FT : Why luxury brands are falling for Asia’s queer romance shows Stars of ‘boys

Why luxury brands are falling for Asia’s queer romance shows
Stars of ‘boys’ love’ and ‘girls’ love’ dramas are becoming fashion ambassadors, as labels chase their unusually devoted fan bases

During fashion week, it’s common to see a crowd of fans waiting outside the show venues of luxury brands. But if you thought they were hoping to get a glimpse of Hollywood stars such as Tilda Swinton or Colman Domingo, you’d be mistaken. At Max Mara’s autumn/winter 2026 show at Milan Fashion Week in February, most of those gathered outside were waiting for Thai beauty queen turned actor Peraya Malisorn. Better known as Faye, she rose to fame after her lead role in popular Thai TV show Blank, which depicts a love story between two women navigating the societal norms that prevent their romance from flourishing. 

So impactful was Faye’s appearance at Milan Fashion Week that her posts generated at least 13 times more media impact value than all of the content produced by Italian celebrities, according to the software company Launchmetrics (media impact value measures the return on investment of marketing activations). By this metric, Faye’s social media content generated $22.2mn in MIV, compared with Vogue US’s $10.2mn.

Faye is among a wave of Asian actors from queer romance shows, known as “Boys’ Love” (BL) or “Girls’ Love” (GL), who are resonating deeply with fans. The shows are increasingly appealing to luxury brands, too. In April, the mega-artist talent agency CAA signed Becky Armstrong, the Thai-British actor who is also a Chanel ambassador. Armstrong’s breakthrough role was in the lesbian series Gap, starring opposite Thai actor Freen Sarocha Chankimha, who has been an ambassador for Valentino since January 2025.

Thai actors Win Metawin and Bright Vachirawit, who feature in the BL series 2gether, are ambassadors for Prada and Burberry respectively. Meanwhile, Lingling Sirilak Kwong and Orm Kornnaphat Sethratanapong, who starred together in the GL drama Only You and are known to fans under the combined moniker “LingOrm”, are both ambassadors for Dior. 

In the view of Andrew Ooi, the founder and chief executive of talent management company Echelon Talent, “executives are finally recognising the cultural relevance and commercial demand” of stars playing LGBTQ+ roles. 

“Luxury brands, ultimately, are in the business of aspiration,” he says. “They seek attractive, influential figures who can embody desire, elegance and emotional connection. Few are better positioned than these actors, whose popularity is reinforced by intensely loyal and highly engaged fan bases. Because their conversion rates are often exceptionally strong, brands increasingly gravitate towards them as collaborators.” LGBT Capital, a specialist investment and corporate advisory firm, estimates that the LGBTQ+ community holds $4.7tn in global purchasing power.

When it comes to queer romance shows, western audiences may be more familiar with Heated Rivalry, the 2025 Canadian TV series about ice hockey rivals, starring Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. Both actors have since been propelled into the mainstream and become luxury brand ambassadors, for Balenciaga and Saint Laurent respectively. But as the rising Thai actor Phuwin Tangsakyuen, who is an ambassador for Tommy Hilfiger and Loewe, said in April during an appearance on the Zach Sang Show, an online show and podcast: “I wouldn’t say that Asia has done it first, but I think it has become big in Asia first.”

Indeed, pop-culture power — which has traditionally stemmed from the US — is increasingly coming from the Asia-Pacific region, driven in part by phenomena such as the Korean wave or “Hallyu” and, more recently, social media trends including “Chinamaxxing” on TikTok, where users celebrate and adopt Chinese habits and aesthetics.

While Thailand is one of the biggest producers of BL and GL shows, a large proportion of viewers tune in from the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Some of these regions are also making their own LGBTQ+ productions, such as the 2024 South Korean film Love in the Big City, starring actor and Chanel ambassador Kim Go-eun, or the Japanese show The Boyfriend, which premiered on Netflix the same year and was the nation’s first same-sex reality dating show. And the appeal of these programmes goes beyond LGBTQ+ audiences. “A lot of fans are heterosexual women because the fantasy is actually about emotional intimacy and softness,” says Tiffany Godoy, a Tokyo-based consultant and the editor-at-large of W Magazine China. “These male characters are often more emotionally expressive, vulnerable and less trapped in traditional masculinity.”

Yet, despite the genre becoming a regional phenomenon, advancements in LGBTQ+ rights across Asia have been slow and uneven, stifled by a collision with tradition and religion. Same-sex marriages only became legal in Thailand in 2025, for example, while LGBTQ+ individuals in other nations continue to face significant legal restrictions and social stigma. Same-sex relationships remain illegal in many Asian countries, including Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

Not all regions in Asia have been as welcoming of the genre either. Representations of same-sex relationships have long been censored in Chinese media — though a growing number of content creators and independent production companies have been making BL dramas and taking them to alternative streaming platforms, where they are portrayed under the guise of “brotherhood” or intense friendship to bypass regulations. 

But queer romance dramas have largely resonated across Asia because “a lot of these ideas around fluidity already existed culturally”, says Godoy. She cites Asia’s blurred gender aesthetics, as seen in the use of gender-neutral skincare or the androgynous styling and silhouettes popularised by K-pop stars and Japanese designers such as Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. “Audiences aren’t always approaching these stories as political statements first,” she says. “A lot of the time, they’re just romance stories that show longing, tension, fantasy and emotional drama.”

While some brands may still feel hesitant to collaborate with actors playing LGBTQ+ roles out of fear of potentially alienating customers in regions where conservative attitudes to gender and sexuality still dominate, “the stigma surrounding LGBTQ+ representation in Asia is gradually being eroded”, believes Ooi. He attributes this change to filmmakers who are prioritising “more emotionally authentic and nuanced storytelling” and also actors who “are far more open to taking on LGBTQ+ roles than previous generations”.

And the increasingly high-quality production values accompanying these programmes demonstrate that they are “not just niche fandom content any more”, says Godoy, making stars from this genre even more attractive for big brands. She points to recent work from the Thai actor and model Davika Hoorne, who made pop-culture history in 2023 as the first Thai ambassador for Gucci, and Thai actors Mile Phakphum Romsaithong and Apo Nattawin Wattanagitiphat, who are both ambassadors for Dior Men.

“Davika’s production company put out what I think is one of the top GL series, Claire Bell. They built original sets, the cinematography is very filmic and moody, and they set a new standard. Meanwhile, the 2025 romance series Shine with Mile and Apo pushes the genre into something more cinematic and historical,” says Godoy. Set in 1969 amid political unrest in Thailand, the show “is not just romance fantasy”, she says. “The costumes, the atmosphere, the references — all of it felt much more ambitious.”

Ooi of Echelon Talent believes the enthusiasm shown so far for queer romance shows is “extremely powerful” and “only the beginning”.

“The rise of fandoms around these shows reflects a larger shift in what modern audiences seek from stars and entertainment,” he says — and it’s what luxury brands are paying close attention to. “Today’s audiences are drawn not just to celebrity, but to emotional authenticity, vulnerability and connection.”

FT : Companies turn to Chinese AI models to cut costs DoorDash, Siemens and Airb

Companies turn to Chinese AI models to cut costs
DoorDash, Siemens and Airbnb are among those seeking to curb ballooning bills and reduce reliance on US technology

Companies from Silicon Valley to Europe are turning to Chinese AI models as they try to cut the cost of using the technology and reduce their dependence on US frontier labs.

DoorDash, Siemens and Airbnb are among the groups that have adopted AI tools built in China, drawn by models that are cheaper, increasingly capable and, in some cases, easier to run on their own infrastructure.

Chinese AI models from groups such as DeepSeek and Z.ai have rapidly overtaken US rivals in token consumption this year, according to OpenRouter, a platform that tracks the units of text, code or data processed by large language models. 

The shift has been driven largely by cost, as companies try to curb ballooning AI bills. But in Europe it has taken on a sharper geopolitical edge after the Trump administration last month imposed export controls on Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models, forcing businesses to confront the risks of depending on US technology.

Chinese models are “the elephant in the room”, said Eugene Cheah, chief executive and co-founder of Featherless AI. “Enterprises are starting to realise, ‘Hey, we don’t need the best model, we can use the faster, cheaper models’.”


DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang said last week that the food delivery group now delegated “lower-level work” to Kimi K2.6, a model by Chinese start-up Moonshot AI, and reserved Anthropic’s Fable for only “the hardest work”.

The new combination “vastly outperform[ed] . . . at a cheaper cost” than a previous set-up that used only US frontier models from Anthropic, he said on X.

German engineering group Siemens told the FT it wanted “flexibility” with its AI models. It uses a broad range, including tools from China’s DeepSeek and Z.ai alongside models from US frontier labs and Nvidia as well as French AI group Mistral.

Some companies have gone further, switching entirely to Chinese models. San Francisco-based start-up Lindy has moved from Anthropic’s AI tools to DeepSeek’s V4 model.

Founder Flo Crivello last month on X hailed the shift as “transformative”, saying it had saved the company millions of dollars and improved performance in “many core use cases”.

The shift has been accelerated by US-based AI groups including Anthropic and OpenAI moving some enterprise services from flat subscriptions to usage-based billing, which has dramatically increased the cost of using their models.

At the same time, China’s top models have improved, especially on coding tasks. The release in June of Z.ai’s GLM-5.2 was praised by many Silicon Valley technologists and signalled that the gap between US and Chinese models was starting to narrow.

“Many smart people/AI insiders are saying GLM-5.2 is the first Chinese AI model to match and often beat the American big lab public AI models with no compromises,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of US venture capital group Andreessen Horowitz, in a post on X.

“Enterprises have an incentive to shift some of their workload to cheaper models. Why would you pay a premium for Anthropic, OpenAI models when for a lot of the workloads you need, the Chinese models are generally workable?” said Sam Bresnick, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

Another draw is that many of the leading Chinese AI tools are so-called open-weight models whose parameters are released publicly, meaning they can be hosted on company-managed servers and fine-tuned for specific uses.

Airbnb said it used “a limited number of China-origin models” and was able to protect its data and operations by running them “only through approved US-based service providers”.

Proprietary models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude tools are largely accessed through their creators’ systems or third-party enterprise platforms.

The best open-weight models are between 10 and 60 times cheaper than their proprietary equivalents, said Vipul Ved Prakash, chief executive and co-founder of Together AI, a cloud provider that helps companies access these tools.

“Companies want to deploy them because they have more control and they can adapt the models to their own data,” he said.


In Europe, companies cite last year’s US trade wars and the export controls on Anthropic’s models as factors in moving away from US AI tools.

While the export ban was overturned, it “changed the perception of the market forever,” said Ben Grinnell, chief AI officer at Newton, a UK consultancy firm. “You can put Fable back in the market, but you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

Tom Sheridan, US vice-president at venture capital firm RTP Global, said his advice to European start-ups has changed. “For European companies, a self-hosted Chinese model is the most secure choice versus the US one.”

Zoltan Bettenbuk, chief executive officer of German human resources start-up Timebutler, said that about six months ago his business started to offload some tasks from Anthropic’s Claude to Alibaba’s Qwen models in order to reduce its dependence on US frontier labs.

“I still rely on the most capable flagship models currently because they do a great job, but if all hell breaks loose, I need to have another plan,” he said.

Platforms offering open-weight models say demand has risen in recent months.

Featherless AI’s Cheah said it had seen “exploding interest” since the US ban on exports of Fable, particularly from Europe. “People came banging on our door.”

He added that one customer had “origins near the Greenland area”, which the US has threatened to take over. “He was like, ‘I don’t want to build on top of closed models, because who knows what happens with the geopolitics’.”

Aidan Gomez, chief executive of Canadian AI group Cohere, said companies were now realising the importance of sovereign AI for their business.

“The Mythos ban was certainly the most tangible event, and people having their access revoked. It exposes the risk of relying on any one single entity for any of your workloads,” he said.

“Two years ago the main worry was China. Right now the bigger worry in Europe is the US,” said Per Roman, founder of European venture capital firm Bullhound Capital. “That is staggering.”

FT : Cutting China reliance would cost the west $23tn, research suggests Study h

Cutting China reliance would cost the west $23tn, research suggests
Study highlights challenge facing US and EU as they try to reduce Beijing’s dominance over strategic supply chains

Europe and the US would need to invest an extra $23.6tn over the next 25 years to end their reliance on China in critical industries such as manufacturing and technology, an economic analysis suggests.

Consultancy EY-Parthenon calculated that replicating the infrastructure, research, software, manufacturing and supply chains currently reliant on China would cost the US $13.7tn, the Eurozone $9.1tn and the UK $800bn by 2050.

At $550bn a year, the annual investment required from the US government and American companies to decouple from China is roughly equivalent to the $600bn invested by big US technology groups in data centres in 2025. For the EU, the spending required would amount to a near doubling of its annual budget, EY-Parthenon said.

The mammoth investment required to replicate Chinese resources and materials currently relied on by advanced economies highlights the scale of the challenge facing western governments as they look to reduce Chinese dominance over strategic supply chains.

“Localising supply chains without putting prohibitive costs on taxpayers and consumers will be one of the most formidable challenges for businesses and governments alike in coming years,” said Mats Persson, a former Downing Street adviser now at EY-Parthenon.

The additional collective investment of an average of $940bn a year for 25 years was, in theory, “not insurmountable” the EY-Parthenon analysts wrote. But it would be required on top of existing investments in energy, technology, defence and infrastructure. Initial annual outlays would be smaller but would mount as the process grew in scale, Persson added.


The vulnerability of European and US economies to Chinese coercion was highlighted last year when Beijing imposed export controls on critical rare earth metals in response to US President Donald Trump’s threat of imposing 145 per cent tariffs on imports from China. 

Production lines in the car industry in both economies came close to a standstill before Beijing and Washington agreed a truce, in an episode that added urgency to US and European efforts to de-risk from China, including an EU scheme to stockpile rare earths.

China is projected to supply more than 60 per cent of the world’s refined lithium and cobalt, which are essential for the transition to cleaner energy sources, and roughly 80 per cent of battery-grade graphite and rare earth elements by 2035, according to an assessment by the International Energy Agency.

In practice, even with massive investment the west could not decouple from China in the short run because of Beijing’s stranglehold over many critical industrial materials, said Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at investment bank Natixis. 

“The challenge is not just how much it would cost, but about China’s ability to intervene to stop such decoupling because of its existing control over the supply of everything from rare earths processing to active pharmaceutical ingredients,” she added.

Given that Chinese-made goods typically enjoyed a 20-100 per cent factory price advantage over their western competitors, reducing reliance on Chinese manufacturing would push up prices and drive inflation, the EY-Parthenon analysis found. 

In Europe, severing reliance on China could leave prices 1-2.5 per cent higher in critical sectors, and the European Central Bank and Bank of England perpetually above their 2 per cent inflation targets, the EY-Parthenon report said, citing an ECB analysis.

As well as investment in factories and physical infrastructure, western economies seeking to meaningfully reduce dependence on China would also need to invest aggressively in training workers and automating factory processes, the report said.

Given the evident scale of the challenges, Persson said that “partial decoupling” from China was more likely with businesses needing to be selective about where they deployed their cash in order to build resilience against potential Chinese chokepoints.

FT : Deutsche Bank and UniCredit sue Linde over Russia sanctions losses Test cas

Deutsche Bank and UniCredit sue Linde over Russia sanctions losses
Test case will determine whether lenders can recover hundreds of millions of euros seized by courts

Leading banks including Deutsche Bank and UniCredit are suing industrial gases group Linde in a test case over who should bear the cost of western sanctions against Russia, as they seek to recover hundreds of millions of euros in assets seized by Russian courts.

The first will be heard in a Frankfurt court on Tuesday, where Deutsche Bank is seeking about €260mn in compensation from Linde for assets confiscated when the German engineering group withdrew from a €10bn gas project in north-western Russia.

The case will help clarify whether banks that issued guarantees remain liable for losses arising from sanctions or whether those costs can be passed back to the companies whose exit from Russia triggered the claims.

The dispute stems from contracts signed in 2021 between a consortium including Linde Engineering and RusChemAlliance (RCA), a joint venture half-owned by Gazprom, to build a gas processing plant as well as a liquefied natural gas plant in the port of Ust-Luga. RCA paid Linde more than €1bn in advance to begin work.

To secure Linde’s contractual obligations, lenders including Deutsche Bank and UniCredit issued advance payment and performance guarantees in favour of RCA.

When EU sanctions forced Linde to suspend work on the project after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the banks refused to honour the guarantees, arguing that payment would breach EU sanctions. Russian courts then ordered the seizure of about €1bn worth of assets held by the banks in Russia.

Deutsche Bank lost about €244mn of local assets, while UniCredit lost roughly €460mn, Commerzbank around €90mn and German state-owned banks BayernLB and LBBW about €270mn and €50mn respectively. RCA also enforced claims against Linde’s Russian joint-venture interests, forcing the sale of its stakes to local partners.

The losses have since surfaced in the banks’ annual reports. Deutsche Bank said it had initially booked a €260mn provision alongside a matching reimbursement asset, but later wrote off the asset after RCA seized €244mn directly from its Russian accounts, acknowledging that reimbursement from Linde was no longer “virtually certain”.

The banks initially obtained anti-suit injunctions from English courts preventing RCA from pursuing claims in Russia but withdrew them last year after Russian courts threatened heavy financial penalties.

Deutsche Bank, UniCredit and Commerzbank have since sued Linde in Germany, arguing that the engineering group is contractually required to compensate them for the losses. 

The Frankfurt court confirmed Tuesday’s hearing, with the amount in dispute standing at about €260mn.

The Munich Regional Court confirmed that UniCredit’s lawsuit seeking about €450mn was in the pretrial stage. The court also confirmed that Commerzbank has filed a separate claim seeking almost €100mn.

BayernLB, which has not filed a lawsuit against Linde, has set aside a €285mn provision for the dispute alongside a matching reimbursement claim against the engineering group.

Linde said the Frankfurt hearing concerned “complex issues relating to a guarantee agreement” connected to a large industrial construction contract in Russia that it terminated because of EU sanctions imposed following the war in Ukraine.

“It is Linde’s practice not to comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” the company added.

BayernLB, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank declined to comment. UniCredit referred to its annual reports.

LBBW, which unlike its peers has not disclosed a separate legal provision for the case, said the lender had not filed a lawsuit against Linde. “We do not expect any significant financial burdens from the legal disputes in Russia.”

Linde has disclosed contingent liabilities of about $1.2bn relating to advance payments received for the cancelled RCA projects.

FT : Dimon pressed over whether he lobbied UK government on Epstein’s advice US

Dimon pressed over whether he lobbied UK government on Epstein’s advice
US Senator Elizabeth Warren demands JPMorgan boss explain any links with paedophile over proposed tax on bankers’ bonuses

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has called on JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon to say whether he lobbied the UK government against a tax on bankers’ bonuses on the advice of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Dimon, who has been chair and chief executive of the largest US bank for two decades, said under oath in 2023 that he had never met Epstein and was not involved in any internal decisions to retain the disgraced financier as a JPMorgan client after concerns were raised about his sex crimes. 

But a cache of documents released by the US Department of Justice this year has piled pressure on Dimon, one of the most powerful figures on Wall Street, and raised fresh questions about his links with Epstein. 

In a letter seen by the FT and sent to Dimon last week, Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, told the banking boss: “It is critical that Congress and the American public fully understand the extent of any interactions the bank and you had with Epstein.”

Earlier this year, the FT revealed that in 2009, Lord Peter Mandelson, then Britain’s business secretary, told Epstein that Dimon should “mildly threaten” Alistair Darling, the chancellor at the time, over a proposed tax on banker bonuses.

The revelations added further pressure to Mandelson after the FT reported that he received $75,000 from Epstein beginning in 2003 and that his husband also took money from the convicted sex offender. Mandelson was sacked as UK ambassador to the US over his friendship with Epstein and is now under criminal investigation on suspicion of misconduct in public office. 

DoJ emails showed Mandelson trying to “amend” Darling’s proposed tax on bankers’ bonuses, which would have levied an additional 50 per cent tax rate on bonuses of more than £25,000.

A week after Darling announced the measure, Epstein messaged Mandelson with suggestions on how to soften the policy, including only taxing the cash portion of bonuses.

Epstein later emailed Mandelson asking whether Dimon should “call (Alistair) darling one more time?” Mandelson replied, saying: “Yes and mildly threaten.”

Darling later recalled in his memoirs that Dimon called him and was “very, very angry” about the proposed tax. Darling said Dimon pointed out that JPMorgan was a major employer and purchaser of UK gilts and threatened to halt investment in a new headquarters in London.

Mandelson went on to set up an advisory firm called Global Counsel that included JPMorgan among its clients.

Warren said Dimon needed to explain the issues raised in the messages and set out a series of questions and requests for documents from the banking boss detailing his and other JPMorgan employees’ communications with Epstein and UK government officials.

“These resurfaced emails and related reporting raise serious questions regarding the extent of the bank’s relationship with Epstein, and your knowledge of these ties,” she wrote. 

A spokesperson for JPMorgan said: “Any association with the man was a mistake and we regret it, but we would not have continued doing business with him had we believed he was engaged in ongoing crimes. We exited him as a client in 2013 — years before his federal sex trafficking arrest and years after the government had damning information they kept from us.”

The bank also reiterated that Dimon never met Epstein and “was not involved in any decisions about his account”. Regarding conversations in the UK, Dimon “regularly speaks his mind on bad, anti-growth policy and has his own views”, it added. Any suggestion that Dimon spoke with Epstein or took counsel from him was false, the bank said.

Epstein was a client of JPMorgan’s private bank from 1998 until it cut ties with him in 2013. JPMorgan agreed in 2023 to pay $290mn to sexual abuse victims of Epstein who claimed the bank ignored warnings about the disgraced financier, although it did not admit wrongdoing or liability. 

Jes Staley, the former JPMorgan investment banker who was later chief executive of Barclays, is separately facing questions from lawmakers over his links to the convicted sex offender.

The FT first reported earlier this year that Staley had agreed to appear on Capitol Hill on July 23 for a closed-door interview with the House oversight committee about his relationship with Epstein. 

Dimon, who has been chief executive of JPMorgan since 2006, has previously said that he “never knew Jeff Epstein . . . never even heard of the guy, pretty much” before 2019.

However, emails between Epstein and Staley uncovered by lawyers several years ago appeared to show plans for Dimon to meet Epstein.

In June 2009, Epstein asked Staley via email if he “want[ed] to organize either you, or you and Jamie, quietly” at his Manhattan mansion on 71st Street. 

Another email exchange from February 2010 showed Epstein and his assistant Lesley Groff discussing an apparent “evening appointment” with Dimon. Groff asked if snacks should be prepared “for your evening appointments with (redacted attendee), Jes Staley and Jamie Dimon?”

Challenges : Famille Dassault, Rodolphe Saadé, Yann Le Cun… Découvrez le classem

Famille Dassault, Rodolphe Saadé, Yann Le Cun… Découvrez le classement 2026 des plus grandes fortunes professionnelles de France

500 FORTUNES - Comme en 2025, le montant des richesses cumulées dans notre palmarès recule. Mais les nouveaux entrants et les milliardaires sont plus nombreux dans cette 31e édition.

Une année riche… en rebondissements et paradoxes. Pour sa 31e édition, le classement Challenges des fortunes professionnelles n’a jamais compté autant de milliardaires (153) ni un « fmic » (fortune minimale d’insertion dans le classement) aussi élevé, à 250 millions d’euros. Pourtant, l’encours total des 500 fortunes recule pour la deuxième année consécutive, à 1 076 milliards d’euros, contre 1 129 milliards en 2025. Le Top-10 est particulièrement concerné par cette décrue, avec une baisse de près de 9 %, principalement à cause des chutes de la famille Dassault (- 7,9 milliards) et surtout de celles des propriétaires d’Hermès (- 49,4 milliards), qui perdent la première place du classement.

Un résultat en demi-teinte confirmé par le dernier rapport World Wealth Report publié par Capgemini, qui recense les ultrafortunés (au patrimoine financier supérieur à 30 millions de dollars) du monde entier : si leur nombre a augmenté de 6,2 % au global, ils ne sont que 3,5 % de plus en Europe. « La hausse des marchés boursiers a été moins forte de ce côté de l’Atlantique, notamment en France, explique Loïc Paquotte, expert à Capgemini. De plus, la croissance domestique y est certes positive, mais marginalement (+ 0,4 %), comme souvent chez nous. »

Premier constat, la fortune des 500 est liée à l’économie internationale. Le secteur du transport a souffert de la hausse des prix des hydrocarbures à la suite du blocage du détroit d’Ormuz en mars, à l’image du recul de la fortune professionnelle du propriétaire de l’armateur français CMA CGM, Rodolphe Saadé (de 35 à 31,5 milliards).


Licornes de plus en plus rares
Mais cette crise a aussi été un accélérateur pour d’autres, comme Jean Maynier et François Cazor, les fondateurs de Kpler. Depuis 2014, cette entreprise agrège des données sur les itinéraires des navires, leurs cargaisons, les stocks de matières premières, les taux d’utilisation de raffineries ou les risques de congestion portuaire. Pour eux, le conflit à Ormuz est presque une aubaine.

Egalement dans le domaine des données, Olivier Pomel et Alexis Lê-Quôc, qui ont créé la plateforme de surveillance et d’analyse des infrastructures informatiques Datadog, ont profité de l’envolée du cours de Bourse depuis un an (+ 70 %) pour grimper de neuf places dans notre classement cette année.

Du côté de la French Tech, après l’effervescence des dernières années, le secteur décélère. Alors qu’il avait officiellement culminé à 38, le nombre de licornes françaises (d’une valorisation supérieure à 1 milliard de dollars) se serait réduit de près d’un tiers, selon une étude du cabinet de conseil Mighty Nine publiée début mars.

La valorisation de la plateforme NFT de jeux sportifs Sorare s’est ainsi effondrée de 4 milliards à seulement 240 millions d’euros, provoquant la sortie de notre classement de ses fondateurs, Nicolas Julia et Adrien Montfort. Même sort pour Philippe Baudesson de Chanville d’Arc et Christian Raisson, le duo à l’origine de la plateforme d’e-commerce pour le bricolage et le jardinage ManoMano, dont la fortune a été divisée par quatre en seulement un an, après plusieurs coupes d’effectifs importantes. « Le modèle de croissance actuel de Mano­Mano est confronté à un contexte économique international difficile, avec la guerre en Ukraine, l’inflation, l’augmentation des taux d’intérêt ou encore le ralentissement des investissements dans le secteur de la tech », justifiaient déjà en 2023 les deux dirigeants, lors de l’un de ces plans sociaux.

« Le nombre de transactions viticoles reste anémique »
Autre secteur en difficulté dans lequel la France brillait depuis des années sur la scène mondiale : le jeu vidéo. Les frères Guillemot, dont l’aîné Claude a tragiquement péri dans un accident d’avion mi-juin, qui ont fondé le géant mondial Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed, Rayman…) et sont présents dans le classement des 500 fortunes depuis 1996, en sortent cette année, à cause du cours de Bourse en baisse de 80 % depuis trois ans.

« Nous avons subi une double peine : la purge boursière du secteur et le peu d’intérêt des investisseurs pour les valeurs françaises », regrette Fabrice Larue, 453e fortune de notre palmarès et principal actionnaire d’un autre éditeur de jeux vidéo coté, PulluP Entertainment. Car si le CAC 40 affiche une performance à deux chiffres sur les douze derniers mois, la volatilité n’a pas épargné quelques entreprises familiales, comme le spécialiste du petit électroménager SEB, en recul de 36 %.

Quant aux vins et spiritueux, ils subissent cette année encore la décélération de la consommation nationale et mondiale et la pression des tarifs douaniers, ce qui impacte nombre des 500 fortunes, qu’elles soient cotées (Pernod Ricard, Laurent-Perrier) ou non. Le rachat du domaine Pierre Damoy en Bourgogne par le groupe Roederer pour plusieurs centaines de millions d’euros ne doit pas masquer le climat général : « C’est une opération vraiment exceptionnelle, souffle un spécialiste. Le nombre de transactions viticoles reste anémique cette année encore, bien que beaucoup de domaines soient à vendre. »


Nouvelles contributions
Toutefois, le tissu économique français conserve quelques champions en forme comme Mistral AI, fondé par le trio Timothée Lacroix, Guillaume Lample et Arthur Mensch, dont la valorisation a encore doublé en un an pour atteindre 12 milliards d’euros. Ou l’ancien directeur scientifique de Meta, Yann Le Cun, qui a lancé cette année avec son associé Alexandre Lebrun sa propre entreprise d’intelligence artificielle, valorisée 3 milliards de dollars dès sa création. De quoi les faire entrer directement dans le club des milliardaires français, aux côtés de deux autres nouvelles têtes : Jean-Christophe Kerdelhué (102e, fortune d’1,4 milliard d’euros), le président fondateur de NW, pépite tricolore du stockage d’électricité, et Olivier Goudet (117e, 1,2 milliard d’euros), l’ancien président du premier brasseur mondial AB inBev, devenu actionnaire de BIC et de Coface.

Cette année, pas moins de 25 nouveaux noms font leur apparition dans notre classement. Détectés par la rédaction, signalés à leur propre initiative, parfois dénoncés par un concurrent jaloux ou un ancien collaborateur rancunier, ils représentent environ 5 % de cette édition 2026 – ce qui contribue à augmenter mécaniquement le patrimoine professionnel moyen des 500 premières fortunes françaises.

Parmi ces belles entrées se trouvent les frères Hubert et Olivier François (210e, 700 millions d’euros) qui possèdent le producteur de sel Les Salins du Midi et le groupe de location de matériel respiratoire Isis Médical. Citons également Elsa, Antoine et Mathieu Mothay (210e, 700 millions d’euros), les petits-enfants du fondateur de la marque Saint James, qui surfent depuis dix ans sur le succès de la maison de maroquinerie Polène.

9to5 : M7 Ultra to potentially feature up to 1.5TB of RAM, finally matching 2019

M7 Ultra to potentially feature up to 1.5TB of RAM, finally matching 2019 Mac Pro: report

According to the latest Power On newsletter from Mark Gurman, Apple is preparing to include up to 1.5TB of RAM in the upcoming M7 Ultra chip. This’ll mean Apple Silicon will finally match the highest RAM configuration available on the highest end 2019 Intel Mac Pro.
The amount of RAM available in Apple Silicon Macs has always been a limitation, largely because Apple solders the RAM onto the same die as the processor – allowing for immensely high transfer speeds. This is what makes unified memory possible. Of course, it also means the amount of RAM is limited to how big the chipset is.

However, according to Mark Gurman, it sounds like Apple is finally preparing to close that gap. The company is preparing a configuration of the M7 Ultra chipset with 1.5TB of RAM:
The new Ultra is designed to support as much as 1.5 terabytes of memory — roughly double the capacity planned for the M5 Ultra — though whether Apple ultimately offers that configuration will depend on the state of the industry. Widespread memory-chip shortages have made the component harder to find and more expensive.
He does note that it might not end up launching with 1.5TB of RAM because of the ongoing memory shortage. Nonetheless, Apple is engineering the M7 Ultra to support it.

Earlier this year, Apple discontinued the 512GB configuration of the M3 Ultra Mac Studio. It then followed by discontinuing the 256GB configuration – leaving 96GB as the sole choice for the highest end Mac Studio. If you bought M4 Max instead, you could configure up to 128GB.

Apple will also be debuting a new M5 Ultra chip later this year with up to 768GB of unified memory, a new record for Apple silicon.
Based on Apple’s current RAM pricing (roughly $25 per additional gigabyte), upgrading to 1.5TB of RAM from a base configuration of 128GB will likely cost over $35,000.

>>> NOVOB : Presents phase III FRONTIER4 interim data for denecimig in hemophili

Presents phase III FRONTIER4 interim data for denecimig in hemophilia A; 71% of adults/adolescents and 89% of children had zero treated bleeds

- FRONTIER4 included 426 participants aged 1 and older across once-weekly, once-every-two-weeks and once-monthly dosing; estimated mean annualized bleeding rates were 0.75 in adults/adolescents and 0.37 in children.
- Injection-site reactions occurred in 2.0% of injections in children and 1.8% in adolescents/adults; all were mild and transient, with no clinical evidence of neutralizing antibodies.
- Denecimig was submitted to the FDA through a Biologics License Application in September 2025.
- Phase 3 explorer10 data in 24 children under 12 with hemophilia A or B and inhibitors showed concizumab reduced annualized bleeding rate 82% versus prior on-demand treatment, to 2.08 from 11.51.