success, enabling control over production, distribution and monetisation to sustain this thriving creative ecosystem.

AI poses unprecedented challenges through mass scraping of copyrighted content without authorisation or compensation, and creating substitution effects that threaten established business models—making the government’s copyright consultation a critical moment for balancing innovation with creator protection.

Industrial scale theft of video services, especially live sport, is in the ascendance. Combating piracy is a formidable challenge, providing a direct threat to profitability for broadcasters and streamers.

Big tech is both friend and foe in solving the piracy problem. Conflicting incentives harm consumer safety by providing easy discovery of illegal pirated services, and reduced friction through low-cost hardware such as the Amazon Firestick.

Over twenty years since launch, the DRM solutions provided by Google and Microsoft are in steep decline. A complete overhaul of the technology architecture, licensing, and support model is needed. Lack of engagement with content owners indicates this a low priority.

The Berlusconi family-backed MediaForEurope’s (MFE) public offer may not be taken up by many ProSiebenSat.1 (P7) shareholders, but will allow it to raise its stake to above 30%.

Without a core shareholder, ProSieben has flipped-flopped through unsuccessful strategies to meet the digital transition challenge.

MFE believes that European commercial television must build cross-border scale to compete with global streamers.

The requirement for accurate audience measurement led to the creation of separate industry JICs— developed by media owners, agencies, advertisers and trade bodies—used for planning and as credible trading currencies.

However, now as brand advertisers need to be able to optimise campaigns across all audiovisual—and ideally all display—they want full cross-media measurement, and are therefore investing in the Origin platform.

But not all ‘views’ are equal; context is important. While most advertisers understand this, there is a risk that some ascribe the same value to all AV. Broadcasters are understandably wary.

President Trump will likely impose much higher tariffs on most imported goods, which could ignite retaliation by major trading partners and reverse decades of post-war globalisation.

America's biggest tech brands are vulnerable: we assess $570 billion of exposure to sales in China and the Chinese supply chain for six large companies generating over $2 trillion in revenue. 

Apple and Tesla are major investors in China to supply that market, and demand for their products could be blown off course by a wave of anti-US sentiment.   

Despite its scale, YouTube can get overlooked. But its tremendous reach and impact across all demographics make it the internet's universal service provider. 

YouTube is still the golden child for creators who want to make a living from their content. For YouTube, this broad base of suppliers ensures a position of strength from which to claim a large revenue share. 

Competition from TikTok took some of the shine off YouTube's usage, and forced it promote lower-monetising Shorts. YouTube is pushing heavily into subscriptions, TV sets, and premium content via sports rights to boost the money it makes per minute spent. 

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Cross-party support for an 11th hour amendment to the Online Safety Bill’s Commons report stage has forced the Government to agree that a new criminal liability for tech executives will be added in the Bill’s passage through the Lords.

The proposed amendment cites faulty precedents, including in financial services, and a new, not yet established Irish online safety regime that is lengthy in procedural steps before criminal sanction.

The introduction of criminal liability will not strengthen the safety objectives of the bill. It is at odds with the approach of the wider regulation, and is practically unworkable.

In a transformative upgrade of its content subscription offering, Google is buying the rights to live Sunday NFL games for $2 billion per year for 2023-2031.

YouTube can leverage its massive reach to challenge existing video aggregators, including pay-TV platforms and Amazon, as a gatekeeper to consumers.

Google will likely deploy a similar strategy in Europe, eventually competing with Sky, Canal+ and other incumbents—a hopeful development for football leagues.