Industry
SoftBank swings to profit on valuation boost from OpenAI bet
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son (left) and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attend an event in Tokyo in February 2025. SoftBank's investment gain on OpenAI stood at an estimated $19.8 billion as of December. SoftBank Group sprang back to a quarterly profit after investment gains from OpenAI neared $20 billion, a promising start for one of CEO Masayoshi Son's signature gambles alongside ByteDance and Alibaba Group Holding. The Tokyo-based company has invested about $34.6 billion in OpenAI, accumulating an 11% stake as of December, and has been in talks to invest as much as $30 billion more in a round that would value the startup at about $750 billion to $830 billion. As of December, SoftBank's investment gain on OpenAI stood at $19.8 billion, the company said Thursday.
Catfishing a conman back on dating app days after jail release
Within days of being released from his seventh prison term for romance fraud, Raymond McDonald was back on a dating app looking for his next victim. Over more than 20 years he had racked up 58 convictions, mostly for fraud and theft, while telling lies on an industrial scale and taking thousands of pounds from women for holidays and weddings which were never going to happen. This time when he went looking, the BBC was waiting. He thought he was having a date with Kaye, but instead found himself being approached by a BBC reporter and camera crew. He had met Kaye online and, calling himself Rob, told her he was a deep-sea diver looking for a wife.