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Washington, DC – Three days, three countries, hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and a geopolitical shift in the United States’s approach to the region: Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East has been eventful. This week, the United States president visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the first planned trip of his second presidency, after attending Pope Francis’s funeral last month. Trump was visibly gleeful throughout the trip as he secured investments, criticised domestic political rivals and heaped praise on Gulf leaders. The word “historic” was used more than a few times by US…

AI startup Cohere has acquired Ottogrid, a Vancouver-based platform that develops enterprise tools for automating certain kinds of high-level market research. Sully Omar, one of the founders of Ottogrid, announced the deal Friday in a post on X. He didn’t disclose the terms. Ottogrid will sunset its product, according to Omar, but will give customers “ample notice” and “a reasonable transition period.” “We’re very excited to join the Cohere team and integrate Ottogrid into Cohere’s … platform,” Omar said in a statement. “Through our work with Cohere, we’re [going to] dramatically impact how people can automate their workflows, enrich their data,…

After a wildfire decimated a California high school’s newsroom, destroying its cameras, computers and archived newspapers spanning six decades, one of the first offers of help that its journalism adviser received came from the other side of the country. Claire Smith, founding executive director of Temple University’s sports media center, had known Lisa Nehus Saxon since they helped carve out a place for women journalists in Major League Baseball more than 40 years ago. They’d supported each other through the days of being barred from locker rooms, and now with much of Palisades Charter High School damaged, Smith wanted to…

The proposed merger, which would create the largest cable provider in the US, could face antitrust hurdles.Charter Communications has agreed to buy its rival Cox Communications for $21.9bn in a deal that would unite the two of the largest cable and broadband operators in the United States as they battle streaming giants and mobile carriers for customers. The deal, announced on Friday, comes more than a decade after the companies reportedly abandoned an earlier merger attempt. Since then, pressure has intensified on cable companies, with wireless carriers attracting broadband customers with aggressive plans, while millions ditch traditional pay-TV for streaming.…

Roughly a month after Moonvalley, a Los Angeles-based startup developing AI tools for video creation, said it secured $43 million in new funding, the company has raised more, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing, submitted Thursday, reveals that Moonvalley actually landed (so far) around $53 million total from a group of 14 unnamed investors. The filing indicates that this is an additional $10 million in cash, rather than a whole new round. It brings the company’s total raised to about $124 million, estimates Pitchbook, following on the heels of Moonvalley’s $70 million seed round last November. Moonvalley declined…

Over $1bn was injected into the global FinTech ecosystem this week, marking a strong showing across sectors despite a relatively subdued volume of deals.A total of 18 FinTech-related deals were completed, amassing just over $1.13bn in disclosed funding. Of these, three deals crossed the $100m mark, led by HR and financial automation platform Rippling, which raised a remarkable $450m. It was closely followed by WealthTech firm Addepar, bringing in $230m, and digital life insurance platform Bestow, which secured $120m.The US continued its dominance in FinTech funding activity, accounting for half of this week’s deal count with nine investments. The UK…

Aldermore has strengthened its technology capabilities in the mortgage space through an expanded partnership with Finova, a UK cloud-based mortgage and savings software provider.The two companies first began working together in 2016. More recently, Aldermore undertook a comprehensive market review before running a series of pilot projects using Finova’s lending platform, previously known as Apprivo. The success of these trials has led to the formal extension of the relationship into a five-year agreement, focused on delivering end-to-end support for the bank’s specialist lending products, including buy-to-let, commercial real estate, and residential mortgages.As part of the extended agreement, Aldermore will roll…

Days earlier, Novo Nordisk cut its sales and profit forecast for first time since the launch of Wegovy four years ago.Wegovy-maker Novo Nordisk has pushed out CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen over concerns the company is losing its first-mover advantage in the highly competitive obesity drug market. Novo Nordisk announced the decision on Friday. Days earlier, Novo Nordisk cut its sales and profit forecast for the first time since the launch of Wegovy four years ago, though Jorgensen had predicted a return to growth in its biggest market in the second half of this year. Novo’s chairman, Helge Lund, tried to reassure analysts and investors…

Databricks just snatched up another AI company. This week, data analytics giant announced a $1 billion acquisition of Neon, a startup building an open-source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres. It’s the latest in a spree of high-profile buys, joining MosaicML and Tabular, as Databricks positions itself as the place to build, deploy, and scale AI-native applications.  Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha unpack the Databricks–Neon deal, where Neon’s serverless Postgres tech fits into the larger vision, and whether $1 billion still counts as “a lot of money” these days (spoiler: Kirsten and Anthony…

Algbra Group and its FinTech-as-a-Service arm, Algbra Labs, have entered into a new strategic partnership with Gatehouse Bank to support the bank’s next phase of digital transformation.Gatehouse Bank is a UK-based Shariah-compliant financial institution known for its ethical savings offerings and residential property finance products. Its services cater to UK residents, expats, and international homebuyers and landlords interested in properties across England and Wales.Algbra Labs, which is headquartered in the UK, delivers full-stack proprietary digital banking solutions. The company previously developed Algbra’s own consumer banking proposition in the UK and played a key role in building Shoal, a sustainable finance…