Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Anthropic has reached a deal to secure access to 1mn Google Cloud chips to train and run its artificial intelligence models, increasing its ties to one of its largest investors.
Google, which has invested more than $3bn in Anthropic, will bring more than a gigawatt of AI computing capacity online for the start-up next year using its custom chips known as Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs.
Anthropic said the deal was worth tens of billions of dollars, but would not give a specific estimate.
“Anthropic and Google have a long-standing partnership, and this latest expansion will help us continue to grow the compute we need to define the frontier of AI,” said Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer.
“This expanded capacity ensures we can meet our exponentially growing demand while keeping our models at the cutting edge of the industry,” he added.
The agreement follows a flurry of deals by Anthropic’s chief rival OpenAI to secure chips and computing capacity from Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Oracle and Google, estimated to be worth about $1.5tn.
The circular arrangements between companies that act as suppliers, investors and customers of each other, combined with booming AI valuations, have added to concerns about a bubble in the sector.
AI model developers have accelerated their fundraising and dealmaking for fear of falling behind in the arms race to secure enough computing power to remain competitive and meet customer demand.
Anthropic raised $13bn during a funding round that closed in September, lifting its valuation to $183bn. It remains dwarfed by OpenAI’s $500bn valuation.
San Francisco-based Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot, uses three different chip platforms to train and run its AI systems: Amazon’s Trainium, Nvidia’s GPUs and Google’s TPUs.
The start-up said the diversified approach meant “we can continue advancing Claude’s capabilities while maintaining strong partnerships across the industry”.
The arrangement pits Amazon, Nvidia and Google against each other in the competition for huge contracts to supply computing power.
“Anthropic’s choice to significantly expand its usage of TPUs reflects the strong price-performance and efficiency its teams have seen with TPUs for several years,” Thomas Kurian, chief executive at Google Cloud, said in a statement.
Amazon is the start-up’s “primary” cloud provider and a large investor in the company. It has invested $8bn in Anthropic and is building a 2.2GW data centre cluster in New Carlisle, Indiana, to help train its AI models.
Earlier this year it weighed investing more in the start-up to deepen its relationship with the model developer, the Financial Times reported.
Anthropic said that it remained committed to its partnership with Amazon.
Just 37 years old, Chen Zhi is accused of being “the mastermind behind a sprawling cyber-fraud empire… a criminal enterprise built on human suffering”.
With his wispy goatee beard and baby-faced features, he looks even younger than he is. He has certainly become very wealthy, very quickly.
Last week the US Department of Justice charged him with running scam compounds in Cambodia that stole billions in cryptocurrency from victims all over the world. The US Treasury Department has confiscated more than $14bn (£10.5bn) worth of bitcoin that it says is linked to him – it said this was the largest ever crypto-currency seizure.
His own company, the Cambodian Prince Group, describes him on its website as “a respected entrepreneur and renowned philanthropist” whose “vision and leadership have transformed Prince Group into a leading business group in Cambodia that adheres to international standards”. The BBC has contacted the Prince Group for comment.
So, how much do we know about Chen Zhi, the mysterious figure allegedly running a scam empire?
A startling rise
Brought up in Fujian province in south-eastern China, he started with a small, and apparently not very successful internet gaming company, and moved to Cambodia in either late 2010 or 2011, where he began working in the then-booming real estate sector.
His arrival coincided with the start of a speculative property boom in Cambodia. It was fuelled by the availability of large tracts of land expropriated by powerful, politically-connected figures and by a flood of Chinese capital.
Some of it was pouring in on the tail end of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative to export Chinese-made infrastructure, and some of it was from individual Chinese investors seeking more affordable alternatives to China’s overheated property market. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Cambodia was also rising fast.
The skyline of the capital Phnom Penh changed dramatically. The characterful, low-rise cityscape of mustard-coloured French colonial mansions was transformed into another Asian high-rise forest of glass and steel towers.
The transformation of Sihanoukville, a once quiet little seaside resort, was even more extreme. It was not just Chinese holidaymakers and property speculators heading there, but also gamblers – gambling is illegal in China.
New casinos sprang up, alongside gaudy, luxury hotels and apartment blocks. There was plenty of money to be made.
Even so, Chen Zhi’s trajectory was startling.
In 2014 he became a Cambodian citizen, giving up his Chinese nationality. This enabled him to buy land in his own name, but required a minimum investment or donation to the government of $250,000.
It was never clear where Chen Zhi’s money came from. When applying for a bank account on the Isle of Man in 2019 he listed an unnamed uncle who he said had given him $2m to start his first property company in 2011, but no evidence for this was ever provided.
Getty Images
Sihanoukville has been transformed by Chinese investment
Chen Zhi founded the Prince Group in 2015, focused on property development, when he was still only 27 years old.
He got a commercial banking licence in 2018 to establish Prince Bank. The same year he obtained a Cypriot passport, in return for a minimum investment there of $2.5m, giving him easy access to the European Union. He later acquired Vanuatu citizenship as well.
He started Cambodia’s third airline, and in 2020 obtained a certificate to operate a fourth. There were luxury malls in Phnom Penh built by the Prince property arm, five-star hotels in Sihanoukville, and an ambitious scheme to construct a $16bn “eco-city” called “Bay of Lights” there.
In 2020 Chen Zhi was awarded the highest title bestowed by Cambodia’s king, that of “Neak Oknha”, which requires a donation of at least $500,000 to the government.
He had already been made an official adviser to Interior Minister Sar Kheng since 2017, was a business partner with his son Sar Sokha, and an official adviser to Cambodia’s most powerful man Hun Sen, and later his son Hun Manet after he succeeded his father as prime minister in 2023.
Chen Zhi was lauded in the local media as a philanthropist, who had funded scholarships for low-income students and donated substantially to help Cambodia deal with the Covid pandemic.
Yet he remained an enigmatic figure, staying out of the limelight, making few public statements.
AFP via Getty Images
A branch of the Prince Bank in Phnom Penh
“Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s worked with him directly, been in the room with him, they all describe him as very courteous, very calm, very measured,” says Jack Adamovic Davies, a journalist who did a three year-long investigation of Chen Zhi which was published by Radio Free Asia last year.
“I think not being the kind of flamboyant person that people will write tabloid-y things about was smart. Even those who no longer want to be associated with him are still impressed by his quiet charisma, his gravitas.”
But where was all this wealth and power coming from?
‘A litany of transnational crimes’
In 2019 the property bubble burst in Sihanoukville. The online gambling business had attracted Chinese criminal syndicates, who then began violent turf wars with each other. Tourists were scared off.
Under pressure from China, then-prime minister Hun Sen banned online gambling in August that year. Around 450,000 Chinese left the city as its main business collapsed. Many of Prince Group’s residential blocks were left empty.
Yet Chen Zhi continued to expand his business interests and spend freely.
According to the UK authorities, in 2019 he bought a £12m mansion in north London and a £95m office block in the city’s financial district. The US says he and his associates bought properties in New York, private jets and superyachts, and a Picasso painting.
And, they allege, Chen Zhi’s wealth came from the most profitable business in Asia today, online fraud, and the human trafficking and money laundering that go with it.
The US and UK have imposed sanctions on 128 companies linked to Chen Zhi and Prince Group, and on 17 individuals from seven different nationalities who they allege helped run his scam empire. Assets linked to Chen Zhi in the US and UK have been frozen.
US District Court EDNY
Court documents contained images of “phone farms” allegedly used to conduct scams
The sanctions announcement describes an elaborate web of shell companies and cryptocurrency wallets through which money was moved to conceal its origins.
It says: “Prince Group Transnational Crime Organisation profits from a litany of transnational crimes including sextortion – a type of fraud involving the solicitation for eventual blackmail of sexually explicit materials, often from minors – money laundering, various frauds and rackets, corruption, illegal online gambling, and the industrial-scale trafficking, torture, and extortion of enslaved workers in furtherance of the operation of at least 10 scam compounds in Cambodia.”
The ‘scam empire’
China too had been quietly investigating the Prince Group since at least 2020. There have been a number of court cases accusing the company of running online fraud schemes.
The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has established a task force “to investigate the “Prince Group, a major transnational online gambling syndicate based in Cambodia”.
At its heart, the US and UK allege, were businesses like Golden Fortune Science and Technology Park, a compound built by the Prince Group in Chrey Thom, close to the Vietnamese border.
In the past the Prince Group has denied any involvement in scams, and said it no longer has any connection to Golden Fortune, but the US and UK investigation argues that there is still a clear business link between them.
Mr Adamovic Davies interviewed a number of people living and working near Golden Fortune for his investigation into Chen Zhi. They described brutal beatings of the mainly Chinese, Vietnamese and Malaysians who tried to escape from the compound, where they were forced to run online scams.
“I think it’s the sheer scale of his operations which really makes Chen Zhi stand out,” he says, adding that it is shocking the Prince Group was able to build a “global footprint” without raising alarm bells given the serious criminal charges it now faces.
“What should be uncomfortable for a lot of people is that Chen Zhi should never have been able to acquire all these assets, in Singapore, London or the US. Lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, bankers, all should have been looking at this group and saying, hang on, this doesn’t add up. And they didn’t.”
AFP via Getty Images
The Prince International Plaza in Phnom Penh
Today, after all the publicity generated by the US and UK sanctions, businesses are rushing to dissociate themselves from the Prince Group.
The Cambodian Central Bank has had to issue a statement to nervous depositors assuring them they will be able to withdraw their funds from Prince Bank. The South Korean authorities have frozen $64m of its deposits held by Korean banks.
The Singapore and Thai governments are promising investigations into Prince subsidiaries in their jurisdictions – of the 18 individuals targeted by the US and UK, three are Singaporeans.
Cambodia’s government has said little, apart from urging the US and UK authorities to be sure they have sufficient evidence for their allegations.
But it will be difficult for Cambodia’s ruling elite to distance themselves from Chen Zhi, after being so close to him for so long. Cambodia was already facing growing pressure over its tolerance of scam businesses, which some estimate may account for around half of the entire economy.
And what of Chen Zhi himself?
Nothing has been heard or seen of him since the sanctions were announced last week. The enigmatic tycoon, once among the most powerful figures in Cambodia, appears to have vanished.
French President Emmanuel Macron told European Union leaders to consider using the bloc’s most powerful trade tool against China if they aren’t able to find a resolution to Beijing’s planned export controls on critical raw materials.
Macron said they need to weigh using all options available against China, including the EU’s so-called anti-coercion instrument, according to people familiar with the matter.
(Bloomberg) — French President Emmanuel Macron told European Union leaders to consider using the bloc’s most powerful trade tool against China if they aren’t able to find a resolution to Beijing’s planned export controls on critical raw materials.
Most Read from Bloomberg
Macron said they need to weigh using all options available against China, including the EU’s so-called anti-coercion instrument, according to people familiar with the matter.
He made the statement to his counterparts during a leaders’ summit in Brussels Thursday, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The French presidency didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“This is economic coercion,” Macron told reporters after the summit, referring to the Chinese announcement on rare earths, without commenting on the specifics of the closed-door conversation. “We can see the impact it is having on us and we need to be able to respond.”
China announced plans to significantly tighten controls on its exports of rare earths and other critical materials earlier this month. Under the measures, overseas exporters of items that use even traces of certain rare earths sourced from China would need an export license.
The export restrictions would pose a massive threat to Europe’s industry and security, as the inputs are critical across sectors and used in everything from electric vehicle batteries to defense manufacturing.
Following the summit, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz confirmed that the anti-coercion tool was discussed but that no decision had been reached on using it. He said it was now up to the European Commission, which handles trade matters for the EU, to decide whether to deploy the ACI.
The ACI, which has never been used, was designed primarily as a deterrent, and if needed, to respond to deliberate coercive actions from third countries that use trade measures as a means to pressure the policy choices of the EU or its members.
The instrument was created as part of the EU’s effort to boost its trade defenses after the US imposed tariffs on the bloc’s exports during the first Trump administration. Another factor was China’s decision to place restrictions on Lithuanian goods after Taiwan opened a trade office in the Baltic nation.
Use of the EU’s most potent trade tool is unlikely at this stage as it would significantly escalate tensions with China. France has called for using the instrument before, including during trade talks with the US. But the drive never fully gained traction.
The commission is currently working on options that it could use if a diplomatic solution with China isn’t found.
The commission is preparing a list of trade measures by the end of the month that can later be deployed against China to boost its negotiating leverage on the issue, Bloomberg reported earlier. The commission is also developing a plan to protect critical supplies in the short-term and secure other sources.
The EU’s trade chief Maros Sefcovic held talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentao, earlier this week on the proposed export restrictions.
“We have no interest in escalation,” Sefcovic told reporters after the call Tuesday. “However, this situation casts a shadow over our relationship, therefore a prompt resolution is essential.”
–With assistance from Alberto Nardelli and Arne Delfs.
(Updates with Macron quote in the fourth paragraph.)
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., Oct. 22, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Stock futures are little changed Thursday night ahead of a key inflation print.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 13 points, or 0.03%. S&P futures ticked up 0.06%, while Nasdaq 100 futures added 0.1%.
In after-hours trading, Intel shares popped nearly 7% after the chipmaker reported third-quarter sales that exceeded analysts’ estimates. Target shares rose marginally after the retailer announced it would slash its corporate workforce by 8%, marking its first major layoff in a decade. Applied Materials and Rivian also announced layoffs.
The three major U.S. indexes ended the previous session higher, driven by inflows into tech stocks and bullish sentiment heading into the heat of third-quarter earnings season. The S&P 500 rose nearly 0.6%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 144 points, or 0.3%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite outperformed, closing the day 0.9% higher as heavyweight AI stocks such as Nvidia and Oracle got a boost.
Investors are awaiting Friday’s release of the September consumer price index report, which could be a market-moving event given the lack of federal data being released amid the ongoing U.S. government shutdown. Wall Street will be watching for any signs on if inflation is cooling or getting hotter, and if tariffs are affecting consumer prices.
The CPI, which was supposed to be released Oct. 15, will be the last economic reading before the Federal Reserve’s October meeting next week. Markets widely expect the Fed to lower interest rates by another quarter percentage point.
“Markets remain cautious, as the lack of clean economic data adds uncertainty for both the Fed and investors,” said Vishal Khanduja, head of broad markets fixed income at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. “Until more reliable data emerges, the Fed is likely to adhere to market-priced expectations, though Friday’s CPI should provide greater clarity. The impact of tariffs creeping into inflation will be key.”
Stocks are on pace to notch weekly gains, after Thursday’s moves erased Wednesday’s losses. The S&P 500 is tracking for a 1.1% gain, while the Nasdaq and the 30-stock Dow are up nearly 1.2%.
(Reuters) -AI data centre startup Crusoe is raising $1.38 billion at a valuation of about $10 billion from an anticipated Series E funding round, the Denver-based company said on Thursday
The oversubscribed round is being co-led by Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala Capital and includes Nvidia, Fidelity Management and Founders Fund as some of its major investors.
The company, which was involved in building OpenAI’s first big data centre in the U.S., has raised about $3.9 billion since its inception in 2018.
It recently announced that the first phase of its 1.2 gigawatt data center in Abilene, Texas campus, was live just one year after construction began.
(Reporting by Anuj T in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
The FDA has approved belantamab mafodotin-blmf (Blenrep) in combination with bortezomib (Velcade) and dexamethasone (BVd) for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least 2 prior lines of therapy, including a proteasome inhibitor (PI) and an immunomodulatory agent (IMID).1
The approval is supported by findings from the phase 3 DREAMM-7 (NCT04246047) trial. In the study, among patients who had received at least 2 prior lines of therapy, including a PI and an IMID, BVd elicited a 51% reduction in the risk of death (HR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.32-0.76) compared with DVd. Treatment with the combination also led to a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 31.3 months (95% CI, 23.5-NR) vs 10.4 months (95% CI, 7.0-13.4) with DVd (HR, 0.31; 95% CI, 0.21-0.47). The safety and tolerability profiles of DVd and BVd were consistent with the known safety profiles of the individual agents, according to the news release.
“With the approval of [belantamab mafodotin], we now have a community-accessible BCMA-targeting agent with the potential to improve outcomes for patients following 2 or more prior lines of treatment, where options are limited,” Sagar Lonial, MD, chief medical officer and chair of the Emory Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, stated in a news release “This approval marks an important advance in the US relapsed/refractory treatment landscape.”
This approval follows a divided recommendation from the FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee, which voted 5 to 3 against the risk–benefit profile of the BVd regimen.2 Safety concerns raised by the committee included the high incidence of ocular toxicity, the rates of serious and grade 3 or higher adverse effects, and the overall tolerability of BVd.
“Today’s FDA approval of [belantamab mafodotin] is another significant milestone, providing potential for superior efficacy, including overall survival, to US patients,” Tony Wood, chief scientific officer of GSK, added in the news release.1 “There is an urgent need for new and novel therapies, as nearly all patients with multiple myeloma experience relapse, and re-treating with the same mechanism of action often leads to suboptimal outcomes. As the only anti-BCMA agent that can be administered across health care settings, including in community centers where 70% of patients receive care, [belantamab mafodotin] fulfills a major patient need. We believe [belantamab mafodotin] can redefine treatment for patients with multiple myeloma in all parts of the world, and we are accelerating its development in earlier lines of therapy to support its use across all stages of this difficult-to-treat cancer.”
What was the design of the DREAMM-7 study?
In the open-label DREAMM-7 trial, patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma received either BVd or daratumumab (Darzalex) plus bortezomib and dexamethasone (DVd).3 Eligible patients had received at least 1 prior therapy but had not previously received a BCMA-targeted agent and were not refractory to anti-CD38 therapy.
Grade 3 or higher adverse effects (AEs) were more frequent in the BVd arm (95%) than in the DVd arm (78%). Ocular toxicity was more common in patients receiving belantamab mafodotin, occurring at a rate of 79% vs 29% in the DVd arm, but was largely reversible with dose modifications.
“The reality for most patients with multiple myeloma is a relentless cycle of remission and relapse, as their disease becomes refractory to treatments,” Michael Andreini, president and chief executive officer of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium, added in the news release. “Patients urgently need more effective treatment options that can offer more quality time with their loved ones. We see the potential for [belantamab mafodotin] in combination to help patients achieve this.”
References
Blenrep approved by US FDA for use in treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. News release. GSK. October 23, 2025. Accessed October 23, 2025. https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/media/press-releases/blenrep-approved-by-us-fda-for-use-in-treatment-of-relapsedrefractory-multiple-myeloma/
July 17, 2025, Meeting of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC). FDA. Accessed July 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/live/CLhBI3UXWyg
Evaluation of efficacy and safety of belantamab mafodotin, bortezomib and dexamethasone versus daratumumab, bortezomib and dexamethasone in participants with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (DREAMM 7). Updated October 24, 2024. Accessed October 23, 2025. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04246047
Hungria V, Robak P, Hus M, et al. Belantamab mafodotin, bortezomib, and dexamethasone for multiple myeloma. N Engl J Med. 2024;391(5):393-407. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2405090
Belantamab Mafodotin BLA 761440. FDA. July 17, 2025. Accessed July 17, 2025. https://www.fda.gov/media/187657/download
Oct 23 (Reuters) – Applied Materials (AMAT.O), opens new tab will cut about 4% of its workforce, or roughly 1,400 jobs, to streamline operations, the chip equipment maker said on Thursday as tighter U.S. export controls on semiconductors weigh on its business.
The company, one of the largest U.S. makers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, will take a charge of $160 million to $180 million for the layoffs, mostly in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, it disclosed in a regulatory filing.
Sign up here.
Late in September, Washington cracked down on companies in China and other countries that use subsidiaries or other foreign affiliates to circumvent export curbs on chipmaking equipment and other goods and technology.
That has made it harder for Applied Materials and its rivals to export some products and supply specific parts and services to select China-based customers without a license. The company earlier this month forecast a $600-million hit to its fiscal 2026 revenue due to the expanded curbs.
It said it started informing its employees about the layoffs earlier on Thursday. It had 35,700 full-time staff as of October 27, 2024, according to its annual report.
“Our goal is to continue to transform how we work, move faster, simplify decision-making, and focus on what matters most as we prepare Applied Materials for significant growth in the coming years,” CEO Gary Dickerson said in a memo to employees.
Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
