Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has warned that Britain’s prolonged period of low economic growth is the central structural challenge facing Andy Burnham’s incoming government. Productivity, business investment and growth in living standards have weakened substantially since the financial crisis, while renewed energy instability is adding to the pressure.
America remains the world’s most powerful economy, with unmatched capital markets, military reach, technology companies and dollar influence. But its dominance is becoming less automatic as China grows more competitive, migration slows, the dollar faces gradual diversification and US policy becomes harder for allies and businesses to predict. The result is not American decline, but a more multipolar world in which US leadership must be continually earned.
Apple has raised prices across Macs, iPads, HomePod, Apple TV and Vision Pro as surging AI data centre demand drives up memory and storage chip costs. The increases show how the AI boom is now affecting ordinary consumers and business technology budgets, with scarce components creating winners among chipmakers but cost pressure for device manufacturers and buyers.
Global markets fell as investors reassessed the strength of the artificial intelligence boom. Technology-heavy markets in Asia came under pressure, with concerns over OpenAI’s possible IPO delay, Apple’s price rises and rising memory chip costs weighing on sentiment. The sell-off does not end the AI investment story, but it shows investors are asking harder questions about valuations, profitability and whether demand can justify the scale of recent gains.
SpaceX’s $60bn all-stock acquisition of Cursor has turned the AI coding tool’s four young cofounders into multi-billionaires and signalled how valuable developer software has become in the artificial intelligence race. The deal gives SpaceX and xAI greater access to enterprise software users, but also raises questions about valuation, competition, computing power and the future role of human software engineers.
