Business
AI business managers 'optimistic still' after Project Vend – RNZ
Business
Capgemini-WNS Deal: French firm to acquire BPS provider for $3.3 billion; eyes edge in agentic AI operations
French tech giant Capgemini on Monday announced its acquisition of business process services (BPS) provider WNS for $3.3 billion in cash, a strategic move aimed at creating a global leader in AI-powered business operations. As per the news agency AFP, the deal, unanimously approved by both companies’ boards, values WNS at $76.50 per share, a 28 per cent premium over its 90-day average trading price.With this acquisition, Capgemini aims to tap into the fast-evolving demand for agentic AI, or autonomous AI agents, which can independently perform tasks and make decisions in business environments. “Capgemini’s acquisition of WNS will provide the group with the scale and vertical sector expertise to capture that rapidly emerging strategic opportunity created by the paradigm shift from traditional BPS to agentic AI-powered intelligent operations,” said Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat, as cited by AFP.WNS, headquartered in London with a second base in India and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, began in the late 1990s by offering services to British Airways. Today, it caters to clients across various sectors, helping them transition from conventional outsourcing to tech-driven operational models. The company is widely recognised as a key player in the BPS sector, which has evolved from simple back-office outsourcing to complex AI-integrated process management.“Organisations that have already digitised are now seeking to reimagine their operating models by embedding AI at the core, shifting from automation to autonomy,” WNS CEO Keshav Murugesh said, as per AFP.Capgemini, which provides IT consulting and digital transformation services, said the acquisition would open up strong cross-selling opportunities and is expected to immediately enhance its financial performance. The deal is projected to boost earnings per share by 4 per cent in 2026 and by 7 per cent in 2027 once synergies are realised.To fund the acquisition and assume WNS’s existing debt, Capgemini has secured €4 billion ($4.7 billion) in bridge financing, it said in a joint statement with WNS. The transaction reflects a broader industry shift as companies move from AI-assisted automation to building AI-led autonomous operations.
Business
‘the Face of Gemini:’ How Google Found Its AI Hype Guy
He’s not an executive, a company spokesperson, or a world-class researcher. But he might be Google’s secret weapon in winning the AI race.
If you’re an AI developer, you’ve likely heard of Logan Kilpatrick. As Google’s head of developer relations, Kilpatrick, 27, runs AI Studio, the company’s AI developer software program.
He has also become Google’s delegate for speaking to the AI community and — intentionally or not — a one-man marketing machine for the company’s AI products. He’s a prolific poster on X, where he’ll sometimes hype Google’s latest Gemini releases or tease something new on the horizon.
Above all, he is one of the people tasked with translating Google’s AI breakthroughs to the global developer community. It’s a crucial job at a time when the search giant needs to not just convince developers to use its products, but capture a new generation of builders entering the fray as AI makes it easier for anyone to make software.
“If you want AI to have the level of impact on humanity that I think it could have, you need to be able to provide a platform for developers in order to go and do this stuff,” he told Business Insider in an interview. “The reality is there’s a thousand and one things that Google is never going to build, and doesn’t make sense for us to build, that developers want to build.”
Company insiders say Google has recognized Kilpatrick’s strength and given him more responsibilities and visibility. He could be seen onstage at this year’s Google I/O conference and even had a fireside chat with Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
“People really crave legitimacy, authenticity, and competency, and Logan combines all three,” Asara Near, a startup founder who has occasionally contacted Kilpatrick with development questions, told BI.
LoganGPT
In 2022, OpenAI was preparing to launch ChatGPT and fire the starting gun on one of history’s most profound technological shifts. Kilpatrick, who has a technical background and worked at Apple and NASA, saw an online job ad for OpenAI and was soon facing a tricky decision: to work at what was then Sam Altman’s little-known startup, or take a gig at IBM.
He decided that OpenAI was worth a shot — and within a few months, found himself at the center of the biggest tech launch since the debut of the iPhone in 2007.
“The OpenAI experience was a startup experience for about six months and then it became basically a hyperscaler,” he told BI. It was chaotic, but it helped Kilpatrick learn how to build an ecosystem and cut his teeth as the developers’ go-to guy. There, developers nicknamed him “LoganGPT.”
Brett A. Sims
When he left OpenAI in 2024 for Google, developers and peers made clear it was a huge loss for the ChatGPT maker, and a big win for Google in the AI talent transfer window. AI Studio was then still a project inside Google’s Labs division, and Kilpatrick and his team were tasked with migrating it into a fully-fledged product inside Google’s Cloud unit. It was again like going from zero to one: AI Studio was pre-revenue with no customers, but with a long tail of developers ready to jump on board.
“It has felt oddly almost like the same exact experience I’ve lived through at two different companies and two different cultures,” he told BI.
In May this year, Kilpatrick was promoted, and his team running AI Studio was moved from the Cloud unit to Google DeepMind, bringing them closer to the researchers working on the underlying models and the employees working on its Gemini chatbot.
“He’s kind of all over the place, and that’s his superpower,” said one senior employee who requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak to the media. They said that Google has put Kilpatrick in charge of more products as leaders have recognized his ability to engage so effectively with the developer community. “Logan is 90% of Google’s marketing,” they said.
Helping Google win
On paper, Google is an AI winner. The reality is more complicated.
Its latest Gemini 2.0 Pro model ranks top of multiple leaderboards across a range of testing areas, but this hasn’t always been reflected in the number of users. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, said in May that the company’s Gemini app has more than 400 million monthly active users. That’s well behind the 500 million weekly active users for ChatGPT, according to figures shared by Altman in April.
“DeepMind doesn’t get nearly as much credit and attention as they deserve, and that’s because comms is vastly underperforming capabilities,” communications executive Lulu Meservey posted on X in May. Responding to another person, she wrote: “Logan is like 90% of their comms.”
Some of the struggle, insiders say, is due to Google owning multiple products that aren’t always clearly distinct. Developers can build using Vertex in Google Cloud or AI Studio. Meanwhile Google has a consumer-facing app simply called Gemini. The same models aren’t necessarily always available across all three places at the same time, which can get confusing for users and developers.
There’s also the problem of being a quarter-century-old tech behemoth with more nimble startups nipping at its heels. “OpenAI can put all their messaging arrows behind one thing, while Google has messaging arrows behind 10,000 things,” former Google product manager Rajat Paharia told BI.
Google/Ryan Trostle
Kilpatrick recognizes that Google has work to do. “I think Google on a net basis is doing so much in the world right now, and AI is around everything that we’re doing, and I think a lot of narrative doesn’t capture innovation is happening,” he said.
A big part of Kilpatrick’s job is trying to cement that narrative among the global developer base. At OpenAI, Sam Altman’s Jobsian showmanship has made him a highly effective salesman both for his company’s products and his vision for the future of this technology. Or, as Paharia described Altman to BI, a “showman with rizz.”
Google may have found its equivalent in Kilpatrick. He told BI that he often posts on X because it has become something of a town square for AI developers and enthusiasts, all champing at the bit for the latest crumb of news. It’s a community filled with hype, AI “vagueposting”, and steeped deeply in lore (what did Ilya see?).
On a day that OpenAI’s latest release sucking is grabbing everyone’s attention, Kilpatrick may log on and post a single word — “Gemini” — just to rev the hype engine a little.
Kilpatrick often has “a thousand” emails from developers that need responding to, he told BI. “I spend probably as much time as I physically can responding to stuff these days,” he said. And that’s between the numerous product meetings (he had 22 meetings scheduled on the day we spoke in early July, 23 the day before). He once posted on X: “I am online 7 days a week, ~8+ hours a day. If you need something as you build with Gemini, please ping me!”
Developers say they like that Kilpatrick takes the time to engage and listen to their feedback. “The few times I’ve emailed him to get help with something, they near-instantly responded and helped resolve the issue,” said Near, the startup founder. “This is the opposite of my experience through normal support channels.”
Andrew Curran, an AI commentator who frequently posts to X, wrote last month that Kilpatrick had been “an incredible hire” for Google. “To a lot of people he is now the face of Gemini, I bet most people don’t even remember his OAI days,” he wrote.
Kilpatrick told BI that because he is a developer himself, he finds it easy to understand the core target user. He said this has helped in building out Google’s AI Studio, and that engaging with developers comes naturally. “It’s just the obvious thing to do if you want to build a product for developers, is like, go talk to your users,” he said.
He’s been an incredible hire for Google. To a lot of people he is now the face of Gemini, I bet most people don’t even remember his OAI days.
— Andrew Curran (@AndrewCurran_) June 25, 2025
But the definition of developer is changing with approaches like vibe coding, which lets non-technical people create software by describing what they’d like to an AI tool.
“What it means to be a developer right now looks a little different than it did two years ago or three years ago, and I think it’s going to look fundamentally different in 10 years,” said Kilpatrick. He believes the developer group will “massively expand” in the next five years. His job at Google is to make the next generation believe Google is where they should be developing, but that job is also evolving in this new era of artificial intelligence.
“Our mandate is actually AI builders, already encompassing this group of people who maybe don’t identify as developers and don’t write code, but they build software using AI, and I think that’s going to accelerate in the next few years,” he said.
Have something to share? Contact this reporter via email at hlangley@businessinsider.com or Signal at 628-228-1836. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.
Business
Donald Trump threatens extra 10% tariff for ‘anti-American’ Brics policies, as trade war deadline approaches – business live | Business
Donald Trump threatens extra 10% tariff for “anti-American” Brics policies
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets, and the world economy.
Donald Trump has targeted the BRICS group of developing nations in the latest salvo of his ongoing trade war, as the deadline to agree deals before the president’s 90-day tariff pause looms.
Trump has warned overnight that he will impose a new 10% tariff on any country that aligns itself with the BRICS group, claiming they are “anti-American”.
Writing on his Truth Social site, Trump declared:
Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Trump’s attack comes after the Brics group — which was originally made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa but now includes other nations — met in Brazil at the weekend.
Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, told the meeting in Rio de Janeiro that BRICS was the heir to the “Non-Aligned Movement” – the bloc of countries who declined to ally with either side in the Cold War.
Lula criticised the move (driven by Trump) towards increased spending on the military rather than on international development, pointing out: “It is always easier to invest in war than in peace”.
He told leaders they were witnessing “the unparalleled collapse of multilateralism”, before warning:
“If international governance does not reflect the new multipolar reality of the 21st century, it is up to BRICS to help bring it up to date.”
The BRICS group also condemned US and Israeli attacks on Iran and urged “just and lasting” solutions to conflicts across the Middle East.
All of which appears to have stirred Trump into another tariff threat.
There’s also confusion this morning about the status of the original ‘liberation day’ tariffs which Trump announced at the start of April, and then paused for 90 days after the markets slumped.
The president told reporters on Sunday that his administration plans to start sending letters later today to US trade partners dictating new tariffs.
But there’s confusion about when these levies would kick in. Trump implied they would start on Wednesday, saying “I think we’ll have most countries done by July 9, yeah. Either a letter or a deal.”
But commerce secretary Howard Lutnick then weighed in to explain:
“But they go into effect on August 1. Tariffs go into effect August 1, but the president is setting the rates and the deals right now.”
Trump has subsequently posted that “TARIFF Letters, and/or Deals” will be delivered from 12:00 PM (Eastern)“ today, (that’s 5pm BST)
The agenda
Key events
Tesla shares drop after Musk launches America Party
Over in Frankfurt, shares in Tesla are sliding as the row between Elon Musk and Donald Trump escalates.
Telsa have fallen 3% in early trading, an indication that they could fall Wall Street when trading resumes, as investors react to Musk’s plan to launch a new US political party called the America Party.
Trump called the idea “ridiculous”, and claimed Musk had gone completely ‘off the rails’.
Veteran tech analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush said Musk was Tesla’s “biggest asset” and his decision to dive deeper into politics could hurt the car maker’s share price.
Ives wrote:
“Tesla needs Musk as CEO and its biggest asset and not heading down the political route yet again…while at the same time getting on Trump’s bad side.
“It would also not shock us if the Tesla board gets involved at some point given the political nature of this endeavour depending on how far Musk takes it.”
FTSE 100 opens slightly lower as Shell slides
London’s stock market has slipped very slightly at the start of trading.
The FTSE 100 index of blue-chip shares has dropped by 9 points, or 0.1%.
Shell are the top faller, down 1.8%, after lowering its forecast for gas output and natural gas production this morning, and predicting that trading and optimisation at its integrated gas division in the last quarter will be significantly lower than in Q1.
Standard Chartered (+1.4%), the Asia-Pacific focused bank, are the top riser.
UK house prices flat in June, Halifax reports
UK house prices stagnated last month, new data from lender Halifax shows.
Halifax reports that house prices were effectively unchanged month-on-month in June with the average price of a property sold coming in at £296,665, compared to £296,782 in May.
This pulled the annual rate of house price inflation down to 2.5% from 2.6% in May.
Northern Ireland has by far the strongest annual price growth in the UK, with prices up by +9.6% over the past year.
But, growth was much more subdued in the South West of England, and London, with prices rising by just +0.5% and +0.6% respectively.
Amanda Bryden, head of mortgages at Halifax, said the UK housing market “remained steady in June”, adding:
“The market’s resilience continues to stand out and, after a brief slowdown following the spring stamp duty changes, mortgage approvals and property transactions have both picked up, with more buyers returning to the market. That’s being helped by a few key factors: wages are still rising, which is easing some of the pressure on affordability, and interest rates have stabilised in recent months, giving people more confidence to plan ahead.
Bryden pointed out that affordability is still stretched, particularly for those coming to the end of fixed-rate deals, explaining:
The economic backdrop also remains uncertain; while inflation has eased, it’s still above target, and there are signs the jobs market may be softening.
According to @HalifaxBank average house price growth was flat in June making the average property price now £296,665, down £117 on May’s efforts. Moving forward increased flex around mortgage lending and two rate cuts has the lender expectant of a more buoyant market towards the… pic.twitter.com/jdCqNEjyGt
— Emma Fildes (@emmafildes) July 7, 2025
Most Asia-Pacific markets are in the red today.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index has dropped by 0.55%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is down 0.4%, Australia’s S&P/ASX is off 0.15%, and India’s Sensex has slipped by 0.1%
Jim Reid, market strategist at Deutsche Bank, says:
“Asian equity markets are a little nervous this morning, perhaps on Trump’s BRICs comments.”
Some BRICS currencies have also dipped this morning.
South Africa’s rand has fallen 1%, to 17.75/$ from 17.57/$ on Friday night.
India’s rupee has slipped by 0.5% against the dollar, to 85.8 rupees/$ down from 85.3925/$ at the end of last week.
China’s yuan has slipped by 0.1%, while Brazil’s real and Russia’s rouble are both flat.
Many currencies are slipping against the US dollar this morning, as traders await news of the tariff ‘deals and letters’ which Donald Trump says he will issue later today.
The euro has slipped by 0.15% against the dollar to $1.176, not too far from the near-four-year high touched last week.
The Australian dollar has lost 0.7%, while New Zealand’s dollar has dropped by 0.95%.
The British pound is also weakening a little, down 0.35% at just over $1.36.
So far, only the UK, China and Vietnam have reached any kind of trade agreements with the US in the last 90 days….
Donald Trump threatens extra 10% tariff for “anti-American” Brics policies
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets, and the world economy.
Donald Trump has targeted the BRICS group of developing nations in the latest salvo of his ongoing trade war, as the deadline to agree deals before the president’s 90-day tariff pause looms.
Trump has warned overnight that he will impose a new 10% tariff on any country that aligns itself with the BRICS group, claiming they are “anti-American”.
Writing on his Truth Social site, Trump declared:
Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Trump’s attack comes after the Brics group — which was originally made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa but now includes other nations — met in Brazil at the weekend.
Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, told the meeting in Rio de Janeiro that BRICS was the heir to the “Non-Aligned Movement” – the bloc of countries who declined to ally with either side in the Cold War.
Lula criticised the move (driven by Trump) towards increased spending on the military rather than on international development, pointing out: “It is always easier to invest in war than in peace”.
He told leaders they were witnessing “the unparalleled collapse of multilateralism”, before warning:
“If international governance does not reflect the new multipolar reality of the 21st century, it is up to BRICS to help bring it up to date.”
The BRICS group also condemned US and Israeli attacks on Iran and urged “just and lasting” solutions to conflicts across the Middle East.
All of which appears to have stirred Trump into another tariff threat.
There’s also confusion this morning about the status of the original ‘liberation day’ tariffs which Trump announced at the start of April, and then paused for 90 days after the markets slumped.
The president told reporters on Sunday that his administration plans to start sending letters later today to US trade partners dictating new tariffs.
But there’s confusion about when these levies would kick in. Trump implied they would start on Wednesday, saying “I think we’ll have most countries done by July 9, yeah. Either a letter or a deal.”
But commerce secretary Howard Lutnick then weighed in to explain:
“But they go into effect on August 1. Tariffs go into effect August 1, but the president is setting the rates and the deals right now.”
Trump has subsequently posted that “TARIFF Letters, and/or Deals” will be delivered from 12:00 PM (Eastern)“ today, (that’s 5pm BST)
The agenda
-
Funding & Business6 days ago
Kayak and Expedia race to build AI travel agents that turn social posts into itineraries
-
Jobs & Careers6 days ago
Mumbai-based Perplexity Alternative Has 60k+ Users Without Funding
-
Mergers & Acquisitions6 days ago
Donald Trump suggests US government review subsidies to Elon Musk’s companies
-
Funding & Business6 days ago
Rethinking Venture Capital’s Talent Pipeline
-
Jobs & Careers6 days ago
Why Agentic AI Isn’t Pure Hype (And What Skeptics Aren’t Seeing Yet)
-
Funding & Business3 days ago
Sakana AI’s TreeQuest: Deploy multi-model teams that outperform individual LLMs by 30%
-
Funding & Business7 days ago
From chatbots to collaborators: How AI agents are reshaping enterprise work
-
Funding & Business4 days ago
Dust hits $6M ARR helping enterprises build AI agents that actually do stuff instead of just talking
-
Tools & Platforms6 days ago
Winning with AI – A Playbook for Pest Control Business Leaders to Drive Growth
-
Funding & Business4 days ago
HOLY SMOKES! A new, 200% faster DeepSeek R1-0528 variant appears from German lab TNG Technology Consulting GmbH