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(Reuters) -Stoke Space Technologies said on Wednesday it has raised $510 million in a funding round led by Thomas Tull's US Innovative Technology Fund, to speed up development of the startup's Nova reusable launch vehicles. The round also drew backing from Washington Harbour Partners and General Innovation Capital Partners, and existing investors including 776, Breakthrough Energy, Glade Brook Capital and Toyota Ventures. Earlier this year, the U.S. Space Force awarded Stoke a National Security Space Launch contract, underscoring growing demand for medium-lift launch capacity for defense, including for the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system, the company said. Stoke is developing the fully reusable Nova rocket for frequent, low-cost space launches, backed by funding from the U.S. Space Force, NASA and other partners. (Reporting by Prakhar Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)

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AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Nearly every large company to have introduced AI has incurred some initial financial loss, an EY survey published on Wednesday said, often due to compliance failures, flawed outputs, bias, or disruptions to sustainability goals. Reputational damage or legal problems were less frequently reported. EY, the British business services firm formerly known as Ernst & Young, conducted the anonymised survey among 975 executives overseeing AI at companies with annual sales exceeding $1 billion from around the world in July and August 2025. Total combined losses were estimated at $4.4 billion, with metrics such as revenue growth, cost savings and employee satisfaction trailing expectations. Despite that, the firms polled were still optimistic that AI adoption would ultimately yield significant benefits, EY said. "AI is absolutely improving efficiency and productivity, people are doing more, faster. But the value capture lags because those gains are being reinvested into doing more work, not necessarily into cutting costs or driving immediate revenue, said Joe Depa, EY's Global Chief Innovation Officer, in an email to Reuters. EY's survey was focused on what it terms "Responsible AI" adoption – a series of metrics assessing whether companies have established internal governance policies for AI, communicated clear usage guidelines, and monitored compliance. Companies with more fully developed "Responsible AI" policies reported stronger performance on sales, cost savings, and employee satisfaction metrics, EY said. (Reporting by Toby Sterling, Editing by Louise Heavens)

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) -U.S. tech giant Google announced on Wednesday plans to invest 5 billion euros ($5.80 billion) in Belgium, which the compay said would create a further 300 jobs in the country. Google added the investment would focus on the AI sector and on expanding its data centre campuses in Belgium. Google also announced deals to support the development of new onshore wind farms in Belgium. ($1 = 0.8615 euros) (Reporting by Bart Meijer;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)

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By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -Elon Musk and X Corp have reached a settlement in a lawsuit by four former top executives at Twitter, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, who claim they were not paid $128 million in promised severance pay after Musk acquired the social media company and fired them. The terms of the settlement, which was first announced in a filing in San Francisco federal court last week, were not disclosed. A federal judge on October 1 pushed back filing deadlines and a hearing in the case so the settlement can be finalized.  X in August agreed to settle a separate lawsuit by rank-and-file Twitter employees who lost their jobs during mass layoffs and claimed they were owed $500 million in unpaid severance.  The cases are among a series of legal challenges that Musk, the world's richest person, has faced after he acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, cut more than half of its workforce and renamed it X. X and lawyers for the former Twitter executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The plaintiffs are Agrawal; Ned Segal, Twitter's former chief financial officer; Vijaya Gadde, its former chief legal officer; and Sean Edgett, its former general counsel. The former executives say that Musk falsely accused them of misconduct and forced them out of Twitter after they sued him for attempting to renege on his offer to purchase the company. Musk then denied the executives severance pay they had been promised for years before he acquired Twitter, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs say they each are owed one year's salary and hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of stock options. Musk and X have denied wrongdoing and said the executives were fired over their performance. (Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New YorkEditing by Marguerita Choy)

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By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -Elon Musk and X Corp have reached a settlement in a lawsuit by four former top executives at Twitter, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, who claim they were not paid $128 million in promised severance pay after Musk acquired the social media company and fired them. The terms of the settlement, which was first announced in a filing in San Francisco federal court last week, were not disclosed. A federal judge on October 1 pushed back filing deadlines and a hearing in the case so the settlement can be finalized.  X in August agreed to settle a separate lawsuit by rank-and-file Twitter employees who lost their jobs during mass layoffs and claimed they were owed $500 million in unpaid severance.  The cases are among a series of legal challenges that Musk, the world's richest person, has faced after he acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, cut more than half of its workforce and renamed it X. X and lawyers for the former Twitter executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The plaintiffs are Agrawal; Ned Segal, Twitter's former chief financial officer; Vijaya Gadde, its former chief legal officer; and Sean Edgett, its former general counsel. The former executives say that Musk falsely accused them of misconduct and forced them out of Twitter after they sued him for attempting to renege on his offer to purchase the company. Musk then denied the executives severance pay they had been promised for years before he acquired Twitter, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs say they each are owed one year's salary and hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of stock options. Musk and X have denied wrongdoing and said the executives were fired over their performance. (Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New YorkEditing by Marguerita Choy)

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) -U.S. tech giant Google announced on Wednesday plans to invest 5 billion euros ($5.80 billion) in Belgium, which the compay said would create a further 300 jobs in the country. Google added the investment would focus on the AI sector and on expanding its data centre campuses in Belgium. Google also announced deals to support the development of new onshore wind farms in Belgium. ($1 = 0.8615 euros) (Reporting by Bart Meijer;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) -U.S. tech giant Google announced on Wednesday plans to invest 5 billion euros ($5.80 billion) in Belgium, which the compay said would create a further 300 jobs in the country. Google added the investment would focus on the AI sector and on expanding its data centre campuses in Belgium. Google also announced deals to support the development of new onshore wind farms in Belgium. ($1 = 0.8615 euros) (Reporting by Bart Meijer;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)

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By John Revill and Anton Bridge ZURICH/TOKYO (Reuters) -SoftBank Group has agreed to buy the robotics business of Swiss engineering group ABB in a $5.4 billion deal, as the Japanese investor forges ahead with a strategy to fuse robotics and artificial intelligence. The acquisition, announced on Wednesday, is the latest by founder and CEO Masayoshi Son to establish Softbank as a core player in the development of artificial intelligence. SoftBank pushed into humanoid robotics a decade ago with its Pepper robot but later scaled back its ambitions. Its recent investments in the sector include Berkshire Grey and AutoStore, and it also led a $40 billion funding round in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and in March bought chip design company Ampere for $6.5 billion. SOFTBANK'S STRATEGY: MERGING AI WITH ROBOTICS "SoftBank's next frontier is Physical AI," Son said in a statement. The deal means ABB has abandoned its original decision to spin off and separately list the industrial automation business, which competes with Japan's Fanuc and Yaskawa, as well as Germany's Kuka in making factory robots. The decision is the first major move under ABB CEO Morten Wierod, who took charge last year, and follows years of struggling sales and falling profitability for the robots business. ABB's robotics division, which employs 7,000 people, generated sales of $2.3 billion last year, equivalent to 7% of ABB's total revenues. But the company saw limited crossover with the rest of its business, which focuses primarily on electrification and automation. ABB announced to shareholders in April its decision to spin off robotics but decided to sell instead because the SoftBank deal provided money immediately, Wierod told Reuters. Following the deal's announcement, Switzerland's Zuercher Kantonalbank said it had expected a valuation of slightly less than $4 billion for the robotics business under the planned spin-off. ABB shares opened 2% higher in Zurich after the sale announcement, while SoftBank's shares did not move significantly, ending the day down 2%. ABB TO FOCUS ON ELECTRIFICATION, AUTOMATION, ACQUISITIONS "We always said that robotics is a market with much higher volatility. And that's what we've seen over the years, both when it comes to growth, but also margins," Wierod said. "So it is a bit of a different market than, say, the rest of ABB today, which is focusing on electrification and automation." The transaction is expected to close in mid- to late-2026 and will generate cash proceeds of roughly $5.3 billion, ABB said. The money will be spent on developing new technology and production capacity in electrification and automation, and could also fund new acquisitions, Wierod said. "We do have firepower to also do bigger acquisitions, so we're not excluding bigger deals," Wierod said. (Reporting by John Revill and Anton Bridge; Editing by Miranda Murray, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Joe Bavier)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By John Revill and Anton Bridge ZURICH/TOKYO (Reuters) -SoftBank Group has agreed to buy the robotics business of Swiss engineering group ABB in a $5.4 billion deal, as the Japanese investor forges ahead with a strategy to fuse robotics and artificial intelligence. The acquisition, announced on Wednesday, is the latest by founder and CEO Masayoshi Son to establish Softbank as a core player in the development of artificial intelligence. SoftBank pushed into humanoid robotics a decade ago with its Pepper robot but later scaled back its ambitions. Its recent investments in the sector include Berkshire Grey and AutoStore, and it also led a $40 billion funding round in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and in March bought chip design company Ampere for $6.5 billion. SOFTBANK'S STRATEGY: MERGING AI WITH ROBOTICS "SoftBank's next frontier is Physical AI," Son said in a statement. The deal means ABB has abandoned its original decision to spin off and separately list the industrial automation business, which competes with Japan's Fanuc and Yaskawa, as well as Germany's Kuka in making factory robots. The decision is the first major move under ABB CEO Morten Wierod, who took charge last year, and follows years of struggling sales and falling profitability for the robots business. ABB's robotics division, which employs 7,000 people, generated sales of $2.3 billion last year, equivalent to 7% of ABB's total revenues. But the company saw limited crossover with the rest of its business, which focuses primarily on electrification and automation. ABB announced to shareholders in April its decision to spin off robotics but decided to sell instead because the SoftBank deal provided money immediately, Wierod told Reuters. Following the deal's announcement, Switzerland's Zuercher Kantonalbank said it had expected a valuation of slightly less than $4 billion for the robotics business under the planned spin-off. ABB shares opened 2% higher in Zurich after the sale announcement, while SoftBank's shares did not move significantly, ending the day down 2%. ABB TO FOCUS ON ELECTRIFICATION, AUTOMATION, ACQUISITIONS "We always said that robotics is a market with much higher volatility. And that's what we've seen over the years, both when it comes to growth, but also margins," Wierod said. "So it is a bit of a different market than, say, the rest of ABB today, which is focusing on electrification and automation." The transaction is expected to close in mid- to late-2026 and will generate cash proceeds of roughly $5.3 billion, ABB said. The money will be spent on developing new technology and production capacity in electrification and automation, and could also fund new acquisitions, Wierod said. "We do have firepower to also do bigger acquisitions, so we're not excluding bigger deals," Wierod said. (Reporting by John Revill and Anton Bridge; Editing by Miranda Murray, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Joe Bavier)

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(Reuters) -Salesforce said on Wednesday it would spend $1 billion in Mexico over the next five years, as the cloud software provider looks to expand its operations and drive artificial intelligence adoption. The company, which began operating in Mexico in 2006, said the investment will fund a new Mexico City office and a Global Delivery Center to support customers across the Americas. "This $1 billion investment is a commitment to Mexico as a key market for AI-powered growth," CEO Marc Benioff said. Mexico is rapidly emerging as a tech services hub, drawing investments from technology companies, particularly in the AI domain due to the country's proximity to the U.S. and growing talent base. Microsoft announced last year that it will spend $1.3 billion over the next three years to build up its infrastructure in Mexico for cloud computing and AI. Salesforce said Mexico is a growth market for the company, with a customer base including organizations such as Xcaret, Grupo Bafar and FEMSA. "This investment will not only create jobs and build AI skills within Mexico but will also position our country as a key consultancy hub for markets across Latin America on AI agents and more," Mexico's Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard said. Last month, Salesforce forecast third-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates. The company had also announced a $20 billion increase to its existing share buyback program. Salesforce has rolled out AI across its cloud services at a rapid pace, culminating in the 2024 commercial launch of Agentforce — its AI agent platform designed to automate tasks, streamline operations and help lift margins. (Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

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