FT : Plans for high-speed rail line in northern England suffer fresh delay

Plans for high-speed rail line in northern England suffer fresh delay
Proposals for link between Liverpool and Manchester held up by discussions involving the Treasury

Plans for a new high-speed rail line in northern England have been delayed again, with Sir Keir Starmer no longer expected to outline the project at Labour’s annual conference next week.

Northern leaders had been hoping to hear government confirmation of proposals for a rail link between Liverpool and Manchester either in the run-up to the conference or in the prime minister’s keynote speech on Tuesday.

But people familiar with the matter said that discussions with the Treasury were holding up an announcement.

“I’d always been led to believe an announcement was coming around conference,” said one well-placed rail industry figure, adding that others had been led to believe the same. 

The latest delay comes after an announcement about the northern rail line was slated for inclusion in the government’s spending review in June, but did not subsequently materialise.

Labour promised in its 2024 general election manifesto to upgrade northern rail links, but since then has not explained what that means, or how much it would cost. 

In the spending review, chancellor Rachel Reeves promised to back what she termed “Northern Powerhouse Rail”, but she did not outline details of any financial commitment or set out the scope of the project.

Northern leaders have been lobbying for improvements to rail connectivity in their areas, and a new line between Liverpool and Manchester is supported by Andy Burnham, Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, and Steve Rotheram, his counterpart representing Liverpool city region.

Part of the plans would involve expensive tunnelling between Manchester city centre and Manchester airport, which originally formed part of the northern leg of the High Speed 2 rail line. That portion of HS2 was cancelled in 2023 by the then Tory premier Rishi Sunak.

Many of those backing the Liverpool-Manchester rail link hope such tunnelling would allow for the revival of some version of HS2’s northern leg in the future.

However, several people briefed on the situation said that, while the link had long been supported by the Department for Transport, the Treasury had continually sought more time. 

“We want to scope out the work and make sure everything is nailed down,” said one Labour official.

Other officials said Reeves might decide to hold back an announcement on Northern Powerhouse Rail until close to her Budget on November 26.

“The whole Budget is about growth and infrastructure is a big part of that,” said one. 

Louise Haigh, a former Labour transport secretary and MP for Sheffield Heeley, said news of further delays to Northern Powerhouse Rail was “incredibly disappointing”.

“The north was promised time and again, including by this government, that our desperately poor connectivity would be improved,” she added.

The latest delay will also disappoint Burnham and Rotheram, who have proposed a Liverpool-Manchester rail link and argue it is essential for economic growth in the North-west. Their scheme would cost at least £12bn.

With Starmer coming under intense pressure following Angela Rayner’s resignation as deputy prime minister and the sacking of Lord Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, Burnham has been at the centre of speculation about a possible bid for the Labour leadership.

The Greater Manchester mayor is weighing up whether to attempt a return to Westminster ahead of any potential leadership challenge, and is due to speak alongside Rotheram at Labour’s conference.

A government insider said it remained “fully committed” to Northern Powerhouse Rail, adding that it was “determined to learn from the mistakes” of Conservative rail plans that had unravelled or been cancelled. 

“That’s why we’re taking our time to get this right. We will set out our plans in the coming weeks,” they added.

FT : Start-up Modular raises $250mn to challenge Nvidia’s software dominance

Start-up Modular raises $250mn to challenge Nvidia’s software dominance
Three-year-old company has developed alternative to Cuda to break chip giant’s stranglehold on AI market

A team of Silicon Valley veterans who previously worked at Apple and Google has raised $250mn to challenge Nvidia’s dominance of the software tools used to programme artificial intelligence chips.

Palo Alto-based Modular, which is building an alternative to Nvidia’s Cuda software that has been vital to keeping customers locked to the chipmaker’s AI products, announced it has received the new investment at a $1.6bn valuation on Wednesday.

The funding will boost its efforts to build “Android for generative AI hardware”, said the start-up’s co-founder and chief executive Chris Lattner, likening its toolkit to the Google mobile operating system that boosted competition to Apple’s iPhone.

The new investment nearly triples Modular’s valuation since its last round in 2023. The $250mn financing was led by US Innovative Technology, the fund headed by former Legendary Entertainment owner Thomas Tull, which has previously backed US defence tech group Anduril and AI cloud start-up Lambda.

While Nvidia’s Cuda software only works with the chipmaker’s own hardware, Modular’s system allows developers to create AI models and apps that can run on the latest graphics processing units from Nvidia, AMD and Apple’s Macs, allowing them to switch between chips more easily.

DFJ Growth, a major backer of SpaceX and xAI, is also joining the round alongside existing investors such as Alphabet’s venture unit GV and General Catalyst.

“Modular is addressing the most urgent challenge in AI: unifying the compute layer by enabling diversified processing hardware and software to operate cohesively,” said Sam Fort, partner at DFJ Growth.

But the start-up has an uphill struggle. Nvidia is also involved in a whirlwind of deals, such as its latest pledge to invest $100bn in OpenAI, which are seen as an attempt to ensure its chips and Cuda platform remain at the centre of the AI industry.

Nvidia’s GPUs today command an estimated 80 per cent of the booming market for AI data centre systems — a dominance that has propelled the chipmaker to become the world’s most valuable company.

“The industry is locked into this Cuda world,” said Lattner, who previously led Apple’s developer tools team for several years and launched its Swift programming language. “This is a big challenge for developers, because people want choice. People want to be able to run and build AI, and put it on the hardware where it makes the most sense.”

Lattner co-founded Modular in 2022 alongside Tim Davis, after they worked together on Google’s own custom AI chip, dubbed Tensor Processing Units, and other semiconductor projects at Google Brain, the Big Tech group’s AI lab.

Lattner argues that other industry attempts to build cross-compatible alternatives to Cuda — including open source projects backed by the likes of OpenAI, Meta, Google and Microsoft, as well as efforts from chipmakers Intel and AMD — have failed because each Big Tech company is trying to protect its own interests.

The business charges corporate customers based on usage when they run AI tasks on its software on cloud computing platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Oracle. Several new AI cloud computing start-ups are also using Modular to run their data centres using multiple GPU suppliers, Davis said.

Even though Modular presents a challenge to one of Nvidia’s key differentiators, the chipmaker is also working as a partner with the start-up.

“Nvidia has wonderful products, wonderful GPUs, but we want more competition to enable even better silicon,” said Davis. “You shouldn’t win because you have enormous market power, you should win because you have the best product.”

TechCrunch : Microsoft adds Anthropic’s AI to Copilot

Microsoft adds Anthropic’s AI to Copilot

Microsoft is leaning into its new partnership with OpenAI’s chief rival, Anthropic. Starting Wednesday, the software giant will incorporate Anthropic’s AI models into its AI assistant Copilot, which has previously been fueled mainly by OpenAI.

The deal signals yet another step toward the slow disentangling between the erstwhile exclusive partners, and comes a couple of weeks after Microsoft inked a deal to use Anthropic’s AI in Office 365 apps like Word, Excel, and Outlook.

Copilot business users will be able to choose between OpenAI’s deep reasoning models and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.1 and Claude Sonnet 4 for help with certain tasks, like complex researching and help building custom AI tools and enterprise-grade agents. Opus 4.1 is designed for complex reasoning, coding, and deep architecture planning, whereas Sonnet 4 is better for routine development tasks, large-scale data processing, and content generation.

SCMP : China’s visa-free policy boosts Beijing, Shanghai’s international influen

China’s visa-free policy boosts Beijing, Shanghai’s international influence: report
China’s top cities climb international rankings thanks to better access, technology and connectivity, study finds

China’s expanded visa-free entry policy and technological advances have boosted the standing of its major cities as global hubs, with Beijing retaining a top-tier position in international influence and connectivity rankings.
The Chinese capital rose to sixth place on the 2025 International Exchange Centres Index – up from seventh last year – driven by surging tourist arrivals and improved transport links, according to the annual report released by Tsinghua University’s China Institute for Development Planning (CIDP) and Deloitte China on Wednesday.

Shanghai, a leading financial centre, rose to eighth place this year from eleventh last year, with foreign tourist arrivals doubling year on year in 2024.

According to the report, the city ranked second globally over the past decade for the number of scientific and technological publications, behind only Beijing, and fifth among the sampled cities for unicorn companies.

Hong Kong ranked seventh this year, down from fourth last year, mainly because the latest assessment excluded inbound tourist data from mainland China. Disruptions to global trade also negatively impacted the city’s ranking.

The top three cities – London, Paris and New York – remained unchanged from last year’s ranking.

“All of these movements underscore a key insight of the report that resilience and adaptability have become the defining traits of leading international cities,” Thierry Delmarcelle, Asia-Pacific Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer for Deloitte, said at the launch event.

He added that collaboration, technological leadership, openness and institutional resilience are critical to the competitiveness of future cities.

Global metropolises are the cradle of globalisation, said Yang Yongheng, director of the CIDP. They should act as a bulwark against rising deglobalisation and a stabilising force in the global political and economic landscape, he added.
Introduced in 2023, this year’s report assessed 50 global cities across three areas: their ability to attract global human capital, their influence in politics, science, technology, culture and economics, and their connectivity through transport and digital infrastructure.

Compared to last year’s rankings, seven cities have been added this year: Bangkok, Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Osaka, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Chongqing.

China’s leading cities have seen a sharp rebound in inbound tourism. In 2024, international visitors to Beijing, Chongqing, Hangzhou and Chengdu more than doubled year on year, with Hangzhou recording growth of up to 191.5 per cent, the report’s authors said.

Inbound foreign tourists and international flights accounted for about 20 per cent in the calculations, making them one of the main variables driving the higher rankings of Chinese cities this year. Indicators on business start-ups and technological innovation – both areas of rapid growth for China in recent years – accounted for a combined weight of 16.7 per cent.

China began expanding its visa-free entry policy in November 2023 to lure foreign tourists and businesspeople back after nearly three years of strict Covid-19 controls.

Currently, 47 countries – including 33 in Europe and seven in Asia – are exempt from visa requirements, allowing citizens to visit any part of China for up to 30 days. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and the southern metropolis of Guangzhou serve as gateway cities for international arrivals.

China welcomed 26.9 million inbound trips by foreign tourists in 2024, according to government data. About 20.1 million people entered via the visa-free scheme, up 112.3 per cent from the previous year.
The travel boom has continued in 2025, with 25.6 million foreign tourist entries in the first eight months, including 15.9 million via the visa-free policy – up 52.1 per cent year on year.

China’s immigration authorities have pledged improvements to the visa-free scheme to strengthen international exchanges amid China-US trade tensions, and to support the domestic economy through increased foreign spending.

In a sign the policy could be expanded further, the National Immigration Administration added Russia to the list of countries eligible for visa-free travel last week.

Additionally, passport holders from 55 other countries can enter China without a visa for up to 10 days when transiting to a third destination, subject to certain conditions.