The U.S. dollar edged lower, as investors tracked shifting developments around a potential Iran deal and the resulting moves in oil prices, which influenced inflation expectations and safe-haven demand.
The dollar index (DXY), which measures the greenback against a
An acquisition is the easiest way for the titan to get a leg up with digital nomads and international customers.
At first glance, it seems an absurd idea: JPMorgan Chase & Co., with its roughly $850 billion market cap, acquiring European unicorn Revolut, a private neobank valued at $75 billion.
Seemingly absurd, yes, but also worth considering, because it underscores the challenge that upstart fintechs pose to traditional banks. JPMorgan has already tested the practicality of building a digital-first banking experience internally. It launched Finn in 2017 as a standalone mobile banking brand aimed at younger users, then shut it down in 2019 after it failed to gain traction.
But the Finn experiment was not a clean rebuttal; it looked more like a legacy institution’s attempt to market around a shifting banking relationship than a fundamental rethink. A Revolut acquisition would give JPMorgan an established entry point into a dynamic new field.
I’m old enough to remember when BlackBerry’s CEO scoffed at Steve Jobs, saying, “You don’t need an app for the web.” We know how that played out. It’s easy to dismiss what doesn’t seem to fit your current moment, and just as easy to miss the next shift when you have the means to act.
JPMorgan doesn’t need Revolut. But the point isn’t survival; it’s trajectory. If banking is moving toward super apps as primary accounts, the question is whether JPMorgan can realistically build that future internally, or whether buying it may be the faster path.
Here are four reasons it could actually make sense:
Ask a senior engineer at Revolut whether JPMorgan could replicate its platform quickly, and you’re likely to get a laugh. Ask JPMorgan’s technology leadership, and you’re likely to hear the opposite.
Both can be true.
By the time JPMorgan was experimenting with the future, Revolut was writing it. The fintech hit 100,000 customers within a year of its funding and scaled to 50 million by the end of 2024. It’s redefining what consumers expect from banking in Europe, and its sights are now set on the U.S. as well. In March, it applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for a U.S. national bank charter.
JPMorgan has the resources to succeed in the era of super-apps. But building a globally integrated, mobile-first platform is as much about organizational culture as it is about technology. Revolut was built for speed, iteration, and cross-border functionality from day one. JPMorgan was built for scale, stability, and regulatory complexity.
As Finn illustrates, those traits are not easily interchangeable.
JPMorgan could buy smaller firms in payments, investing, foreign exchange, or onboarding to assemble its own version of a super app. But stitching together components is not the same as acquiring a scaled, integrated platform with tens of millions of users, unified technology, and talent that lives and breathes a culture built around speed and innovation.
Realistically, an acquisition would require a significant premium over Revolut’s most recent private valuation. But that cuts both ways; JPMorgan would be paying for a scaled operating system, not a collection of disconnected parts.
The difference between the two banks shows up in their approach to competing in Europe. JPMorgan is already expanding its digital retail presence and building out its footprint beyond the U.S. But the approach is incremental.
Revolut is anything but incremental. The company has grown to more than 70 million customers, adding roughly 1 million every 17 days. It provides immediate scale in markets where JPMorgan is still building.
Banks like Banco Santander have spent decades building global retail networks, market by market. For JPMorgan, acquiring Revolut would dramatically shorten that timeline, turning a multi-year expansion into near-instant relevance.
Traditional banking still assumes a static customer: one address, one jurisdiction, one primary market. While that remains true for many customers, it doesn’t justify treating digital nomads and international customers as undeserving, which is exactly what many U.S. banks do.
A growing segment — freelancers, remote workers, and globally mobile professionals — lives across borders. They earn in one currency, spend in another, and expect their financial lives to follow them. Revolut was built specifically for this customer.
JPMorgan, for all its scale, still largely adheres to a domestic model. Acquiring Revolut would instantly position it at the center of a shift already underway: one that legacy banking structures are not designed to support.
Of course, a deal this large would face serious scrutiny in the U.S. and the U.K. Regulators would question systemic risk, governance, the impact on competition, and whether one of the world’s largest banks should absorb one of fintech’s fastest-growing global challengers.
But “difficult” and “impossible” are not synonyms, especially in modern finance, where every few years brings a deal that once seemed unthinkable. If JPMorgan believed the strategic gap was large enough, regulatory friction would become part of the negotiation, not the automatic death of the deal.
It would also send a signal to regulators and policymakers — intentionally or not — that U.S. banking structures may need to loosen if domestic institutions are to compete more effectively on the global stage. Even floating a deal like a JPMorgan/Revolut tie-up would force a conversation the industry needs to have.
No, JPMorgan doesn’t need Revolut. But at some point, it may have to decide whether to write the future of banking or keep refining the version it already dominates.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management executed a highly active rebalancing strategy for the week ending May 22, 2026. The latest trading data reveals a distinct shift away from certain legacy chipmakers and streaming tech, rotating capital heavily into digital asset infrastructure, next-gen aviation, AI hardware, and
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Ahead of Memorial Day, we want to express appreciation to the brave men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Seeking Alpha wishes all our subscribers a beautiful holiday weekend and let us remember those who courageously gave
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Oura, the Finnish company that created the ring-shaped health tracker worn by millions worldwide, has confidentially submitted draft paperwork to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed IPO, according to several reports.
While the number of shares and the expected price range remain undisclosed, the company had a recent funding round in the fall of 2025 that valued the business at around $11 billion (€9.5bn), more than double the $5 billion (€4.3bn) valuation it earned in a previous round in 2024.
According to CEO Tom Hale, more than 5.5 million Oura rings had been sold up to the end of last year’s third quarter.
At the time, Hale also projected that the company would reach $2 billion (€1.7bn) in annual revenue in 2026 compared with $500 million (€430mn) just two years ago.
The move towards an IPO puts a European wearable brand on Wall Street’s radar at a time when investor appetite for consumer health technology appears to be returning.
Oura has become a standout name in the fast-growing smart ring category, competing against smartwatch giants such as Apple, Garmin and Samsung, while carving out a niche with a distinct piece of hardware that some consumers find less obtrusive.
Over the past two years, the company has expanded aggressively into software, subscriptions and AI-powered health analysis. Its wearable platform now focuses on long-term health signals including sleep, readiness, heart rate, stress and recovery.
More recently, Oura has pushed further into women’s health and AI-based personal coaching, including tools designed to interpret physiological data and provide tailored wellness recommendations.
Analysts see that transition from device maker to subscripton-based health platform as central to its IPO pitch as the firm is currently on pace to surpass 5 million paid members.
The IPO filing marks a significant moment for one of Europe’s most prominent health tech success stories.
Founded in Finland and developed around research into sleep, recovery and biometric monitoring, Oura has grown from a Nordic hardware start-up into a global player in the wearable market.
However, for Europe’s start-up ecosystem, Oura’s planned listing carries broader significance.
While its roots and design philosophy are deeply tied to Finland, the company recently transitioned to a US-based parent company, named Oura Inc. and headquartered in San Francisco, to access American venture capital while keeping its European operations.
Its decision to prepare for a US listing rather than a European one reflects a wider pattern among high-growth European tech firms seeking deeper capital markets and greater visibility among global investors.
The planned flotation arrives during renewed debate over whether Europe is losing some of its most successful technology companies to US exchanges.
Oura joins a growing list of European-founded businesses choosing Wall Street as their route to public markets, drawn by scale, liquidity and stronger investor familiarity with consumer technology.
The company’s IPO will also be seen as a test of investor sentiment towards wearable technology after a mixed few years for the sector.
Unlike smartwatches, smart rings remain a relatively young category, though interest has accelerated rapidly.
Oura is widely viewed as the segment’s category leader and its public debut could offer a clearer benchmark for how markets value next-generation health hardware combined with software subscriptions and AI services.
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Digital asset ETFs experienced heavy selling pressure last week as Bitcoin (BTC-USD) briefly dipped near $75K amid rising macro uncertainty and bond market stress.
From May 18 to May 22, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $1.26B in net outflows, according to
Political turmoil rattles emerging markets as election risks mount
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Notable healthcare headlines for the week: UnitedHealth, Boston Scientific, and Eli Lilly in focus
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Pabst Brewing Company confirmed this week that it is placing Schlitz Premium “on hiatus,” citing unsustainable economics. The brand’s volume had fallen so far that even the minimum production quantities required by the Anheuser-Busch (BUD) plant in Texas, which had
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa signed on Friday a revamped trade deal with Mexico as part of the EU’s efforts to expand its influence in Latin America, shortly after the Mercosur pact entered into force.
The deal was signed at an EU–Mexico summit in Mexico, with von der Leyen and Costa joined by the country’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, amid rising geopolitical tensions and shifting global alliances following the return of US president to the White House.
The economic partnership between the two medium-sized powers reflects efforts on both sides to reduce their dependence on the US — the EU’s and Mexico’s largest trading partner—and on China, for which Mexico has become a hub for electric vehicle production.
“The EU and Mexico are committed to a close strategic partnership,” von der Leyen said, adding: “Today’s modernised Agreements set out our shared vision of the future and will deliver many benefits for both sides.”
The EU–Mexico trade deal strengthens the EU’s diversification strategy by updating a 20-year-old agreement that had already eliminated tariff barriers on bilateral trade.
Under the new deal, the EU will access new markets for products, such as agri-food (pork, dairy, cereals, fruit and pasta), pharmaceuticals and machinery.
Mexico is the EU’s second-largest trading partner in Latin America and the EU is Mexico’s second-largest export market. Trade between both sides reached €86.8 billion in goods in 2025, alongside €29.7 billion in services in 2024.
The figures remain far smaller than Mexico’s trade with its neighbour, the US, which exceeded $900 billion in goods and services in 2024. But the deal comes as Mexico faces mounting pressure from a more protectionist White House.
For its part, the EU has been grappling with repeated tariff threats from Trump despite a trade deal clinched in 2025.
“At a time of growing global uncertainty, the EU and Mexico are choosing openness, partnership and ambition,” EU trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, who was also in Mexico City, said. He pointed out that more than 43,000 European companies export to Mexico, while over 11,000 EU companies operate in the country.
On agriculture, the pact will open up new markets for Mexican products such as coffee, fruit, chocolate and agave syrup.
A total of 568 European and 26 Mexican geographical indications will also be protected, alongside the opening of public procurement markets, according to the Commission.
With this new deal, the EU also wants to signal its strengthened presence in Latin America, where China has expanded its influence.
“97% of the GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean will be covered by sophisticated preferential agreements with the European Union,” a senior EU official said, adding: “There is no other region in the world that has such a dense and connected network of agreements.”
The EU has already built new trade ties with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay through the Mercosur trade agreement, which provisionally entered into force on 1 May and liberalises trade flows between the EU and those countries.
However, its signing has faced strong opposition from EU farmers, who fear unfair competition from Latin American imports, and ratification was suspended after MEPs challenged the agreement before the EU Court of Justice.
Brussels argues the Mexico agreement should avoid the backlash faced by Mercosur because sensitive agricultural imports remain capped through tariff quotas.
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EU Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné called for EU businesses to diversify their suppliers on Friday as trade tensions with China ramp up.
The comments come as Beijing has made repeated threats towards the EU in recent weeks, while Brussels seeks to strengthen its legislation against its Asian rival.
Last year, China restricted exports of rare earths and chips, strategic for the EU’s green technologies, defence and automotive industries.
“Do not make 100% of your supplies in one country,” Séjourné told EU businesses after a meeting with the EU’s 27 trade ministers in Brussels. He added: “The global geopolitical situation shows that your ability to provide yourself abroad must also depend on other types of countries and also on European production.”
The European Commission has so far issued guidance to EU companies and Séjourné signalled that if they did not move, the EU executive would “perhaps have to move to the next step.”
Internally, the Commission is already working on a proposal to force car producers to source chips from multiple suppliers, Euronews has revealed.
Last year, a spat between the Dutch government and the Chinese chip company Nexperia, based in the Netherlands, caused shortages of chips for EU industries after Beijing blocked exports in retaliation.
EU Trade Chief Maroš Šefčovič told Euronews at the time that China was “weaponising” critical supplies for EU industry.
Brussels and Beijing have been at loggerheads since the EU presented several proposals restricting China’s access to the EU single market.
The so-called “Industrial Accelerator Act” aims to favour EU companies in public procurement and impose strict conditions on Chinese investments in the bloc. Meanwhile, a Cybersecurity Act could exclude Chinese telecoms companies from the EU market.
Beijing has directly threatened the EU with retaliation if it moves forward with those proposals. China repeated the threats after media reports about potential EU measures against cheap Chinese imports flooding the EU market.
An orientation debate is set to take place in Brussels between EU commissioners on 29 May to decide on the EU’s strategy as its trade deficit with China becomes more critical month after month.
From Spain to Cabo Verde, the EIB is building a blueprint for global maritime decarbonization.
When the European Investment Bank (EIB) signed off on an €80 million loan to Bilbao’s Port Authority in late 2024, most observers logged it as routine. It was anything but.
The facility bundled three priorities that now define the bank’s maritime strategy: capacity expansion, grid electrification, and renewable energy generation on port land. Over the past 18 months, operating through its core European window and EIB Global, the bank has deployed or committed well over €400 million in maritime financing, for the most active period of EIB maritime engagement in a generation.
The Bilbao loan and a subsequent package for Málaga form the European spine of the push. Bilbao’s €80 million facility finances breakwater expansion, the landside electricity grid, and renewable generation, positioning the port on the Atlantic Corridor of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) as a lower-carbon alternative to road freight. Málaga’s €50 million loan, signed in spring 2025, follows the same template on the Mediterranean Corridor: a new multi-purpose terminal, full shore-power electrification for docked vessels, and upgraded border and passenger facilities.
Both foreground onshore power supply (OPS)—enabling ships to cut auxiliary engines at berth—in anticipation of FuelEU Maritime, the EU regulation that mandates OPS at designated EU ports as of 2030.
The Cabo Verde Blue Economy Sustainable Ports Facility remains the EIB’s most ambitious external maritime bet in recent memory, however.
Assembled in layers over the past two years, the program combines €114 million in EIB loans with a €34 million EU investment grant for a total €148 million concessional package under the Global Gateway, the EU’s strategy to invest in sustainable infrastructure. The undertaking spans three of the four maritime hubs across the Cape Verde archipelago: Mindelo’s Porto Grande (new breakwater, expanded container and fisheries infrastructure), Palmeira on Sal (larger-vessel reception, improved fish-landing facilities), and Santo Antão’s Porto Novo (inter-island connectivity upgrades).
Solar energy systems across multiple ports aim to cut diesel dependency. The centerpiece of the project is the rehabilitation of CABNAVE, Cape Verde’s sole naval repair yard. The EIB intends to develop it into a regional maritime center of excellence: a goal with geopolitical resonance, given China’s longstanding interest in the facility.SUBHED
The series of deals comes fully into focus as an accompaniment to the regulatory revolution unfolding in parallel in the EU. FuelEU Maritime, in force since the beginning of last year, mandates progressive greenhouse-gas intensity cuts for ships above 5,000 gross tonnes calling at EU ports: 2% against a 2020 baseline now, rising to 6% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. Simultaneously, the EU Emissions Trading System covers shipping; companies must surrender allowances for 40% of verified emissions from 2024, 70% from 2025, and 100% from 2026.
This double pressure—a fuel-intensity standard alongside a carbon price—is the commercial incentive structure the EIB’s port electrification investments are designed to capitalize on. The bank is de-risking regulatory transitions for port authorities that might otherwise be delayed while awaiting final implementing rules. Additionally, bundling electrification, renewables, and capacity expansion into single loan instruments is more sophisticated than the EIB’s earlier methods of generating port loans, which were piecemeal and perceived as non-strategic.
But the EIB is not the only major backer of the energy transition, nor could it be.
Last year, the European Investment Fund approved infrastructure fund investments explicitly targeting shipping-sector decarbonization, signaling a move beyond pure debt into equity and quasi-equity instruments that aim to crowd in pension funds and insurers at a scale individual EIB loans cannot reach. The European Commission has estimated that the full maritime energy transition will require around €100 billion by 2035; the EIF’s fund route is considered the most plausible mechanism for mobilizing capital at that magnitude.
Yet gaps remain. The portfolio is still weighted heavily toward port-side infrastructure rather than the fleet itself; direct EIB financing for vessel retrofits and alternative-fuel newbuilds has yet to materialize at scale. OPS deployment across all TEN-T ports by 2030 is a larger task than two Spanish loans can address. And the geopolitical role the bank has assumed in Cape Verde raises questions about mandate and institutional capacity that extend beyond the mid-Atlantic.
The EIB’s maritime schemes of the past 18 months are not isolated transactions; they are the outline of a strategy. Whether the bank receives the resources and political backing to match the scale of the transition it’s trying to finance is an open question.
Deepfake fraud is becoming a persistent, multiyear corporate risk as synthetic voices circulate undetected.
Deepfake-enabled fraud, which began as novel technical exploits, is now a persistent operational risk with a multi-year shelf life within the corporate ecosystem. According to deepfake-detection provider Resemble.AI, deepfakes typically remain in circulation for three-and-a-half years.
Resemble.AI’s 2025 Deepfake Threat Report, published in March, references an incident in which a voice clone of a German energy company CEO remained in circulation for nearly six years, although it resulted in only a €243,000 loss in 2019.
Determining losses from such attacks is difficult; for the 41 documented incidents last year cited by the research, only $74.9 million in verified losses were reported, with a median per-incident loss of $243,000. However, the authors noted that 71% of victims did not report financial losses, suggesting a higher volume of hidden liabilities.
“What makes them so effective is that they enable both real-time impersonation and the creation of synthetic identities stitched together from real and fake data,” said Dominic Forrest, CTO of biometric security vendor Iproov. “These are extremely difficult to detect, and once trusted, they can be used to bypass controls and commit fraud.”
Detecting deepfakes is a growing concern; the authors of the Resemble.AI report estimate that deepfake-based fraud attacks on corporations reached 8.5 billion potential incidents, ranging from audio impersonations of executives to doctored or fake images. The most common targets, Forrest noted, are on account openings, payment authorization, credential reset, and high-value transactions.
Telling a deepfake from the genuine article has become an AI-on-AI battle, experts warn.
The generative AI models producing deepfakes improve continuously via scaling and data, while deepfake detectors rely on signals like artifacts and inconsistencies, which disappear as models improve, said Siwei Lyu, professor of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Institute for AI and Data Science at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
“In practice, detectors lag by about six to 18 months on specific modalities,” he said. “But more importantly, they are chasing a moving target whose failure modes are actively being optimized away.”
Forrest suggests that firms move their identity verification from single checks to a multi-layered approach: “You need to confirm that a real person is physically present, not a deepfake, while also analyzing the digital environment for signs of compromise. No signal should be trusted in isolation.”
This article first appeared in the May edition of Global Finance Magazine.
Chemours falls as EPA's rollback of refrigerant rule raises oversupply concerns
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In a Venezuela whose infrastructure has been abandoned to the past, it is easy to forget that even here the famous phrase “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” still applies. In many ways it perfectly encapsulates the contradictions of Venezuelan society, a country where running water and electricity is far from a certainty and yet adoption of payment technologies and cryptocurrencies far outpaces that of developed countries. Whatever one thinks of the usefulness and value of these technologies, we can expect even more contradictions in the coming age of AI.
The future and AI will arrive in Venezuela, but to whose benefit? And for which purposes?
Before answering these questions I think it’s helpful to understand the technology which is AI through Jensen Huang’s analogy of a five layer cake, where Layer One is the top and Layer Five the bottom.
One – AI Applications (Claude Code, Copilot, ChatGPT, etc)
Two – AI Models (Claude-Opus, GPT5, Llama, etc)
Three – Cloud Data Center Infrastructure
Four – Chips and Computing Infrastructure
Five – Energy
Each layer of the cake requires the one below to stand. These are complicated supply chains that allow for the incredible technology that is modern generative AI.
In the case of Venezuela we can forget about having much to do with Layers Two and Four. These simply require too much know-how that the engineers and manufacturers in Venezuela do not have. We cannot compete with factories in Taiwan or China nor can we compete with computer and electrical engineers making millions of dollars a year in Silicon Valley. For a few decades at least.
Let’s look at how we can expect the other three to apply to Venezuela.
The first layer of the cake, even if these applications are not made in Venezuela (and most won’t be), they will not be difficult to deploy as these companies will offer (as they do now) software-as-a-service (SaaS) products whose infrastructure can run anywhere else in the world. The use of these tools requires little more than an internet connection and we can expect some level of widespread adoption, but likely not much in terms of cutting-edge innovation.
Because of the insatiable demand from AI companies for energy and places to put their datacenters where it’ll be the most profitable, Venezuela is attractive with its much lower-cost energy in relative terms.
Before discussing more of possible AI applications in Venezuela, let’s consider layers three (cloud datacenter infrastructure) and five (energy). These are where Venezuela is more relevant than may first meet the eye.
As you can see the entire cake relies on one base: energy. Energy and its cost is the main constraint for the entire supply chain of AI and the main reason why companies like Anthropic and OpenAI remain unprofitable despite tens of billions of dollars in revenue.
Venezuela is a potential powerhouse for energy production. Not only does it have incredibly high oil reserves but also impressive hydropower, and an extremely underdeveloped solar and wind industry.
In her bid to ask for international support, opposition leader María Corina Machado has framed Venezuela’s future as an energy hub for the Americas. Because of the insatiable demand from AI companies for energy and places to put their datacenters where it’ll be the most profitable, Venezuela is attractive with its much lower-cost energy in relative terms.
If only it had a functioning grid.
The focus on fixing this enormous issue during this stabilization phase of the American plan is no accident. The world, as has been the case since it first found oil, looks to Venezuela for the energy it can provide. One could see this negatively in that Venezuelans will have to compete with large multinational AI companies for energy, but the “stability” in the political environment that these companies require could incidentally be good for Venezuelans.
Stability of governance and respect of property rights is crucial for any company looking to make hypothetical data center or energy investments since this infrastructure takes multiple years to develop, if not decades. A return to true law and order and unassailable property rights would be an undeniable boon to the economy.
Local corporations will probably use AI-powered enterprise software as many others in the world. Though the Venezuelan entrepreneurial spirit keeps surprising, it seems likely that Venezuelan businesses will be not quite at the cutting edge but still positioned to take advantage of AI.
The area of most interest, or rather most concern, is how the government might use these tools. The Venezuelan government has laid out their first risk-based ethical code for AI, largely modeled after the EU’s AI Act. Whether or not this translates to law, remains to be seen, but they have spoken about their commitment to “humanist” AI which disavows use cases such as manipulation, mass surveillance and disinformation. These are great values to strive for, but the government’s respect for its own laws, let alone ethical codes, has been more than lacking.
AI gives tyrants around the world exactly what they want: an army of intelligent capable agents who can’t say no and don’t need to be fed or housed.
In its ability to perform thinking tasks with lightning speed in a parallelizable manner, AI is a technology which tyrants in years past must have wished they had access to. A virtual army of bureaucrats (which the Venezuelan State already has in human form) observing citizens and making small decisions, putting names on lists, logging personal connections, building political profiles as well as modeling how likely a person would be to vote a certain way or become an annoying political activist, thus saving intelligence agencies hundreds of thousands of man-hours a year. Relying less on actual humans to want to do the work of spying on their own people or even themselves.
AI agents can screen social media and the internet for any sign of online political coordination and connect that to their already centralized data systems, which could be used to target or deny access to benefits for anyone who the AI has decided is toxic to your agenda.
When you are unpopular and attempting to maintain control over a population, technology is your friend because you can leverage your human capital much further, to do what you need done without the need to grow your network of trusted people. AI gives tyrants around the world exactly what they want: an army of intelligent capable agents who can’t say no and don’t need to be fed or housed.
At the moment, Venezuela’s future hangs in the balance, leadership going forward is unclear but one thing is clear. It will not be more of the same. The only permanent thing in the world is change, and the future will arrive in Venezuela. The question is: how will it be distributed? Who will get the benefits?
As always, it will benefit those with power. The question is: who will have power?
The European Commission on Thursday cut its 2026 growth forecast for the European economy, as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East drives energy prices sharply higher.
The EU economy is now expected to grow by just 1.1% in 2026, down from the 1.4% projected in the Commission’s autumn forecast. The eurozone outlook was revised down further to 0.9%.
In its report, the Commission warned that disruption to global energy markets — caused by escalating tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s key oil and gas shipping routes — has significantly worsened Europe’s economic outlook.
“Before the end of February 2026, the EU economy was expected to continue expanding at a moderate pace, alongside a further decline in inflation,” the report said. “However, the outlook has changed substantially since the outbreak of the conflict.”
Inflation is also expected to rise sharply due to the disruption around Hormuz.
EU inflation is forecast to reach 3.1% this year — a full percentage point higher than previously expected — driven mainly by soaring energy costs after oil and gas prices surged amid fears of supply disruptions in the Gulf.
For EU officials, the shock recalls 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered Europe’s worst energy crisis in decades.
The Commission described the latest turmoil as “the second such shock in less than five years”, warning that Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels leaves it highly vulnerable whenever geopolitical tensions threaten global energy supplies.
Consumer confidence has already fallen to a 40-month low, according to the forecast, as households prepare for higher heating and fuel bills while businesses face rising operating costs and weaker demand.
Investment is also expected to slow as companies confront tighter financing conditions and growing uncertainty. Export growth is weakening as global demand softens.
Despite the deteriorating outlook, Brussels said the bloc is better prepared than during the Ukraine-related energy crisis, thanks to years of investment in renewable energy, lower gas consumption and efforts to diversify away from Russian supplies.
“The push towards supply diversification, decarbonisation and lower energy consumption has left the EU economy better placed to absorb today’s shock,” the Commission said.
However, EU officials acknowledged that risks remain heavily skewed to the downside.
The report warned that prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz or across wider Middle Eastern supply chains could drive energy prices even higher, derail the expected easing of inflation in 2027 and potentially stall Europe’s recovery altogether.
The Commission also cautioned that shortages of refined oil products, fertilisers and other industrial inputs could spread through global supply chains, increasing food and manufacturing costs across Europe.
Meanwhile, European governments are preparing for growing fiscal pressure. Public deficits across the EU are expected to widen as governments increase spending to protect households from rising energy bills while also boosting defence expenditure amid mounting geopolitical instability.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has recently urged the European Commission to relax fiscal rules for households and industries struggling with soaring energy costs, arguing that energy security should be treated with the same urgency as defence spending.
At the centre of Rome’s request is the EU’s national escape clause, adopted on 8 July, which allows member states temporary fiscal flexibility to increase defence spending under exceptional circumstances.
Meloni said Brussels had already shown a willingness to loosen budget rules in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine and growing concerns about Europe’s military preparedness. Italy is now seeking similar flexibility for emergency energy measures.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced plans on Wednesday for one of the biggest stock sales ever, by taking a space company public that is currently losing billions of dollars a year.
A filing shows that SpaceX lost $2.6 billion (€2.24bn) from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses continued at the start of this year.
The prospectus did not put a dollar figure on the amount Musk hopes to raise, but various reports have estimated it at around $75bn (€64.5bn). An offering of that size would easily surpass the current title holder, Saudi Aramco, the oil giant that went public seven years ago and raised $26bn (€22.4bn).
SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said the money will help finance projects to put people on the Moon and Mars, as part of its goal to make humans an interplanetary species in the face of existential threats that could wipe out civilisation.
“We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs,” the filing states.
The prospectus reads, in part, like a Hollywood-style vision of the future, detailing in one section that part of Musk’s compensation will be granted only if he maintains “a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.”
Short of that, the stock sale alone could make Musk — the founder and a major shareholder of SpaceX — the world’s first trillionaire. Forbes currently estimates his net worth at $839bn (€722bn), roughly equivalent to Poland’s annual GDP.
In addition to making reusable rockets to send astronauts into orbit, SpaceX has other businesses, some successful and others struggling, with plenty of question marks.
The document shows that Starlink, the world’s largest satellite communications company, is a major source of cash, generating $4.4bn (€3.8bn) in operating income last year. The business uses 10,000 satellites in low orbit to provide internet service to 10 million people in 150 countries and territories.
Among the struggling businesses are two Musk ventures recently acquired by SpaceX — his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, and his artificial intelligence firm xAI. Those purchases were criticised by some SpaceX investors as bailouts, as both are significant loss-makers.
The prospectus said its AI business lost $6.4bn (€5.5bn) from operations last year.
The original SpaceX business — building rockets and conducting launches — has benefited from major government contracts, raising questions that could come back to affect the company. Given Musk’s close ties to the Trump administration, government ethics lawyers and watchdogs have questioned whether he received preferential treatment in securing taxpayer-funded contracts, and whether that support will continue once Donald Trump leaves office.
SpaceX has won contracts worth $6bn (€5.2bn) from NASA, the Defence Department and other government agencies over the past five years, according to USAspending.gov. The company noted in its filing that one-fifth of its revenue last year came from the federal government.
Musk was the biggest donor to Trump’s presidential campaign and remains a major backer, despite a sometimes rocky relationship following his role in the government cost-cutting effort known as DOGE early last year.
Like many corporate CEOs, Musk’s compensation goes far beyond his annual salary, which was $54,080 (€46,538.5)in 2025 and has remained unchanged since 2019, according to the filing.
The prospectus says stock grants for him will be divided into 15 nearly equal tranches — 67 million shares each — and will vest only as the company reaches preset market capitalisation targets. In addition to the Mars colony milestone, SpaceX’s market value would need to reach $7.5 trillion (€6.45tr) for him to receive the full award.
He would receive additional stock awards if SpaceX succeeds in deploying giant data centres the size of football fields in space.
The document shows Musk will retain significant control over the business.
It states that he and certain other shareholders will receive shares in a special class of stock that gives them 10 votes per share. These shareholders will be able, among other things, to elect a majority of the company’s board of directors.
“This will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters and the election of our directors,” SpaceX said in a warning to prospective investors.
SpaceX will be able to market the offering to investors — in what is known on Wall Street as a “roadshow” — 15 days after making its prospectus public. In this case, that would be 4 June.
Dilok Klaisataporn
Japan reported a trade surplus of JPY 301.9 billion in April 2026, compared to a deficit of JPY 149.5 billion in April 2025, significantly exceeding expectations for a JPY 29.7 billion deficit.
This surplus is the largest since November, with exports
Finance leaders shift from AI experimentation to measurable ROI across corporate operations.
We get it. Artificial intelligence is impressive. But how is it saving CFOs money?
Prithwijit Chaki has a take. As Global Leader for Finance Advisory at Genpact, a global professional services firm, Chaki helps chief financial officers harness AI and data to drive measurable business outcomes. With more than two decades of experience advising companies on finance strategy and large-scale transformation, he has seen firsthand how enterprises are rewiring their finance operations for an AI-first era.
That perspective takes on new dimensions with Genpact’s alliance with Google Cloud, announced earlier this month. The partnership translates AI ambition into production-ready operations.
Global Finance asked Chaki how that vision is taking shape and whether the conversation is no longer just about how AI can enhance productivity, but about bottom-line business value.
Global Finance: CFOs have spent the last two years experimenting with AI pilots. What’s different in 2026?
Prithwijit Chaki: CFOs are moving from AI experimentation to AI accountability. After years of pilots, the question is no longer whether AI can improve individual productivity, but whether those gains translate into enterprise value across the finance function: faster close cycles, better working capital, lower manual review burden, stronger controls, or measurable business outcomes.
According to a Genpact/HFS Research report, investment in agentic AI is expected to rise 38% over the next year. However, 67% of enterprises still rely on outdated productivity metrics that fail to capture the value of autonomous decision-making. That’s the gap CFOs are trying to close in 2026: cutting through the ‘sea of sameness’ in the AI market to determine which applications can deliver real, achievable value versus which are simply adding to the noise.
GF: How does agentic AI change day-to-day finance operations?
Chaki: Traditional automation follows basic rules, and generative AI can help an individual complete a task faster. Agentic AI goes even further. It operates inside finance workflows — deciding, acting, learning, and orchestrating work across processes with people still in the loop where needed. In practical terms, that could mean moving from someone using a copilot to draft a dunning letter faster to a more integrated workflow that identifies the right action, drafts the communication, routes exceptions, applies policy guardrails, and connects the work back to measurable enterprise value.
GF: What’s one example of cost savings or business impact that CFOs see from implementing agentic AI?
Chaki: A good example is a global supply chain and distribution company processing close to 3.5 million invoices a year. After a major merger, their finance team was dealing with disconnected ERP systems, heavy manual intervention, and slow exception resolution—the kind of last-mile complexity that generic automation can’t solve. Working with Genpact, they deployed our AI-powered Genpact AP Suite combined with our agentic operations model — 21 pretrained, domain-specific AI agents that autonomously route, prioritize, and resolve invoice exceptions, with human experts validating where needed.
GF: What were the results?
Chaki: Significant. Touchless invoice processing went from 7% to 65%. Invoice cycle times were nearly halved — from 18–29 days down to 9–14 days. On-time payment rates jumped from 60% to 95%. Data extraction accuracy improved from 40% to 92%. And the system identified approximately $350 million in duplicate invoices, while early-payment discounts captured grew from $35 million to $44 million — real dollars added to the bottom line.
This isn’t a pilot or a proof of concept. It’s agentic AI operating at scale inside a core finance workflow, delivering measurable cost savings, stronger cash flow, and a fundamentally better supplier experience. That’s the kind of outcome CFOs are looking for.
GF: Which finance function is currently seeing the fastest returns from AI deployment—and why?
Chaki: Accounts payable is one of the clearest areas where finance teams can see tangible value. The process has high volume and repeatable workflows, but it also has a clear ‘last mile’ problem. Invoices, approvals, exceptions, regulatory nuances, and fragmented systems still require heavy manual intervention. Generic AI can automate a large share of structured work. However, the final 20% requires domain-driven AI that understands real-world complexity, from vendor history and regional rules to exception patterns, approval chains, and master data issues. That is where agentic AI can move beyond simple extraction or automation. It can start resolving mismatches, escalating exceptions, improving first-pass yield, reducing manual touchpoints, and shortening cycle times.
GF: Through Genpact’s expanded work with Google Cloud, what are CFOs specifically asking for from hyperscalers right now? Is the conversation more about cost reduction or something else?
Chaki: The CFO conversation with hyperscalers has moved beyond ‘what’s the cheapest cloud?’ or ‘show me another AI demo.’ CFOs want production-ready finance operations that deliver real, measurable business outcomes. That’s what Genpact’s alliance with Google Cloud aims to address. By pairing Google’s AI infrastructure with Genpact’s finance expertise, CFOs can improve forecasting accuracy, strengthen cash flow, and scale AI within their existing cloud environments.
The goal is not just to reduce costs. It’s about boosting process efficiency and accuracy, freeing finance teams from manual work, improving decision-making, and giving CFOs a clearer path from AI investment to strategic value.
GF: Are there any guardrails that must be in place before agentic AI can be trusted within core financial workflows?
Chaki: Think of the guardrails for agentic AI as needing to scale alongside the technology itself. The more finance use cases it touches, the more important it becomes to build controls directly into the workflow. What we’re seeing today is the first wave of “agent-ification.” It operates on a machine-led, human-validated model, combining automation efficiency with expert oversight to ensure quality and compliance. Companies will build tools with that future standard in mind—where the guardrails and technology scale together—will be the ones who truly innovate what finance is capable of.
GF: Are there specific examples you can share of how you see AI augmenting finance teams?
Chaki: We’re already seeing AI reshape how finance teams spend their time. In accounts payable, for example, AI agents are handling invoice extraction, three-way matching, and exception routing. This work used to consume entire teams. In financial planning and analysis, AI is accelerating variance analysis, generating narrative commentary on actuals, and enabling rolling forecasts that would have been extremely time-consuming and practically impractical to run manually. When it comes to record-to-report, it’s compressing close cycles by automating reconciliations and surfacing anomalies before they become audit issues.
GF: Do you expect job cuts?
Chaki: The shift this creates is less about job cuts and more about role evolution. Finance teams won’t shrink overnight, but the composition will change. You’ll see fewer people doing repetitive transactional work and more people in roles that require judgment, such as interpreting AI-generated insights, managing agent workflows, overseeing controls, and partnering with the business on strategic decisions. The finance professional of the future looks more like a combination of business partner and orchestrator than a processor.
Over the next three to five years, as agentic AI matures and enterprise vendors begin offering subscription-based finance capabilities built on entire agentic libraries, the operating model will shift. Finance functions will become leaner, faster, and more insight-driven but the organizations that get there first will be the ones investing now in both technology and the talent to work alongside it.
An ambitious data center project stalls due to insufficient electrical capacity.
Kenya is positioning itself as Africa’s Silicon Savannah and its premier tech hub. Touting itself as a “full-package investment destination,” part of the strategy has been encouraging global tech giants to set up operations in the country.
Lately, however, the plan has run into a roadblock: electrical capacity.
Pull back to May 2024, when Microsoft Corp., in partnership with G42, an Emirati-based AI developer, unveiled plans to invest $1 billion in a data center in Kenya powered by geothermal energy.
Described as the single largest and broadest digital investment in the country’s history, the center would be the heartbeat of a digitally led economy in Kenya and the wider East Africa region, anchored in AI and cloud-computing services.
Two years later, the project has been abandoned on account of too little electricity to power the center.
According to G42, the facility was supposed to be located some 100 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, the epicenter of geothermal energy production. Initially, it would have required 100 megawatts of electricity to run, but when fully operational, 1 gigawatt.
For a country whose installed electricity capacity stands at only 3,840 MW (3.8 GW), and where national connectivity is approximately 76%, the realization was astounding.
“To switch on that one data center, we would need to shut off power for half the country,” said President William Ruto at a recent state event. “That’s when I knew there was a problem.” Kenya continues to lose high-value investments due to low electricity capacity, he conceded; to attract and secure investment, it needs at least 10 GW.
That leaves Kenya with no ongoing power generation projects or plans for more in the future.
The stalling of the data center is bad news for Microsoft. The tech giant saw East Africa as a ripe market for its Azure products and other cloud and AI-powered solutions for businesses and the public sector. A key focus was to help governments digitize operations and service delivery, starting with Kenya, which has indicated plans to move more of its services to the cloud. Another goal was to help startups, entrepreneurs, and organizations build a digital ecosystem offering critical solutions to key sectors of the economy.
Earnings Call Insights: NVIDIA (NVDA) Q1 fiscal 2027
“This was an extraordinary quarter, demand has gone parabolic. The reason is simple, agentic AI has arrived. AI can now do productive and valuable work. Tokens are now profitable, so model makers are in a race
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