Philippa Kaur

The Lucky Saint in central London looks like any other pub. Big wooden barrels double as tables. Bartenders pull pints. But this isn’t a regular watering-hole. Though booze is on offer, about 15% of sales are of Lucky Saint, the non-alcoholic beer brand that owns the place. Other patrons merrily sip alcohol-free cocktails and sparkling wine. “Go back a couple of years and people used to cleanse in January,” says Nate Roberts, one of the managers, “but now we see this 365 days per year.” More

AT THE HEIGHT of the cold war, the Netherlands passed a law allowing the state to take over companies for security purposes. After gathering dust for 73 years, the law has at last been put to use. On September 30th the Ministry of Economic Affairs quietly took control of Nexperia, a semiconductor firm headquartered in Nijmegen that had been bought in 2019 by Zhang Xuezheng, a Chinese entrepreneur. A week later an Amsterdam business court suspended Mr Zhang (known by his nickname “Wing”) as CEO, replacing him with a Dutch interim chief. The moves were made public by the Dutch press on October 12th. They are among the most aggressive steps yet by European governments to protect strategic industries from China. More

Over the past three years, which company in the S&P 500 index has enjoyed the biggest rise in its share price? Nvidia, a mighty maker of artificial-intelligence chips? Only third. Palantir, a star of data analytics? That would have been right—until last month. The winner is AppLovin, a digital-ads firm that entered the index only on September 22nd. Since October 2022 its share price has climbed more than 30-fold (see chart). At $200bn, it is worth more than Uber. AppLovin’s boosters call it the TikTok of the mobile-advertising world, powered by a super-smart algorithm. Short-sellers call it a house of cards. More

THE YEAR 1984 is immortalised in tech circles for the introduction of Apple’s Macintosh computers. It was also when the first TED conference—which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design—was held in Monterey, California. And just as the Mac became a totem of the digital desktop, TED became the sharpest, coolest name in elite events. More

“Astounding triumphs”, from stopping climate change to founding space colonies, will be made possible by artificial intelligence, Sam Altman has written. The head of OpenAI is not the only tech boss with high hopes. AI is the “defining technology of our time”, believes Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s boss. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta has argued that AI will enable the discovery of “things that aren’t imaginable today”. More

WHEN HE FIRES his trade weapons at China, President Donald Trump often appears to shoot from the hip. Officials in Beijing, by contrast, are said to deliberate much more, convening high-level meetings among ministries and regulators to determine their country’s next steps. More

America’s first merger wave began in the 1890s and forged giants in steel, oil and railroads. A second preceded the crash of 1929. Executives assembled conglomerates in the 1960s; private-equity firms dismantled them in the 1980s. The bursting of the internet bubble, the financial crisis and higher interest rates ended takeover waves in 2000, 2007 and 2022. Now an eighth is gathering strength. Like its predecessors, it is energised by technological promise, enthusiastic credit markets, willing politicians and striving bosses. More

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