FTI Consulting News Bytes – 27 February 2026

FTI Consulting News Bytes

This week, reports emerged that Meta has agreed to buy 6 gigawatts worth of AI chips from AMD in a deal valued at more than $100 billion. In the UK, self-driving start-up Wayve announced it has raised $1.2bn in new funding from car makers and Big Tech, valuing the company at $8.6bn as it prepares to launch its robotaxi service in London later this year. In the world of streaming, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ are expected to come under “enhanced regulation” by Ofcom, making the streaming giants subject to the same scrutiny as traditional broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV. Elsewhere, we discuss the big question: Can AI liberate us from the tyranny of email? And finally, we look at media groups uniting, including The Guardian, the BBC, Financial Times, Sky News, and Telegraph Media to tackle AI scraping of journalism.

This week’s news

Meta agrees multibillion-dollar chip deal with AMD

Meta has agreed to buy 6 gigawatts worth of artificial intelligence computing power from Advanced Micro Devices in a deal valued at more than $100 billion that could result in Meta owning as much as 10% of AMD’s stock. Under the agreement, Meta will buy enough of AMD’s latest chips, known as the M1450 series, to power data centres using up to 6 gigawatts of computing power over the next five years. Meta is expected to deploy the first gigawatt starting later this year. According to The Wall Street Journal, the deal represents a coup for AMD in its effort to challenge Nvidia in the market for selling graphics processing units (GPUs) – the microchips powering the AI boom. 

Wayve valued at $8.6bn in global race for driverless cars

UK self-driving start-up Wayve has raised $1.2bn in new funding from investors including Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis and Nissan, as it gears up to launch its first robotaxi service in London later this year. The deal values Wayve at $8.6bn, including the new funds, ranking it among the UK’s most valuable startups. The Financial Times reports that the round marks the first time Wayve has raised capital from the automotive industry, after signing its first commercial partnership (with Nissan) last year. Speaking to The Times, Wayve CEO Alex Kendall said “in the future every vehicle is going to be autonomous” and added that “this year we are going to see the first commercial exposure of the technology and then a quick period of maturation and ramping up in the coming years.”

Ofcom to regulate streaming platforms

Sky News reports that the UK Government will bring major streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ under broadcast-style regulation for the first time. Under the Media Act, video-on-demand services with more than 500,000 UK users will be designated “Tier 1” and subject to a new standards code enforced by Ofcom, covering impartiality, harmful content and accessibility; viewers will also be able to lodge complaints directly with the watchdog. The move reflects shifting viewing habits, with two-thirds of households subscribing to at least one major streaming service. As traditional TV fades, regulation is finally beginning to catch up with the power and reach of streaming.

AI’s new frontier: Your inbox

Digital Marketing Chief, Maani Safa, says AI has cut his weekly inbox clear-out from hours to under 30 minutes, using a customised ChatGPT bot to scan and summarise messages before drafting replies, which he refines with writing assistant, Whispr Flow. The Financial Times writes that his experience reflects a broader push to tame email overload; Google has rolled out Gemini across Gmail, while Microsoft has embedded Copilot into Outlook to prioritise messages and schedule tasks, with start-ups such as Fyxer also attracting significant funding. This task application for AI, it is argued, will reduce “drudgery” and reclaim fragmented workdays, but many people remain cautious about handing over something as personal as communication to a bot. So, as email becomes the new testing ground for automation, the question persists: can we ever truly escape the inbox?

UK media unites over AI 

A coalition of UK media groups including the The Guardian, the BBC, Financial Times, Sky News and Telegraph Media Group have launched an initiative to ensure AI companies pay for journalism used to train their systems. The group, Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR), is calling for global licensing frameworks to stop content being “scraped, copied and reused” without permission or payment. In an open letter, senior executives said original reporting and archives have become “foundational training material” for AI models, weakening the industry’s economic foundations. The coalition also plans to develop tools and shared standards to track usage, improve transparency around AI training data, and ensure publishers retain control and receive fair compensation to protect the future of high-quality journalism.

Top Tweets of the Week

• Reuters Tech News tweets: “India’s technology sector to expand 6% to $315 billion in fiscal 2026, industry body says.”
• The Financial Times tweets: “US-UK tech deal cautiously restarts with focus on nuclear projects.”
• @Robohub, a page focused on robot news, tweets: “NVIDIA researchers have released SONIC, a generalist humanoid controller that is now open-source. 🤖 This model scales parameters and data to provide a unified foundation for whole-body control across various inputs like VR teleoperation and human video.”

Number of the week

12% The number of US teenagers who turn to AI for emotional support, according to TechCrunch.