Good morning and welcome to FirstFT. In today’s newsletter:
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Samsung in talks to invest in Mistral at €20bn valuation
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Zelenskyy replaces top Ukraine general after mass protests
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UK fintech boss tried to set up arms deals with Wirecard’s Marsalek
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Britain’s biggest university is a private company
You can listen to today’s top news stories in the FT News Briefing podcast.
We start with a tech exclusive. Samsung is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of euros in the AI start-up Mistral, a move that would bolster the French company’s efforts to become a leading alternative to US technology groups.
What to know: The South Korean conglomerate is discussing an investment as part of a broader fundraising round that could value Mistral at roughly €20bn, according to people familiar with the matter.
Samsung, which had previously backed the group through its venture arm, could invest about €1bn in the new round, one of the people said.
Why it matters: The talks reflect a broader push by AI developers to secure partnerships with semiconductor suppliers as the industry grapples with surging demand that far outstrips the supply of computing power.
Mistral is seeking to capitalise on growing interest from European and Asian companies, as well as governments, for alternatives to US AI models, after the Trump administration blocked foreign access to Anthropic’s latest Mythos and Fable models last month. Ivan Levingston and Tim Bradshaw have the full story.
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Security breach: OpenAI has admitted that an “agent” hacked into the start-up Hugging Face by itself, in one of the first public examples of a cyber attack by an AI system acting outside human control.
Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:
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Economic data: The UK releases inflation data for June.
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Ukraine war: EU ambassadors meet for a final effort to reach a consensus on new economic sanctions against Russia before the summer recess. National capitals have refused to support measures that could damage their corporate champions.
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Results: AkzoNobel, Alphabet, AT&T, Dassault Aviation, IBM, Moncler, Moody’s Q2, Mulberry, Philip Morris International, Santander and Tesla report earnings.
Five more top stories
1. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has chosen Mykhailo Drapatyi as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces and dismissed controversial general and close ally Oleksandr Syrsky in the biggest shake-up of the country’s military leadership since 2024.
2. The head of an ethical fintech backed by Standard Chartered and marketed as “people and planet first” previously sought to set up arms deals with Jan Marsalek, the Wirecard executive who fled to Russia following the German company’s collapse.
3. Europe’s June heatwave erased more than €2bn from the value of its grain crop, with France and Hungary bearing the brunt of the damage, according to new analysis. Susannah Savage has the full report.
4. Donald Trump has threatened a new escalation of the Iran war, warning that the US will soon attack a heavily fortified nuclear site. The US launched its 11th straight night of strikes on Iran yesterday as part of a flare-up of the conflict that has driven oil to $91 a barrel.
5. Exclusive: The Trump administration has collected more than $13bn in revenues from Venezuelan oil sales this year, according to FT calculations, but has said almost nothing about what has happened to the money. Read the full story.
Visual story
The Sudanese city of El Obeid has come under intensifying drone attack as the Rapid Support Forces battle to prise control of central Sudan from the army, in what international officials warn could mark a grim next chapter of the civil war.
The city, which has a population of half a million and an additional 100,000 internally displaced people, lies six hours by road from the capital Khartoum.
The UN and western countries have repeatedly warned of the threat of massacres on a par with those in the city of El Fasher in Darfur — which the RSF paramilitaries over-ran last October — should the paramilitaries seek to capture El Obeid.
Read more on the battle that could lead to Sudan’s next catastrophe.
We’re also reading . . .
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Neo-mercantilist era: In terms of economic size, self-sufficiency and monopoly power, China is edging out the US and the EU. Martin Wolf looks at what this means for the rest of the world.
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Insider information: Without tough enforcement, prediction platforms provide fertile ground for market manipulation, writes Brooke Masters.
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Burnham cabinet profile: New energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has previously called for the UK’s net zero target to be accelerated.
How will Andy Burnham govern? Join us tomorrow for a live Ask an Expert Q&A with Jennifer Williams, Stephen Bush and Robert Shrimsley.
Chart of the day
Though few have heard of it, Global Banking School is now the biggest teacher of full-time undergraduates in the UK. GBS is not a university but a private company contracted by universities around England to teach students who may never set foot on their own campuses. Read our deep dive on the UK’s franchised education providers.
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