UK government bond prices are rising as the City waits to hear from prime minister Andy Burnham later today.
Burnham is due to address the Labour party conference at 2pm, and there are reports that the prime minister could signal the end of the pensions triple lock, by suggesting it should be reviewed in the party’s next manifesto.
This could help to fund a new social care system, which Labour insiders hope to sell to the public before the next election.
Last weekend, the PM told the Guardian that it was “crucial” to have fiscal stability – remarks which could reassure investors that it won’t embark on a reckless borrowing splurge.
This morning, the yield on 10-year UK bonds is down 4.4 basis points (0.044 of a percentage point) at 5.385%. Thirty-year gilt yields are down 4bps at 5.878%, both below the multi-year highs set this month.
Shorter-dated borrowing costs are down too, with two-year bond yields down 4.6bps to 4.886%.
Updated
AstraZeneca hits two-month high after Summit deal
Shares in AstraZeneca have jumped by 2% at the start of stock market trading in London, hitting a two-month high.
That puts them among the top risers on the London Stock Exchange, along with a group of mining companies including Antofagasta (+1.9%) and Anglo American (+1.75%)
Updated
And in a FURTHER reminder of those dangers…. OpenAI has apologised to Australians for hacking a government website this summer
In a blog post released on Tuesday, OpenAI said it should have handled its response to the attack on Medicare better, saying:
“In June, during internal training and evaluation our models accessed Australian government websites in ways they were not authorised to.
We also should have handled our response better. We are sorry and working to do better in the future.”
OpenAI scraps release of new model over safety concerns in internal testing
In another example of the risks of AI, OpenAI is scrapping the release of GPT-6.1 Astra, a next-generation model planned for an October debut, over safety concerns raised by researchers during internal testing.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the model, expected to appear in ChatGPT and Codex, was designed to handle more complex tasks without human assistance.
However, it has failed OpenAI’s ‘alignment tests’, which assess whether a system follows human intent:
-
The model showed more deception than its predecessor, including at times failing to accurately disclose actions it had or had not taken.
-
It also had problems with “scope authorization”, pushing ahead with tasks without requesting user permission and sometimes attempting to use external tools or services when doing so could be unsafe.
The Financial Times have also scrutinised Anthropic’s IPO prospectus, and report that the Claude maker also provided investors with a clearer picture of the challenging economics of building state of the art AI models.
Anthropic said it plans to spend $518bn on cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations in the coming years to support its rapid growth.
The AI lab’s backers are confident Anthropic can list at a valuation of over $2tn, more than double the level achieved in its last funding round in May and beyond the $1.78tn achieved by Elon Musk’s SpaceX in June. They point to its extraordinary growth rate to justify their bullishness.
Updated
AstraZeneca invests $2bn in Summit in cancer drug tie-up
Pharmaceuticals news: AstraZeneca is investing $2bn in biopharmaceutical oncology company Summit Therapeutics, as part of a tie-up to jointly develop and test anti-cancer drugs.
Announcing the deal, AstraZeneca says the two companies will collaborate on a series of studies testing their cancer treatments together.
They hope to accelerate the development of ivonescimab, a next-generation cancer treatment licensed by Summit which stops tumor growth and help the body’s immune system attack cancer.
Ivonescimab works by simultaneously blocking PD-1, which helps cancer evade the immune system, and VEGF, which tumors use to grow blood vessels, helping the immune system better find and attack cancer cells.
Susan Galbraith, executive vice president for oncology haematology R&D at AstraZeneca, explains:
“A core pillar of our oncology strategy is to broaden the reach of our ADC portfolio as the backbone of treatment across tumour types with combinations alongside next-generation immunotherapies.
Bispecifics targeting PD-1 and VEGF are rapidly advancing in development and have the potential to improve on current immunotherapies, particularly in lung, breast and gastrointestinal cancers. This opportunity to combine ivonescimab with AstraZeneca’s ADC portfolio, including with Sone-Ve, could enable new regimens that raise the bar for patients with cancer across the treatment landscape.”
Under the deal, AstraZeneca is paying $2bn to receive 12% of Summit’s shares.
Updated
Introduction: Anthropic warns AI may pose 'existential risks to humanity' in IPO filing
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
Anthropic’s plan to float on the stock market has provided a sobering insight into the risks that AI poses, even as it attempts to pull off a massive share sale to the public.
Reuters has taken a look at Anthropic’s IPO prospectus – the legal document that outlines a company’s financial details before it floats on the stock market – and found that it includes a warning that advanced AI could be a “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.”
The filing explains:
“Our development of highly advanced models, platforms, and applications and expansion of use cases could further increase the risk that our models cause harm.”
And following a flurry of stories about AI models going rogue, Anthropic flags that its models could conceal information and exhibit behavior resembling blackmail, and resist efforts to shut them down.
It cautions:
“Potential model awareness of our evaluation efforts creates a significant limitation on our ability to assess model safety.”
Such warnings appear across 80 pages (!) devoted to risk factors in the prospectus, almost a third of the document.
Despite these warnings, Anthropic – which created the Claude chatbot – is aiming for one of the largest stock market flotations ever, which could value it at more than $2tn.
The IPO prospectus shows that Anthropic’s revenue grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6bn – with nearly a quarter coming from just two customers.
But… its operating loss swelled to over $8bn last year, from nearly $3bn in 2024.
The IPO is expected to take place after the US midterm elections in November, and will be a serious test of investor interest, and concern, around AI.
Yesterday, a group of senior AI executives – and two of the “godfathers” of the technology – warned governments to prepare for an AI “intelligence explosion”.
The agenda
-
9.30am BST: Bank of England mortgage approvals data
-
10am BST: UK to auction a 2036 government bond
-
1.30pm BST: Canadian GDP report for July
-
2pm BST: US house price data
-
3pm BST: US JOLTS survey of job vacancies
-
4.30pm: Bank of England policymaker Alan Taylor gives a speech
Updated
