FTI Consulting News Bytes – 29 August 2025

FTI Consulting News Bytes

In today’s edition of News Bytes, we start by looking into some of the most recent copyright infringement cases being levelled against AI companies, with Anthropic’s resolution of a class action lawsuit just the tip of the iceberg in this week’s news. We then take a look at how the EU is standing by its landmark digital rules, despite threats of retaliatory tariffs from President Donald Trump. Turning back to AI, we delve into the UK government’s significant investment in AI related projects this year. We then look into Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN, who announced the launch of HUMAIN Chat this week, a next-generation Arabic conversational AI app. Finally, with funding season on the horizon, we turn to Tech Crunch’s take on the twelve European startups that have already become unicorns this year.

This week’s news

The AI copyright infringement wars continue

AI company Anthropic has resolved a class action lawsuit from a group of US authors who argued that its AI training infringed on their copyrights, marking the first settlement in a string of major industry lawsuits. Reuters notes that the California federal judge overseeing the case said in a June ruling that Anthropic might have illegally downloaded as many as seven million books from pirate websites. The Anthropic lawsuit is far from an isolated incident of a copyright infringement case being levelled against an AI company. Just this week, Nikkei, the owner of the Financial Times, and  The Asahi Shimbun have accused Perplexity AI of “free-riding” on journalists’ articles in a practice that risks “ultimately threatening the core of democracy”. According to The Times, the publishers are seeking an injunction to ensure Perplexity stops reproducing their content and deletes all existing data. This comes as The Telegraph reports that the owner of the Daily Mail has called for a crackdown on Google’s AI after warning that early tests of the company’s “AI overviews” were causing web traffic to fall by as much as 89%.

EU stands firm on digital regulations

The EU has said it would keep moving forward with its landmark digital rules despite President Donald Trump threatening retaliatory tariffs against countries whose taxes or laws target US tech companies. In a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform, the President had declared that he would “stand up” to countries that “attack our incredible American Tech Companies”, adding that Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation and Digital Markets Regulation are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology”. In response, Paula Pinho, a spokesperson for the European Commission, commented “it is the sovereign right of the EU and its member states to regulate economic activities on our territory which are consistent with our democratic values”, adding “this is also why this was not part of our [trade] agreement with the US”. The Financial Times notes that the US had pressed for changes to the EU’s digital regulations as part of the trade talks, but Brussels “resisted the pressure” from the US government.

Whitehall’s £573 million efficiency push 

New figures from government procurement data provider Tussell have revealed that the UK government has handed out £573 million worth of government contracts for AI related projects this year, far exceeding the total amount awarded for all of 2024 – which totalled £468 million. The contracts are indicative of a major push by Whitehall to harness AI for streamlining public services, cutting waste, and driving economic growth and efficiency. The contracts, awarded up to the 15th July, cover a wide range of AI applications, including genAI, predictive data analytics, automation and image recognition. The Financial Times highlighted Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s vows to use AI to “streamline the civil service and reduce government waste”, pointing to ministers’ comments in March that the deployment of new technology can potentially save Whitehall at least £45 billion each year.

HUMAIN’s AI chatbot debut

HUMAIN, a full-stack AI company wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund, announced the launch of HUMAIN Chat this week – a next-generation Arabic conversational AI app powered by ALLAM 34B, HUMAIN’s flagship Arabic large language model. Speaking to CNBC, CEO Tareq Amin highlighted that HUMAIN is using its own technology to cater to Saudi consumers through an understanding of cultural nuances, reiterating that HUMAIN is second in the world in terms of accuracy, as well as flagging that the platform will continue to learn. With over 120 AI specialists, including 35 PhD holders, with a 50/50 gender ratio, HUMAIN has developed this model from the ground up.  Available on web, iOS, and Android, HUMAIN Chat is launching first in Saudi Arabia as a national milestone, with regional rollout across the Middle East and global expansion to follow soon.

Fairytale start to 2025 for Europe’s new unicorns

As funding season is about to restart in Europe after a lull over the summer, Tech Crunch has looked at the twelve European startups that have already become unicorns this year. The list includes Tekever, Europe’s leading provider of AI-driven Autonomous Systems, which raised a funding round in May that confirmed its >£1bn valuation and is set to fund the company’s plans to invest £400 million into a UK development plan spanning five years. Other tech companies on the list include Swedish AI coding startup Lovable, which raised a $200 million Series A led by Accel at a $1.8 billion valuation in July, and Quantum Systems, which became a unicorn in May upon raising a €160M Series C to accelerate its global expansion, scale production, and advance its autonomous drone systems, software, and AI. The outlet suggests that if all goes well with the Autumn funding season, Europe could see dozens (plural) more unicorns in its midst after a strong start to the year. 

Top Tweets of the Week

• Eric Berger, Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica: It’s been nine very difficult months for the Starship program, but today’s test flight was a huge step forward. Congratulations to the many thousands of engineers and technicians who made that magic happen today.
• Mark Kleinman, Sky News City Editor:  Revealed: Streetbees, an AI-powered market research firm backed by the venture arm of The Guardian, and once valued at $200m, has collapsed into insolvency after efforts to find a buyer proved unsuccessful; its entire workforce has been made redundant. https://t.co/0icOignw7a
• Steve Dinneen, Editor of City AM The Magazine, and City AM’s Life&Style section: I got a pitch about warring London chicken shops that turned out to be written by AI – so I chased down the culprit, veering from Chicago to Nairobi in search of the rogue AI reporter. This might be the wildest story I’ve ever worked on – for @CityAM https://t.co/9xEFWOqxYn 

Number of the week

$9bn The amount Google is planning to invest in data centres in Virginia through 2026 to enhance cloud and AI infrastructure across the state, according to Bloomberg.