Business

Your banknote redesign ideas – from British Bulldogs to Basil Fawlty

Published

4 days ago

July 4, 2025

Kevin Peachey

Cost of living correspondent

Julie Dudley the Bulldog on Cawsand Beach in Cornwall with the sea in the background — Dudley the dog is unlikely to feature, but animals are a popular suggestion

While cash might not be as popular as it once was, the opportunity to fashion the next series of banknotes has got brains whirring and tails wagging.

Within a day of reporting on the Bank of England’s public invitation to influence a major redesign of banknotes, there were more than 2,000 responses to Your Voice, Your BBC on the issue.

Dudley the British Bulldog, pictured on Cawsand Beach in Cornwall, will be one of the least likely contenders, despite being described as a “national treasure” by his owner Julie, from Plymouth.

But animals and nature, as well as railways and TV nostalgia have featured strongly among the ideas.

Images of historical characters, starting with William Shakespeare, have featured on Bank of England notes since 1970.

Now, the Bank’s chief cashier Victoria Cleland has suggested images on the next set of £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes could stick with notable figures of the past or move on to a new theme, as is seen on banknotes issued in Scotland, Nothern Ireland and around the world.

The Bank is giving people a month to select from certain themes, such as architecture, innovation or the arts, or suggest their own topics.

The Bank has not commented on the number of entries so far, but – if responses to the BBC are anything to go by – they are likely to be inundated.

Great ships

The SS Great Britain in Bristol is among the maritime suggestions

Getty Images The SS Great Britain in dry dock in Bristol. — The SS Great Britain in Bristol is among the maritime suggestions

Among the themes to be suggested was a celebration of the UK’s maritime heritage.

The Mary Rose, HMS Belfast, HMS Trincomalee, HMS Victory, Cutty Sark, and the SS Great Britain are all worthy of a place on a banknote, according to Hilary in London.

Charles from Bristol goes further. “I don’t just mean the spectacularly beautiful clipper ships, and instantly recognisable liners, but perhaps some of the lesser known vessels trading with Commonwealth countries, or oil rig support vessels working hard in the North Sea,” he wrote.

Famous landmarks

Stonehenge is always a popular suggestion for something that represents Britain

Stonehenge under a blue sky with grass in front. — Stonehenge is always a popular suggestion for something that represents Britain

There are appeals for the themes and choices to represent the whole of the country.

The Angel of the North is a regular suggestion, and areas of natural beauty such as the Yorkshire Dales.

Mike in Salisbury thinks using tourist sites on banknotes could bring benefits.

“Tourists come to England to see the main sites such as Stonehenge, Buckingham Palace, the Queen Elizabeth Tower etc,” he says.

“If the banknotes showed these pictures then they would be more likely to visit the site, hold one up when taking a photo, and maybe even taking the note home as a souvenir.”

Classic TV characters

Classic sitcoms like Fawlty Towers might be a popular choice

John Cleese as Basil Fawlty with Basil Henson as Doctor Abbott and Elspet Gray as Mrs Abbott in a still from Fawlty Towers. — Classic sitcoms like Fawlty Towers might be a popular choice

Nostalgia features heavily, bringing a more recent historical outlook to notes that have carried images of people from the past for more than 50 years.

“Some classic British children’s TV characters like Willow The Wisp, Bagpuss, or even a collection of them would make me smile,” says Steve in Cardiff.

“Likewise I think some classic British TV could be represented, like The Bill – no pun intended – or Casualty, soap operas or even comedies like Fawlty Towers. Television has been a large part of life for many people growing up and I’m sure, people would appreciate a bit of nostalgia on the notes.”

Vintage trains

SSPL/Getty Images Pullman train, hauled by a H2 class 4-4-2 locomotive number 32424 at Brighton station, West Sussex, by E D Bruton, 5 October 1952 — Many people would like to see British railways and vintage trains like the British Pullman celebrated

Nostalgia for the railways and “local and meaningful” stations also features in responses.

“With the 200 years of the railway in Britain being celebrated, it seems a shame not to celebrate that considering we gave railways to the world,” says Ian in Derby.

A mobile phone?

Getty Images Smiling young man in a cafe pays using a phone with a coffee in front of him.

Despite the wide range of options, some people are keen to stick to the way key figures in history are honoured on banknotes.

“Having looked at all the options I really do think that historical figures should still be number one choice. Might it be possible to include Diana Princess of Wales somewhere?” asks Elizabeth, from Oxford.

But with cash used in only 12% of transactions, some say the time and effort involved in a huge overhaul of notes is unnecessary.

“We are sadly faced with the prospect of a cashless society, with so many places refusing to accept my cash, so I have to wonder, why bother changing the design?” says Dawn in Redditch.

Ian in Leighton Buzzard is much more blunt. “I would suggest that the new banknotes look like a mobile phone because that is how people are used to paying,” he says.

People can submit their views via an online form on the Bank’s website, or by post, by the end of July.

The final decision on what exactly features on a banknote lies with the Bank’s governor.

Additional reporting by Bernadette McCague

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Business

Can AI run a successful vending business? An AI startup tested it out

Published

2 hours ago

July 7, 2025

Linda Becker

Because AI isn’t (yet) able to physically restock the machine, the AI model could email company employees who handled such tasks. Beyond that, however, the AI model, dubbed Claudius for the experiment, was tasked with many of the responsibilities of a traditional operator, including selecting and maintaining inventory, setting prices and maximizing profit.

The upshot: “If Anthropic were deciding today to expand into the in-office vending market, we would not hire Claudius,” the company wrote in its blog.

The experiment showed that while the AI model was effective at tasks such as identifying suppliers, adapting to users’ requests and “jailbreak resistance,” as Anthropic employees tried to trick Claudius into stock sensitive items, Claudius failed as a convenience service operator because it ignored profitable opportunities, instructed customers to make payments at a Venmo address it had imagined (instead of the one created), sold products at a loss, offered excessive discounts and mismanaged inventory.

Although version one of Project Vend wasn’t successful at the bottom line, Anthropic predicts that AI middle managers will come to pass. “It’s worth remembering that the AI won’t have to be perfect to be adopted; it will just have to be competitive with human performance at a lower cost in some cases,” the company wrote in its blog.

Read the full story here.

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Business

Suntory Global Spirits chooses Globant to build a Commercial Insights AI Agent and unlock Business Intelligence at Scale

Published

3 hours ago

July 7, 2025

The Editors

Suntory Global Spirits chooses Globant to build a Commercial Insights AI Agent and unlock Business Intelligence at Scale

PR Newswire

NEW YORK, July 7, 2025

Globant is partnering with Suntory Global Spirits to build a generative AI-powered Commercial Insights Agent
With the Agent, Suntory Global Spirits employees can access data insights and self-service intelligence, speeding up decision-making across product development, marketing, sales and strategy

NEW YORK, July 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Globant (NYSE: GLOB), a digitally native company focused on reinventing businesses through innovative technology solutions, today announced a reinvention partnership with Suntory Global Spirits, the world leader in premium spirits, to build and deploy a generative AI-powered Commercial Insights Agent. By compressing days of work into seconds and supporting real-time decision-making for sales, marketing, and strategy, Globant’s Commercial Insights Agent is transforming operations for the beverage company.

The AI-powered agent can interpret complex business questions across dashboards, reports, and unstructured documentation for Suntory Global Spirits, eliminating the need for manual insight requests. By automating insight retrieval, the Commercial Insights Agent reduces operating costs tied to traditional business intelligence workflows and significantly reduces time-to-action. What once required multiple cycles of back-and-forth between business and analytics teams can now be executed on demand, freeing up employees to focus on higher-value strategic tasks.

“Our work with Suntory Global Spirits exemplifies how visionary companies can harness the power of agentic and generative AI to fundamentally transform the way they operate,” said Santiago Noziglia, Retail, CPG and Automotive AI Studio CEO at Globant. “The Commercial Insights Agent is more than a productivity tool; it’s a strategic enabler that redefines how teams access knowledge, make decisions, and unlock growth. Together, we’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when building an AI-powered enterprise.”

Additional benefits of the Commercial Insights Agent include:

Self-serve decision support at scale: Teams at Suntory Global Spirits, especially across marketing, sales and product management, can independently access data insights, ask questions, or generate reports without bottlenecks or dependencies on other teams.
Contextual recommendations powered by GenAI: The Commercial Insights Agent is trained on internal data to provide contextual GenAI recommendations that speed up decision-making.
AI Agent foundation: The Commercial Insights Agent is just the beginning for Suntory Global Spirits, which can now use the agent as a template for new use cases across brand planning, commercial forecasting and innovation pipelines.

To learn more about Globant’s AI-powered tools, visit https://www.globant.com/enterprise-ai.

About Globant

At Globant, we create the digitally-native products that people love. We bridge the gap between businesses and consumers through technology and creativity, leveraging our expertise in AI. We dare to digitally transform organizations and strive to delight their customers.

We have more than 31,100 employees and are present in 36 countries across 5 continents, working for companies like Google, Electronic Arts, and Santander, among others.
We were named a Worldwide Leader in AI Services (2023) and a Worldwide Leader in Media Consultation, Integration, and Business Operations Cloud Service Providers (2024) by IDC MarketScape report.
We are the fastest-growing IT brand and the 5th strongest IT brand globally (2024), according to Brand Finance.
We were featured as a business case study at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.
We are active members of The Green Software Foundation (GSF) and the Cybersecurity Tech Accord.

Contact: pr@globant.com
Sign up to get first dibs on press news and updates.
For more information, visit www.globant.com.

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Business

AI Company Buys Bitcoin Miner in $9 Billion Deal to Expand Data Power

Published

3 hours ago

July 7, 2025

CPI

AI cloud provider CoreWeave announced it will acquire bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $9 billion, according to Reuters.

As AI workloads continue to surge, energy-hungry data centers have become a crucial asset. Firms like CoreWeave, which began as a crypto miner and later transitioned into AI infrastructure, are aggressively expanding their access to power and physical computing capacity. Per Reuters, the acquisition will give CoreWeave control of Core Scientific’s 1.3 gigawatts of contracted power and its development pipeline, a major boost in the race to scale AI operations.

Under the terms of the deal, Core Scientific shareholders will receive 0.1235 shares of newly issued CoreWeave stock for each Core Scientific share they hold. The offer values Core Scientific at $20.40 per share—a 66% premium over the stock’s price before deal discussions became public in late June, Reuters noted.

Despite the premium, Core Scientific’s stock dropped 22% in early trading Monday, while CoreWeave, which is backed by Nvidia, saw its shares decline 4.5%.

The acquisition is expected to help CoreWeave reduce more than $10 billion in projected future lease expenses tied to current site agreements over the next 12 years. The move not only expands CoreWeave’s energy footprint but also signals a broader trend of bitcoin miners diversifying into AI to remain viable in a rapidly shifting tech landscape.

“This acquisition accelerates our strategy to deploy AI and HPC (high-performance computing) workloads at scale,” said CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator, in a statement released alongside the announcement.

Industry analysts see the transaction as a potential inflection point. Gautam Chhugani of Bernstein told Reuters the deal could become a blueprint for other miners looking to reposition themselves in the AI economy. Power access, he emphasized, remains the chief bottleneck for the expansion of AI-focused data centers.

Founded in 2017 as an Ethereum mining operation, CoreWeave exited the crypto mining business following Ethereum’s 2022 shift to a proof-of-stake model, which dramatically reduced miner incentives. Since then, the company has grown rapidly, with revenue surging more than eightfold last year, per its IPO filing.

Source: Reuters

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