Palantir paid just £2m in UK corporation tax, rogue AI outsmarted government tests

The software group Palantir paid just £2m in corporation tax in the UK in 2024, despite holding public sector contracts worth hundreds of millions, thanks to tax breaks that are likely to reduce its contributions to governments around the world for years to come. The US-headquartered company, which has harnessed AI to secure lucrative work for the NHS and the Ministry of Defence, is growing exponentially. Palantir’s shares bounced 17% in early trading on Tuesday after its chief executive, Alex Karp, forecast worldwide revenues would almost double this year to $8bn (£5.95bn), a result that he described as “otherworldly”. The Guardian 

An eight-month-old start-up headquartered in London has secured a $10bn (£7bn) deal with AI giant Anthropic. Volta, which was founded in January, also said it had received backing from a string of US tech investors including Nvidia. The company, valued at $2.4bn, is the latest to attract substantial amounts of capital as AI companies rush to secure access to high-powered chips in data centres. Volta was founded by a group of UK-based former executives at the investment giant Brookfield and is run by Ricard Boada, a 33-year-old who led digital investments at Brookfield in Europe. Telegraph

Shares in Elon Musk’s SpaceX tumbled after the company’s first-ever earnings report revealed a huge jump in spending on artificial intelligence, spooking investors. While the firm’s quarterly revenue had nearly doubled to $7.8bn (£5.8bn) from a year earlier, its spending ballooned to $18.3bn, more than six times what it was a year ago, the bulk of which was for AI. The firm builds space rockets and Starlink internet satellites as well as owning the social media platform X. It began trading on the US stock market in June. BBC

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 series, alongside the Flip 8, has broken 1.44 million sales during the pre-order phase, smashing a record previously set by the Galaxy Note 10. Without the data, it’s clear that Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a popular choice. So much so that the website is struggling to keep up, and Samsung is having to delay shipments as more orders keep coming in. The number is expected to continue growing as Samsung ends the pre-order phase on August 7. 9to5Google.com

Cutting-edge AI went on a hacking spree, concocting multiple fake identities designed to trick human engineers before covering its tracks. During testing by a UK government-run AI lab, an advanced version of ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Mythos went rogue. In the most serious case, Mythos sent fraudulent emails and attempted to insert malicious code into a database. Britain’s AI Security Institute (AISI), which is supposed to evaluate AI bots for dangerous cyber capabilities, has admitted the tools tried to bypass security systems and tried to hide their activity when detected. Telegraph 

Motorola has the Edge 70, the Edge 70 Max, the Edge 70 Pro and Pro+, the Edge 70 Fusion and Fusion+, and the Ultra, but there’s no Neo, at least thus far. Тhat is about to change according to a forum post about the Android 17 Beta for the Motorola Edge 70 Neo by a senior forum member, the phone is likely coming soon. The post reads as a call for participants for a firmware beta test about an existing phone, which points to one of two scenarios – either the person leaked an unannounced phone, or he made a mistake. It’s unlikely to be a mistake, however, as the participation form for the beta is also in the Edge 70 Neo’s name. GSM Arena