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Aon Nears Roughly $17 Billion Deal for Insurance Brokerage USI

Private-equity giant KKR has owned USI since 2017

Aon AON 1.67%increase; up pointing triangle is near an agreement to buy insurance brokerage USI Insurance from private-equity firm KKR KKR -0.59%decrease; down pointing triangle for roughly $17 billion, including debt, according to people familiar with the matter.

A deal could be announced as soon as Monday, the people said, assuming it comes together.

The details

USI, based in Valhalla, N.Y., is an insurance brokerage and consulting firm. It helps businesses and individuals find policies and build benefit plans, among other things, and has roughly $3 billion in annual revenue, according to its website.

KKR acquired USI from the private-equity firm Onex in 2017 alongside the Canadian investment firm CDPQ for $4.3 billion. KKR has since made additional investments to increase its ownership stake in the business and become the largest shareholder.

Aon, a large insurance broker and consulting firm, has long specialized in helping businesses manage risk, healthcare benefits and retirement wealth. The acquisition would expand Aon’s capabilities in helping midsize businesses and is expected to increase earnings per share as soon as 2028, a person familiar with the matter said.

The context

The deal would be the latest in a string of big exits for KKR at a time when the private-equity industry has been struggling to unload assets. The firm reported its best-ever quarterly asset sales in the latest period, at $1.29 billion.

Recent exits include the sale of the data-center cooling business CoolIT, on which it made about 15 times the equity it invested, and the sale of the commercial and defense aerospace unit of pump-and-valve maker Circor.

Earlier this year, KKR closed a $23 billion fund focused on private-equity investments in North America, bringing the total amount of capital raised across the most recent vintages of KKR’s flagship regional funds to $46 billion, the firm has said.

Aon had a market value of around $75 billion as of Friday. The company has reported rising demand for its commercial risk and reinsurance businesses.

In a similar deal, Aon bought NFP, a middle-market property and casualty insurance broker, for about $13 billion in cash and stock from Madison Dearborn and HPS Investment Partners in 2024. Madison Dearborn last year bought back most of Aon’s NFP wealth business for around $2.7 billion.

Disgruntled soldiers who launched attack detained in capital

Niger regained control of a major military base in the capital Niamey after an attempted coup by disgruntled soldiers on Saturday threatened to overthrow the embattled regime of President Abdourahmane Tchiani. 

Soldiers attacked the military base, known as Base 101, at the international airport early on Saturday. Witnesses told the FT that they seized drones at the base before moving on to the presidential palace and national broadcaster downtown. 

Authorities have since retaken control of the base and other areas in Niamey, according to the Nigerian state media corporation RTN, which broadcast images of mutinous soldiers being detained. It is unclear how many soldiers have been arrested. 

RTN reported that “hundreds of soldiers, adrift and without faith, law or stated objective” had held others captive at the base. Defence minister Salifou Modi said mutineers had fired on “sensitive sites” around the capital.

Both Italy and Russia have military contingents in Niamey. Russian ambassador Viktor Voropayev said Africa Corps, a Russian paramilitary force that is also present in Mali and Burkina Faso, had helped put down the mutiny.

He told Russian state news agency Tass that Nigerian forces had appealed to Russia for assistance, and that Nigerian high command had since visited Africa Corps’ base to thank its servicemen for their assistance. Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto said Italian forces were not involved.  

Andrew Lebovich, a research fellow at the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands, said the Russian intervention underscored the value of partnering with Africa Corps. The force helped stabilise the government in Mali after a major offensive by al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists and ethnic Tuareg secessionists in April. 

“This is part of the Russian appeal, and is part of why they are there. The Russians are demonstrating that they will provide the support to the government in place and help put down security threats,” said Lebovich. 

But the coup points to the deep problems facing Niger.

Sources told the FT that the coup was staged mainly by young officers. There has been growing frustration within the ranks about battlefield losses in the fight against Islamic State and an al-Qaeda affiliate known as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).

The presidential guard rallied to the support of Tchiani, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Lebovich said multiple units appeared to have participated in the mutiny, including those from frontline areas in Dosso, Ouallam and Tillabéri. 

“That could have an impact on the security situation,” Lebovich said, adding that a reduction in forces on the ground could give Islamist insurgents a freer rein to operate in those areas.

Yvan Guichaoua, an analyst at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, said the coup attempt would probably lead to greater distrust and purges within the ranks, as well as a growing dependence on Russia. It could also disrupt efforts to fend off threats from Islamists affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which have been growing in strength in Niger.

Niger has been run by its military since Tchiani led a putsch in 2023 that overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohamed Bazoum, who has since been held under house arrest.

Tchiani promised to turn the tide against JNIM and Islamic State, but the situation on the battlefield has grown increasingly difficult. The complex that houses the international airport in Niamey and Base 101 has come under assault by Islamic State twice this year alone.

The coup attempt is the most serious threat to Tchiani and the military regime in Niamey since it overthrew Bazoum. 

Mali and Burkina Faso, which are also run by military regimes, have faced a worsening situation in their fight against Islamist insurgents. They have formed, together with Niger, a bloc known as the Confederation of Sahelian States (AES).

The AES issued a statement late on Saturday, which said Niger had been the target of a “betrayal by a group of soldiers involved in a destabilisation plot” and that the attempted coup had been “contained and thwarted”.

The deal caps months of secretive negotiations to give the U.S. rights to the some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves

President Trump spent months declaring his ouster of Venezuela’s leader had secured the country’s oil for America. When U.S. energy companies resisted investing at the speed and scale he wanted, his administration devised an extraordinary solution to turn his vision into reality: make the U.S. government itself an investor.

The agreement announced Friday evening would transform the U.S. government from a broker of American oil investments in Venezuela to an investor itself.

It would give Washington a direct financial stake in a private company that would be granted centurylong rights to some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves—and tie the U.S. more closely to the unelected government that is granting those rights.

The private company, led by controversial Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, would have the opportunity to develop 17 oil fields said to contain 65 billion barrels of oil, or one-fifth of the country’s reserves. The Pentagon, in a striking expansion of its remit, would help finance the oil venture and reap the rewards of its future output.

“If this deal can survive subsequent Venezuelan governments, then Trump will have secured strategic oil reserves for the U.S. that go beyond the shale revolution,” said Schreiner Parker, a partner at consulting firm Rystad Energy. “Now, there’s a lot of uncertainty as to how these barrels go from reserves to actual production, and who’s going to invest the time, effort and money to do that.”

The deal caps months of secretive negotiations and frequent trips to Caracas by U.S. officials and negotiators. Trump and interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez agreed to the outlines of the deal on a phone call days before the announcement, according to people familiar with the talks. Officials then spent the past few days working through details on how to implement the unusual agreement.

Trump announced the deal on social media Friday night, and the White House didn’t offer further comment.

Although it was negotiated by senior officials in both governments, the structure would make the U.S. an investor in a private company rather than a direct counterparty to the Venezuelan government.

The U.S. plans to take a 35% passive stake in Betancourt’s North American Blue Energy Partners and would secure preferential rights to purchase 20% of its production at cost, according to people involved in negotiating the agreement.

The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital plans to structure the investment through penny warrants that would yield the U.S. an equity ownership in the business without a significant capital investment, the people said. The Pentagon office has limited statutory authority to strike deals designed to support U.S. national-security interests, typically through loans and guarantees.

Betancourt has served as a broker in Venezuela’s energy deals and has close ties to Rodríguez. He faced criminal investigations of alleged money laundering in Spain and Switzerland, though no formal charges have emerged. His NABEP has become the second-largest private oil producer in Venezuela, after Chevron, over the past two years.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the agreement a “huge win” that would secure low-cost oil in the Western Hemisphere and lower gas prices for Americans. Rodríguez underscored that it would bring more than $100 billion in investment, more than $209 billion in taxes, and thousands of jobs that would aid in rebuilding the country’s oil industry.

Yet the deal angered many Venezuelans and sowed confusion among some oil executives, and even U.S. officials, over what was agreed and how the arrangement would work.

For American oil companies pursuing potential investments in Venezuela, the idea of competing with a U.S.-backed private company with a stake in huge swaths of the country’s oil fields is daunting, people close to the companies said. U.S. officials said the state-backed company would be the second-largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco.

“Why is the U.S. subsidizing and building a major competitor to the U.S. oil patch?” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston. “Lucy [of the Peanuts comic strip] will pull out the football once again—once Trump is out of office.”

The deal is also raising alarms within the industry about whether a new Venezuelan government could mount a successful legal challenge, and whether it might undercut new entrants’ confidence in making investments, the people said.

The substance of the agreement appears to be in direct conflict with Venezuela’s 1999 constitution, which states that the country’s oil reserves belong to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and can’t be sold. Critics say Venezuela’s current government, populated by unelected officials kept in power by the Trump administration, has no legal authority to sell the country’s oil rights.

The deal took shape in recent months as the administration sought to turn Trump’s repeated claims that America was obtaining Venezuelan oil into reality.

Faced with an unpopular and grinding war with Iran, which has squeezed global energy supplies, the Trump administration felt a sense of urgency to announce it had secured a long-term source of crude in the Western Hemisphere, people involved in the talks said. Trump also sought a political win in portraying the Venezuela deal as a way to insulate Americans from the costs of the turmoil in the Middle East ahead of November’s midterm elections, they added.

Venezuela, though, isn’t currently a major oil producer—it pumps just 1.1 million barrels a day, on par with North Dakota. Restoring production would take years and is unlikely to quickly spur the drop in gas prices that Trump has promised, oil analysts say.

Trump officials turned to Betancourt because they felt he was uniquely positioned to implement the venture: His company is already operating in the country, and he has close relationships with senior Venezuelan officials, people familiar with the negotiations said.

The Trump administration tried to push major oil companies including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to return to Venezuela’s oil fields and quickly reopen the spigot.

But after months of sluggish negotiations, much of the U.S. oil industry has remained on the sidelines. Many companies are still reluctant to invest in the country’s dilapidated oil infrastructure because of security and legal issues.

The deal was led by the State Department, and U.S. officials turned to the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital late in the process while searching for a financial mechanism to deploy, according to some of the people familiar with the talks.

The Defense Department will ultimately hold the government’s equity and purchase rights in the venture.

A delegation of senior Pentagon and State Department officials, including OSC Director David Lorch, visited Venezuela in July to hammer out the deal’s terms, some of the people said.

The OSC launched in 2022 with a mandate to support industries considered critical to U.S. national security, though loans only started flowing from the office during the second Trump administration.

The private company structure was deliberately intended to bind future Venezuelan governments to the agreement and make it difficult to unwind, one of the people involved said. They consider it unlikely that a new government would expropriate a private company, the people said.

The announcement drew fierce backlash from many Venezuelans in the country and in the large exile community abroad, as well as among supporters of the opposition. Many accused Trump of legitimizing an unelected government in exchange for control over the country’s oil.

“It’s an operation that’s absolutely unconstitutional because it’s an illegitimate government,” said Diego Arria, a former Venezuelan cabinet minister and ambassador now in exile in the U.S.

He said the U.S. is working closely with Venezuelan government figures wanted by American law enforcement for drug trafficking and other crimes with one goal: take Venezuela’s oil.

“They are seizing it—there’s no other word for it,” Arria said.

Although polls show Venezuelans overwhelmingly supported the U.S. operation that removed Nicolás Maduro, support for Trump has fallen as he helped Rodríguez—Maduro’s former vice president, who he has praised as “fantastic” and “highly respected”—consolidate power.

“Here what worries us is having electricity, water and money and then resolving the day’s needs,” said Irelis Cedeño, a 65-year-old pensioner who lives just outside of Caracas. “I have no idea what this oil accord is about, but it’s welcome if it’s going to resolve our economic situation.”

Voters weighed the nation’s security in the wake of Trump saying he would like to acquire Greenland

Icelanders voted against restarting negotiations on joining the European Union in a nationwide referendum on Saturday, the country’s national broadcaster said, rejecting arguments that their small island nation should pull closer to Brussels after President Trump’s threats to annex Greenland.

A partial count published by national broadcaster RÚV on Sunday said 52.5% of voters didn’t want their government to reopen talks with the EU, compared with 47.5% who favored talks. RÚV said the vote count had been completed in all but one constituency and it would take “a major shake-up” in that constituency to change the overall result.

The referendum required a simple majority to pass. Although the results aren’t legally binding, the government said before the referendum that it would respect the outcome.

It was the first time Icelanders have been asked about EU negotiations in a referendum. The government said previously that, had the referendum resulted in a “yes” vote, it would have held a second referendum once negotiations were complete on whether to join the bloc.

The apparent decision to reject EU talks comes more than a decade after Reykjavík walked away from earlier negotiations with the bloc amid disagreements over control of the country’s fishing industry.

Iceland sits on the continental divide between North America and Europe, and its economy relies heavily on trade and tourism. It has long been wary of ceding more power to Brussels—although it has adopted many of the EU’s rules as a member of the European Economic Area, which extends the EU’s single market to other countries.

Iceland’s debate over EU membership shifted during the past year, after U.S. tariffs sparked a breakdown in global trading norms and Trump amplified his talk of acquiring Greenland, Iceland’s closest geographic neighbor. Advocates of reopening talks with the EU said Reykjavík should expand cooperation with like-minded partners as an insurance policy.

The country of 400,000 people doesn’t have a military of its own and depends on its membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a defense pact with the U.S. for security. Opponents of EU negotiations said during the campaign that they didn’t think the bloc could offer much additional protection.

If confirmed, this weekend’s result will come as a blow for the EU, whose leaders are eager to show the 27-member bloc is still capable of absorbing new members after the U.K.’s 2020 exit. Iceland would likely have had an easier path to membership compared with other EU hopefuls because it is economically and politically stable.

A key point of contention in the referendum debate was control of Iceland’s fish stocks. Industry representatives said the EU’s common fisheries policy would interfere with Iceland’s ability to determine catch levels and fishing grounds, although EU officials had indicated before the referendum that their policies could be flexible.

Those in favor of EU talks said ahead of the referendum that joining the bloc and swapping the Icelandic króna for the euro currency could bring economic benefits such as easing inflation and the country’s high cost of living. Iceland’s annual inflation hit 5.6% in July based on EU methodology, much higher than the average levels in the EU and euro area.

Alex Eala, the biggest Filipino sports star since Manny Pacquiao, has turned into one of the biggest draws in tennis

It was only 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, five days before the U.S. Open singles draw actually started, but spectators had packed the 14,000 seats of Louis Armstrong Stadium to the brim.

Never mind that it was a weekday, or that the competition was a short-format mixed-doubles event, or that the food courts wouldn’t open for another half-hour.

They had come to see a 21-year-old Filipino tennis prodigy named Alex Eala, who was paired up with Canada’s Félix Auger-Aliassime. They greeted her with a roar, cheered every point, and screamed with such deafening volume that her opponents made a string of unforced errors in the middle of a game. Though the match only lasted roughly 39 minutes—and Eala and Auger-Aliassime lost—fans had gotten what they came for: a chance to see Eala in the flesh.

Tennis is hardly a national pastime in the Philippines, ranking far behind basketball and soccer to the archipelago’s population of roughly 120 million. The country’s most famous athlete is, without a doubt, former world champion boxer Manny Pacquiao, who racked up titles in eight different weight classes before briefly serving as a senator. His name remains synonymous with national pride.

Now, in the space of a season, Eala is primed to capture something similar.

“From what I’ve been told it’s very difficult to get courts nowadays,” she said recently. “Online I’m seeing everybody is playing tennis.” French retailer Decathlon reports seeing beginner racket sales surge 66% in their Philippines stores.

Eala, who grew up in Metro Manila and later graduated from the Rafa Nadal Academy in 2023, conducts at least part of every on-court interview in Tagalog. Those who come to watch her play, wave Filipino flags and wear custom T-shirts with her likeness on the front. In Manila, her face is plastered across a billboard on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, the city’s longest stretch of highway.

“Eala Mania” began picking up steam just over a year ago, at the 2025 Miami Open. Then ranked No. 140 in the world, she made a charmed run to the semifinals by knocking out three Grand Slam champions in merciless succession: Jelena Ostapenko, Madison Keys, and Iga Świątek, each in straight-set victories. Eala had entered the tournament on a wild card. No Filipina in history had ever entered the main draw of a WTA Masters 1000.

That was merely prologue. Earlier this month, at the DC Open, she delivered her true breakout. She toppled world No. 3 Jessica Pegula in three sets to win her first WTA tour title, becoming the first tennis player from the Philippines to win any professional tennis title.

“Her fans came out in droves every day, from morning until night, just to get a glimpse of her or an autograph,” Mark Ein, the Chairman of the DC Open, wrote in an email. “I haven’t seen anything like it since Rafa came to town.”

At the National Bank Open, held this year in Toronto, Canada, ticket sales for her opening round doubled the number of seats available in the venue she was slotted to play in. Organizers scrambled to relocate her to Centre Court. She beat American Caty McNally in the third round and, at the net, McNally could only thank Eala for allowing her to be a part of the experience.

After the match, Eala told the crowd to “give Caty the flowers.” By morning, McNally had gained more than 10,000 new followers on Instagram, with a heavy Filipino contingent.

The claim that Eala’s fans have staked on her life is occasionally intimate, but Eala doesn’t seem to mind. When she shared an Instagram story wishing her parents a happy wedding anniversary, a flock of attendees arrived at her next match, in Cincinnati, holding up signs also wishing Michael “Mike” Eala and Rosemarie “Rizza” Maniego-Eala a happy wedding anniversary.

During an early changeover in the next round, against the American world No. 10 Amanda Anisimova, a young woman squatted down in the bleachers directly behind Eala’s chair, to have her picture taken with the back of Eala’s head. Eala stared straight ahead and sipped her water.

But those moments are only a fraction of what awaits her in Queens, home to the largest Filipino community in New York. This time last year, she entered the U.S. Open as the world No. 75. This week, she arrived as the world No. 18, and seeded 17th at the tournament.

To honor her inaugural title in D.C., Nike gifted her with a custom shoe, decorated with a graphic of the yellow Philippines sun. Eala has been asked repeatedly if representing the dreams of a nation is ever a burden. Never, she says.

“Pressure is part of my job, and a lot of people ask me how I handle it,” she said earlier this year. “But it’s nothing compared to the pressure that regular, everyday Filipinos have to face providing for their families.”

Comments from chief executive of EFG International signal how opposition to new rules extends across the industry

Switzerland risks undermining its position as a global financial centre by imposing excessive regulation on its banks, the incoming head of the country’s banking lobby has warned, as Bern embarks on its biggest overhaul of the sector since the financial crisis.

Giorgio Pradelli, who heads Zurich-based bank EFG International, takes over as chair of the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) next month.

Speaking in his capacity as EFG chief executive, Pradelli said Switzerland could not assume its pre-eminence in global banking would endure as competing financial centres simplify their rules.

“We cannot take it for granted that Switzerland will always be prominent if we do not apply the right policies, including the regulatory framework,” he told the FT, adding it “had to be proportionate”. 

Pradelli’s intervention is a sign of how concerns that Bern risks overcorrecting for the collapse of Credit Suisse stretch across Switzerland’s financial sector.

Although UBS, which took over its rival in a state-sponsored takeover in 2023, is the bank most directly affected by proposed new rules, the reforms reach across the banking system.

A proposed package finalised this month makes individual senior bankers more directly accountable for failures on their watch, tightens bonus and clawback provisions, gives market regulator Finma greater enforcement powers and strengthens crisis planning and access to central bank liquidity.

The debate over how tough its regulatory regime should be comes at a crucial moment for Switzerland’s financial centre. Hong Kong last year overtook Switzerland as the world’s largest hub for offshore wealth, according to BCG.

US regulators are reducing and simplifying some capital requirements, while the UK has delayed parts of its Basel reforms and sought to limit increases in overall capital requirements for competitiveness.

“What we see in the other financial centres is more a trend of simplification,” Pradelli said. “In the US you might even talk about deregulation. So we need to be [on] one level playing field.”

The EFG chief’s warning comes days before a crucial parliamentary committee meeting on the most contentious part of the reforms affecting UBS.

The upper house’s economic affairs committee is due on Monday to resume deliberations on plans that could force the bank to hold about $20bn more common equity, with lawmakers considering alternatives that could soften the government’s proposal.

Asked whether Switzerland had struck the right balance, Pradelli said: “On stability and proportionality, I believe we’re getting there. On competitiveness, we can improve.”

EFG has emerged as one of the beneficiaries of the upheaval in Swiss wealth management following Credit Suisse’s demise. Shares are up nearly 100 per cent since the other bank’s takeover by UBS. 

The private bank attracted SFr5.7bn in net new assets in the first half and has recorded positive inflows for 15 consecutive half-years. It hired 140 relationship managers amid the disruption in 2023 — twice its normal annual hiring target of between 50 and 70 — a period Pradelli described as “pivotal” for the bank.

Geopolitical tensions were accelerating the movement of wealth, he said, with rich clients increasingly diversifying their fortunes not only between investments and banks but across countries and financial centres.

“Clients will no longer put all the eggs in one basket, not even in terms of financial centres,” he said.

Before this week, the dominant story about Nvidia went something like this: For the first few years of the AI boom, Nvidia was the only source for state-of-the-art GPUs, which became immensely profitable as the industry scaled out. In the last few years, hyperscalers like Amazon and Google have started building their own chips, and Nvidia is no longer the only game in town, leading many investors to wonder how durable its advantage really is.

It’s a compelling story, and mostly true. After growing its market cap 10x between the start of 2023 and mid-2025, Nvidia shares have been on a more modest trajectory for the past year, driven by concerns about GPU competition.

A new narrative has taken shape since the company’s earnings on Wednesday and investors are starting to realize that Nvidia’s advantage goes far beyond GPUs. As AI’s compute grows into the gigawatt scale, orchestration has become an increasingly complex task. Not surprisingly, Nvidia has built much of the state-of-the-art hardware needed to handle it, giving the company a huge advantage in the systems that surround the GPU even as it sees increased competition on the GPUs themselves.

For all the talk of compute as a commodity, it’s still incredibly difficult to operate a megascale data center at peak efficiency — and as deployments get bigger and faster, that challenge is only growing.

Rack by Rack

You can see some of this just by looking at the details of what Nvidia is actually selling. The company is currently rolling out its Vera Rubin architecture, which pairs the Rubin GPU with a collection of other units, including the Vera CPU, the Groq 3 LPX inference accelerator and similar racks for storage and networking.

Over the past week, I’ve been talking to folks at Nvidia about what those systems actually do, and the results have been surprising. Like the Rubin GPU itself, they’re extremely specialized systems, but instead of churning through tokens, they’re making sure everything outside the GPU works as efficiently as possible. If the GPU is the engine, these are the rest of the car.

The Vera CPU in particular is focused on the problem of orchestrating data. “Vera is important because there’s only so much memory that you can put in a single server or any sort of compute platform,” Jason Hardy, Nvidia’s VP of storage technology, told me.

As data centers have scaled up computing power, memory capacity has scaled up too, which is why companies like Micron have gotten rich in the second wave of the infrastructure boom. But getting that data to the GPU at the right time isn’t straightforward — and as companies look to drive tokens-per-watt lower and lower, they’re realizing how important that kind of traffic direction is.

“We saw upwards of 3x improvement in these operations, where the Vera CPU is allowing for acceleration,” Hardy said. “So now we can use our flash to its fullest potential, because we can get all that performance out of it without bottlenecking.”

You can see versions of the same problem outside of Nvidia. When OpenAI developed its Jalapeño chip, a major focus was avoiding these challenges entirely by minimizing the amount of data that needs to be moved around.

“We designed Jalapeño to minimize data movement and communication delays,” the company said in a blog post earlier this month. “Its large domain allows the entire workload to remain within one connected system, minimizing data movement and helping the complete request stay fast and efficient from beginning to end.”

It’s a different approach, avoiding data movement entirely by conducting a workload within one integrated chip. But the overall logic is the same, increasing efficiency with smarter traffic control instead of just more processor cycles. That in turn opens up a whole new layer of infrastructure for companies to compete over.

This new focus on data orchestration isn’t automatically a win for Nvidia. The company will have to compete with rival chipmakers and hyperscalers just as it has with GPUs. But the competition has moved to a new layer, where building a rival GPU matters less than being able to make the entire system work efficiently.

And at least in the early stages, Nvidia looks to have a commanding lead.

Drugmakers found a promising cure for the obesity epidemic and their stocks were rewarded for it. Now, investors are salivating over a new crop of companies tackling a more purely aesthetic problem: baldness.

Pattern hair loss affects an estimated 50 million men and 30 million women in the US, but there have been no new approved drugs since the late 1990s. The promise of novel treatments has sent shares of Veradermics Inc., which trades as “MANE,” up nearly 500% since the company went public in February, while Absci Corp.’s stock has more than doubled so far in 2026. Cosmo NV also had positive results for an experimental male hair-loss treatment, though its Zurich-listed shares have been weighed down by the success of US competitors.

Those who are ineligible for hair transplant surgery — or can’t afford it — are left with two main options: over-the-counter topical minoxidil, the active ingredient in Rogaine, or prescription finasteride, branded as Propecia. They can come with some debilitating side effects; minoxidil is linked to heart palpitations while finasteride is known to lower sex drive. Wall Street sees new treatments as an untapped goldmine, full of consumers who are willing to pay out-of-pocket for better options, reminiscent of the boom in GLP-1 weight-loss drugs.

“People will fly all the way to Turkey to have some hair moved around on their head,” said Needham analyst Gil Blum, who rates Absci a buy. “Can you imagine if you could do that without getting a hair transplant?”

Drugmakers and investors alike are hoping for a repeat of the successes of the weight-loss drugs that vaulted Eli Lilly & Co.’s market value across the $1 trillion threshold and made Novo Nordisk A/S, briefly, the most valuable company in Europe.

One of the closest to market is Cosmo’s topical medicine, clascoterone, which targets the root cause of male-pattern hair loss by blocking a hormone that causes it directly at the hair follicle.

The company says the treatment could be the “single biggest opportunity” in its portfolio and plans to submit a new drug application to US regulators in the first quarter of 2027. Clascoterone 5% topical solution leverages the same active ingredient used in Winlevi, Cosmo’s acne treatment product.

While new medicines are likely more than a year away from hitting US shelves, analysts expect Cosmo shares to nearly double over the next 12 months.

Jefferies analysts estimate sales for Cosmo’s male hair-loss therapy reaching $3 billion globally, “assuming a capable commercial partner is successfully found.” The brokerage said the company may find a partner before the year is over, which could help bolster the share price.

Like obesity drugs, there’s room for more than one winner. Analysts tracked by Bloomberg are universally bullish on both Cosmo and Veradermics.

“This space definitely can accommodate multiple drugs,” said Jefferies analyst Roger Song, who holds the Street’s highest price target on Veradermics. “Many hair loss patients tend to use multiple drugs, either prescription or over-the-counter — as long as they can afford it — because it’s a cash-pay market.”

Veradermics announced positive results for its lead candidate, a tablet formulation of minoxidil, in male-pattern hair loss in April. The company also reported promising mid-stage data for women with thinning hair in July. If it’s able to win a nod from the Food and Drug Administration, the drug could become the first approved pill for female-pattern hair loss.

Absci, meanwhile, is developing its early-stage drug candidate ABS-201, an AI-designed shot to treat pattern hair loss. The firm expects interim data in the second half of this year.

“Both obesity and hair loss are large consumer markets and that’s one reason why both of those categories can offer significant revenue potential,” OrbiMed’s Geoff Hsu, portfolio manager of the Biotech Growth Trust Plc, said in an interview. “If you do find a safe and efficacious drug for hair loss, that would unlock a significant addressable market.”

Of course, drug development is high risk, with the potential for big returns counterbalanced by the products and companies that flop. Before GLP-1s won over insurers and consumers alike, a whole generation of obesity drugs failed to reach blockbuster status; some instead went to bankruptcy court.

There’s also a major difference with weight-loss drugs: going bald is not a health crisis. GLP-1s, as a weapon in the battle against obesity, were able to secure insurance coverage while also attracting consumers primarily interested in meeting modern beauty standards. Hair-loss drugs are likely to remain out-of-pocket expenses for consumers, but many in the industry remain upbeat on future sales.

“If you can make it easier on the patient — that is pain-free and simple like taking a pill — I think it opens a whole new avenue of potential patients to treat,” said Ryan Isherwood, who with his wife owns three Gameday Men’s Health clinics in Wisconsin.

Despite high-flying valuations and the risk of failure, analysts remain upbeat on room for future gains.

“This is a zero or hero story. I would buy it now because it’s still cheap,” Needham’s Blum said of Absci.

The money will be used to back companies building chips, memory, networking, storage and other companies involved in the AI buildout.

Andreessen Horowitz raised $1.1 billion for a fund that will invest in physical AI and infrastructure startups, the firm announced Friday. The money will be used to back companies building chips, memory, networking, storage and other companies involved in the AI buildout.

Investors on the firm’s infrastructure team, helmed by Martin Casado, and its American Dynamism team, which invests in defense tech and is led by David Ulevitch, can invest out of the fund, a person familiar with the effort said.

The new cash comes only nine or so months after Andreessen Horowitz raised $15 billion, which included $1.7 billion for a fund to invest in AI infrastructure, or the tech that underpins the AI stack, such as developer tools, cloud, and security. American Dynamism raised just under $1.8 billion in that effort. It’s also on the heels of two notable exits for the infrastructure team: SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, and Stripe’s $7.5 billion acquisition of OpenRouter.

Alex Gerko earned a record £895mn from trading firm XTX in 2025

Payout to one of the UK’s richest people is 31 per cent higher than the year before

British billionaire Alex Gerko made a record £895mn from the profits of XTX Markets last year, boosting his position as one of the UK’s richest people as his trading group continues to grow.

A pot of £1.7bn from the company’s 2025 trading profits was shared between Gerko and his quantitative traders and top tech developers, Companies House filings show. The 23 other people took home £833mn between them, an average of £36.2mn each.

Gerko’s payout is a 31 per cent increase from the year before, when he earned £683mn, and it marks another record for one of the UK’s richest people and his top team.

XTX Markets declined to comment.

XTX makes money by using vast amounts of computing power and AI processing to identify tiny margins on millions of trades. Gerko founded the London-based firm in 2015 and it has grown into one of the world’s biggest market makers, trading stocks, bonds, commodities and other assets.

Its revenues increased 44 per cent last year to £3.9bn, up from £2.7bn the year before, boosted by turbulent markets. It is building a vast data centre in Finland to manage its growing need for computing power.

The Russia-born mathematician is one of the UK’s biggest taxpayers, according to Sunday Times estimates, and in 2024 set up a family office to manage his growing wealth, named Cromulon Capital after a planet in the sci-fi show Rick and Morty that is shaped like a human head.

In June, he lost a long-running legal battle over £22.5mn-worth of tax on profits that he and other traders made when he worked at hedge fund GSA Capital, before he spun out XTX.

Gerko and his wife have set up a new maths-focused secondary school in north London, which will open in September.

The billionaire and his firm have backed AI start-ups including Anthropic and autonomous vehicle company Wayve. 

XTX handles about $250bn-worth of trades a day and employs about 250 people, making it much smaller than its rivals such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.