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Meta Platforms META 3.78%increase; green up pointing triangle is in talks to use chips made by Google in its artificial-intelligence efforts, a step toward diversifying away from its reliance on Nvidia NVDA -2.59%decrease; red down pointing triangle, according to people familiar with the matter.

A deal could be worth billions of dollars, but the talks are continuing and may not result in one. It is still up in the air whether Meta would use the chips, known as tensor processing units or TPUs, to train its AI models or to do inference, one of the people said. Inference, the process a trained model uses to generate the response to a query, requires less computational power than training.

The health regulator extended its review by 3 months to February 28, 2026.

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The FDA extended the deadline after Ascendis submitted additional information on November 5 regarding a required follow-up study, prompting a major change to the application, the company said.

Ascendis had answered all remaining questions from the agency, including providing a revised plan for the post-approval study, and would continue to work closely with the FDA to finalize the requirements, CEO Jan Mikkelsen said.

The rare disorder, called achondroplasia, is caused by a genetic mutation that affects a protein in the body called fibroblast growth factor receptor 3, or FGFR3, resulting in dwarfism.

Ascendis’ therapy, TransCon CNP, targets a naturally occurring peptide called C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), which has been shown to counteract the growth-inhibiting effects of the FGFR3 mutation and stimulate growth.

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Plans to relax restrictions on new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea will be unveiled on Wednesday under the government’s North Sea Strategy.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves will announce the publication of the strategy as part of her Budget speech, the BBC understands. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will release a document on it shortly after.

The strategy is expected to confirm the government is relaxing its moratorium on new drilling for oil and gas in a form in which it can argue the new areas are extensions of existing infrastructure.

This idea for allowing new drilling in a way that can be “tied back” to existing fields was first floated at the Labour conference in September.

The results of the North Sea review will not directly reference the decision being considered by ministers over whether to give the go ahead to the controversial Rosebank field, which Ed Miliband was vocally opposed to while in opposition.

That project is the subject of a separate and ongoing regulatory and judicial process. However, the wider relaxation in rules is widely thought to increase the chances Rosebank will ultimately be approved.

Tiebacks have historically been used for small remote extensions to existing oil and gas fields which geologically stray into currently unlicenced areas of seabed.

Rosebank is a much larger facility which requires its own production infrastructure.

There has also been speculation that the windfall tax of 78% – due to expire in 2030 – might be phased out earlier.

The oil and gas industry has been lobbying hard in recent months for changes to the windfall tax, or energy profits levy, which they say has been crippling the industry.

Investment is at an all-time low with operators instead looking to spend their money in parts of the world with more favourable tax rates.

Research from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen estimates that about 1,000 jobs a month are currently being lost.

It is understood the green light for “tie backs” would be viewed as a hollow gesture without at least some concessions on taxation.

A kind of “cap and floor” mechanism would seem like the most likely move from government, which would kick in if oil prices returned to high levels like they did in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The industry argues that subsequent falls in the price of crude oil demonstrate that the “windfall” has now ended and that taxation should reflect that change.