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Collectors can fight to pay £7m for a Birkin – but the ‘it’ handbag is no longer cool | Lauren Cochrane

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The news that Jane Birkin’s original Hermès bag has sold for a record-breaking €8.6m (£7.4m) at auction will no doubt cause some jaws to drop to the floor. However, perhaps it should not surprise – this is a bag design that is often linked to eyewatering amounts of money. Forty years on from the prototype, it’s now less a (very expensive) symbol of style and elegance, and more a way to signal you have a lot of money and you would like everyone to know that.

A Birkin has always been expensive – about $10,000 (£7,400), according to the Guardian last year – but the complicating factor is demand. As was reported, two California residents sued Hermès for a practice known as “tying”, which means customers are expected to pre-spend a sufficient amount on other items, such as homewares or jewellery – some say up to $30,000 – before they are even put on the waiting list for a Birkin. Therefore, wearing one on your arm – to those in the know – shows you have the disposable income that not only means you can buy the bag, but also go through with this practice in the first place.

The TV show Your Friends & Neighbours – in which Jon Hamm stars as a banker who loses his job and resorts to stealing from his wealthy friends to keep up his lifestyle – alludes to this in an episode where Hamm’s character attempts to steal a Birkin from an alarmed table of the bags in a luxurious closet. In a montage explaining the lore of the handbag, he comments “there is no more obnoxious or coveted status symbol than the Hermès Birkin”.

It’s hard not to agree. With this culture around the bag, it has lost its fashion appeal. See Beyoncé’s lyric in her 2022 track Summer Renaissance, which replaces the Birkin with the more affordable and fashionable Telfar shopping bag, one so popular in Brooklyn that it’s sometimes called the “Bushwick Birkin”. “This Telfar bag imported,” she sings. “Birkins? Them shit’s in storage.”

The Birkin is now a favourite of glossy and put-together women. Victoria Beckham is said to have more than 100, and Kylie Jenner also collects them (Singaporean socialite Jamie Chua apparently has the biggest collection). For the Sotheby’s auction, it was rumoured that representatives of Lauren Sanchez and Kris Jenner were on the phone attempting to bid, although the bag eventually went to a collector in Japan. An article in Vogue revealed who was in the room: collectors with an eye on the value of this item rather than someone wanting to use it as a receptacle. “I’ve been telling people to invest in Hermès bags for years!” comments Sara Abou-Khalil, a client of Sotheby’s who also collects contemporary art.

All of this contrasts to the bag’s beginnings. Jane Birkin was an icon of bohemianism who campaigned for abortion rights and against the far right and originally donated her bag to an auction to raise money for an Aids charity in 1994. Loved for her style, Birkin was gorgeous and chic but she was also scruffy, with wild hair and clothes that didn’t always appear to be completely ironed.

The original bag shows Birkin’s approach to the design during the nine years she owned it – it’s lived-in: scuffed, with marks from the stickers that she regularly put on it, for organisations such as Unicef.

It’s this part of the bag’s life that remains charming – and influential. A TV clip of her showing what was inside her bag in 1988 is a favourite on TikTok, with a pile of papers, notebooks, pens, mascara and more emerging. The way she decorated her bag is so loved that it inspired the “Birkinifying your bag” trend last year, where people added trinkets and charms. Arguably, this was the prelude to the Labubu craze, with the critters becoming the prized object to have hanging on any bag in 2025. The love of Labubus is already going the way of the Birkin – they retail for about £21, but sell for a lot more: a human-sized doll sold at auction last month for £127,000.

The lesson? Whether it’s a monster with spiky teeth or a battered bag with old stickers, fashion will always find a way to get people to spend a lot of money on obnoxious and coveted status symbols. But who knows? Maybe the buyer is a fan of Birkinifying and they’ll soon be walking around Japan with a bag draped in charms, with a Free Tibet sticker on its £7m leather.





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Covecta raises $6.5m to speed up business lending with AI platform

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By Vriti Gothi

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  • Digital Banking

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Covecta has raised $6.5 million to expand its AI-powered platform, aiming to help banks automate workflows, accelerate lending, and free frontline staff from administrative burdens.

Despite years of digital transformation spending, commercial loan applications can still take as long as six months to process, with loan officers spending more than 150 hours on a single case. Financial institutions remain stuck managing disconnected systems from loan origination tools and CRMs to public registers and core banking platforms — forcing staff to juggle tasks that should be seamless.

Covecta’s answer is an “agentic AI” platform that sits on top of existing banking infrastructure. Instead of requiring banks to rip out legacy technology, it integrates with incumbent systems and deploys specialised AI agents that coordinate workflows across departments. The platform is available via web and desktop apps and can be deployed within weeks, offering a plug-and-play alternative to years-long tech overhauls.

The company’s first major client, Metro Bank, has already reported a 60–80% reduction in task completion times since adopting Covecta. The bank says the technology has boosted efficiency, sharpened risk analysis, and improved decision-making.

Founded by Scott Wilson, Ben Thomas, and Abdul Hummaida, Covecta’s leadership brings a mix of industry and technical expertise. Wilson previously scaled revenue at Mambu and helped expand Finastra in the U.S., Thomas spent over a decade advising banks on digital transformation at McKinsey and Accenture, while Hummaida has led AI engineering teams at AppSense and Orgvue.

Backers of the platform say its potential stretches far beyond business lending. Covecta plans to expand into asset management, wealth management, and other areas of financial services, aiming to become what it calls an “AI operating system” for the industry.

The investment marks growing confidence in AI-driven solutions that promise not just process optimisation but a rethink of how financial professionals spend their time. For banks under pressure to improve customer service and reduce costs, the question is no longer whether AI will change financial services but how quickly platforms like Covecta can scale.

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VeriPark achieves the 2025-2026 Microsoft AI Business Solutions Inner Circle award – PA Media

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VeriPark achieves the 2025-2026 Microsoft AI Business Solutions Inner Circle award  PA Media



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DRUID AI raises $31 million Series C, appoints new CEO

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DRUID AI, a Romanian-born technology company, today announced it has secured $31 million in Series C financing to advance the global expansion of its enterprise-ready agentic AI platform under the leadership of its new CEO Joseph Kim. The strategic investment, which will advance DRUID AI’s mission to empower companies to create, manage, and orchestrate conversational AI agents, was led by Cipio Partners, with participation from TQ Ventures, Karma Ventures, Smedvig, and Hoxton Ventures.

“This investment is both a testament to DRUID AI’s success and a catalyst to elevate businesses globally through the power of agentic AI,” said Kim. “Customer success is what it’s all about, and delivering real business outcomes requires understanding companies’ pain points and introducing innovations that help those customers address their complex challenges. That’s the DRUID AI way, and now we’re bringing it to the world through this new phase of global growth.”

Kim has more than two decades of operating executive experience in application, infrastructure, and security industries. Most recently, he was CEO of Sumo Logic. He serves on the boards of directors of SmartBear and Andela. In addition, he was a senior operating partner at private equity firm Francisco Partners, CPTO at Citrix, SolarWinds, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and chief architect at GE.

DRUID AI cofounder and Chief Operating Officer Andreea Plesea, who had been interim CEO, commented: “I am delighted Joseph is taking the reins as CEO to drive our next level of growth. His commitment to customer success and developing the exact solutions customers need is in total sync with the approach that has fueled our progress and positioned us to raise new funds. Joseph and the Series C set up DRUID AI and our clients for expanded innovation and impact.”

The appointment of Kim as CEO and the new funding come on the heels of DRUID AI earning a Challenger spot in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI Platforms for 2025. This is just the latest development validating the maturity of DRUID AI’s platform and its readiness to deliver business results in a market that is experiencing rapid advancement and adoption.

In 2024, DRUID AI grew ARR 2.7x year-over-year. Its award-winning platform has powered more than 1 billion conversations across thousands of agents. In addition, the DRUID AI global partner ecosystem has attracted industry giants Microsoft, Genpact, Cognizant, and Accenture.

The founder of Druid AI, Liviu Dragan, had passed away unexpectedly in May 2025.

DRUID AI is trusted by more than 300 global clients across banking, financial services, government, healthcare, higher education, manufacturing, retail, and telecommunications. Leading organizations such as AXA Insurance, Carrefour, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Georgia Southern University, Kmart Australia, Liberty Global Group, MatrixCare, National Health Service, and Orange Auchan have adopted DRUID AI to redefine the way they operate.

Companies have embraced DRUID AI to help teams accelerate digital operations, reduce the complexity of day-to-day work, enhance user experience, and maximize technology ROI. Powered by advanced agentic AI and driven by the DRUID Conductor, its core orchestration engine, the DRUID platform enables businesses to effortlessly deploy AI agents and intelligent apps that streamline processes, integrate seamlessly with existing systems, and fulfill complex requests efficiently. DRUID AI’s end-to-end platform delivers 98% first response accuracy.





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