Category: Semafor

The News An AI-driven lending platform backed by one of South Africa’s biggest lenders is expanding into two of Africa’s largest credit-starved markets, its CEO told Semafor, betting its machine-learning algorithms can maintain a default rate that is a fraction of traditional commercial banks. Optasia, which made its stock market ...

Liron’s view Six years ago, the signing of the Abraham Accords was dismissed by skeptics as a fragile, fair-weather agreement, bound to shatter at the first sign of Middle Eastern turbulence. Yet, as we mark the latest anniversary of that historic breakthrough — and as I conclude my tenure as ...

Americans are more likely than those living in any other nation to name politics as a leading risk to their safety. One in 10 US adults identified politics as the “greatest source of risk” to their daily safety, according to new Gallup polling, up from 6% who said so in ...

The center-left Searchlight Institute is urging Democrats to abandon Medicare for All legislation and instead work toward universal healthcare in other ways that wouldn’t disrupt private insurance. The Health Care Unity plan, shared first with Semafor, endorses a bigger role for government in healthcare — negotiating drug prices and breaking ...

The Scoop News Corp, the Murdoch family-owned parent company of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, is suing an AI company that describes itself as “the world’s most complete non-Big Tech search engine.” On Tuesday, News Corp announced that it is suing Brave AI, a privacy-focused search ...

Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk sued Eli Lilly on Tuesday, accusing the US drug giant of misleading advertising practices. The lawsuit reflects the companies’ intensifying rivalry in the US weight-loss drug market. Novo argued that Lilly’s ads used outdated comparisons for how much weight users lost using the drugs. The legal ...

The News President Donald Trump is toying with a return to tariff maximalism, deploying a legally dubious negotiating tactic against Canada that promises to again spike Republican lawmakers’ blood pressure. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed Tuesday “to intensify negotiations,” Carney told reporters, before the president imposes 50% ...

Biotech is commanding attention from dealmakers and investors. Pharma companies have acquired 37 biotech firms worth at least $1 billion this year, more than all of 2025, as they race to bolster pipelines before several blockbuster drugs lose their patent protections in the coming years. The Trump administration’s light-touch regulatory ...

The US will scrutinize top Chinese AI models for signs they ripped off American competitors — as Beijing eyes restrictions on overseas access to those same systems. Washington has accused Chinese tech firms of what it calls intellectual property theft through a process called distillation, in which one AI is ...

Indian police briefly detained the country’s top opposition leader and his sister during a protest on Tuesday, as a fresh wave of public outrage puts pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Rahul Gandhi was criticizing the authorities’ use of tear gas and batons on Monday against thousands of protesters ...