Business

October 9th 2025

OpenAI was at the centre of another big deal, agreeing to buy chips worth tens of billions of dollars from AMD and potentially take a 10% stake in the company; AMD’s share price surged by over 40%. The transaction will see OpenAI deploy AMD’s graphics- processing units to expand its data-centre capacity, starting with AMD’s forthcoming MI450 chips in late 2026.

SoftBank agreed to buy the robotics business of ABB, a Swedish-Swiss engineering company, for $5.4bn. A long-time believer in the future of robots, Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s boss, said its “next frontier is physical AI”.

With stocks soaring in anything related to AI, the Bank of England warned that “the risk of a sharp market correction has increased”. The central bank noted that the appreciation in the share prices of America’s big technology companies has augmented concentration within stockmarket indices, with just the top five members of the S&P 500 accounting for nearly 30% of its market share. This suggests that an AI bubble could burst if the future profits that are predicted for the technology do not materialise.

Fifth Third, an American bank with a strong presence in the Midwest, struck a $10.9bn deal to acquire Comerica, which operates throughout the Sunbelt, creating the country’s ninth-largest lender by assets. Comerica had been under pressure from an activist investor to put itself up for sale.