06/06/2025

FRIDAY | JUNE 6, 2025

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BIZ & FINANCE

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Reddit sues Anthropic over content use SAN FRANCISCO: Social media outlet Reddit filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, accusing the startup of illegally scraping millions of user comments to train its Claude chatbot without permission or compensation. The lawsuit in a California state court represents the latest front in the growing battle between content providers and AI companies over the use of data to train increasingly sophisticated language models that power the generative AI revolution. Anthropic, valued at US$61.5 billion (RM260 billion) and heavily backed by Amazon, was founded in 2021 by former executives from OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. The firm, known for its Claude chatbot and artificial intelligence models, positions itself as focused on AI safety and responsible development. “This case is about the two faces of Anthropic – the public face that attempts to ingratiate itself into the consumer’s consciousness with claims of righteousness and respect for boundaries and the law, and the private face that ignores any rules that interfere with its attempts to further line its pockets,” the suit said. According to the complaint, Anthropic has been training its models on Reddit content since at least December 2021, with CEO Dario Amodei co-authoring research papers that specifically identified high-quality content for data training. The lawsuit alleges that despite Anthropic’s public claims that it had blocked its bots from accessing Reddit, the company’s automated systems continued to harvest Reddit’s servers more than 100,000 times in subsequent months. Reddit is seeking monetary damages and a court injunction to force Anthropic to comply with its user agreement terms. The company has requested a jury trial. In an e-mail to AFP, Anthropic said: “We disagree with Reddit’s claims and will defend ourselves vigorously.” Reddit has entered into licensing agreements with other AI giants including Google and OpenAI, which allow those companies to use Reddit content under terms that protect user privacy and provide compensation to the platform. Those deals have helped lift Reddit’s share price since it went public in 2024. Reddit shares closed up more than 6% on Wednesday following news of the lawsuit. Musicians, book authors, visual artists and news publications have sued the various AI companies that used their data without permission or payment. AI companies generally defend their practices by claiming fair use, arguing that training AI on large datasets fundamentally changes the original content and is necessary for innovation. Though most of these lawsuits are still in early stages, their outcomes could have a profound effect on the shape of the AI industry. – AFP

Investors eye Europe’s defence industry boom

managing director at Carlyle Europe Partners. “The more positive political sentiment in the country might accelerate economic growth in a positive way. Germany could be a good place of opportunity in the next decade.” Despite the optimism around Europe’s defence spending, broader private equity dealmaking remains constrained by the threat of recession. The value of private equity assets sales through the initial public offering market in Europe has dropped to an average of US$3.7 billion in the last four years, a fraction of the more than US$17 billion on average in the previous four years, according to Dealogic data. Investors are heading into their fourth straight year of muted realisations from their portfolios, said Joana Rocha Scaff, head of Europe Private Equity at Neuberger Berman. “Despite many investors’ initial optimism about a benign macro backdrop for 2025, the turbulence and noise since January has weighed on investment activity, delayed exits via M&A or IPOs and in doing so tightened liquidity conditions,” she said. At the current pace, 2025 will become the fourth consecutive year with private equity asset sales below US$144 billion, the average since 2014, Dealogic data shows. – Reuters

o Continent races to rearm and reduce dependence on US automatic exclusion, now even some ESG-focused investors are looking to deploy capital to support European defence,” said Macquarie Asset Management EMEA direct lending portfolio manager Sophia Alison, who was attending the conference. “That’s a very tangible shift from 12 or 18 months ago.”

Vietnam has the third-biggest trade surplus with the United States, after China and Mexico, and is anxious to address the imbalance to head off President Donald Trump’s threatened 46% levy as part of his global tariff blitz. Vietnamese and US officials agreed at a meeting in Paris on Wednesday to “focus maximum efforts to achieve the best results in the third technical negotiation round” scheduled for the first half of June, the communist country’s Trade Ministry said in a statement. Trade Minister Nguyen Hong Dien affirmed Vietnam’s “determination and goodwill” to reach an agreement with the United States, while his American counterpart Jamieson Greer said a deal would be important for Washington as well as Hanoi, according to the statement. Meanwhile, a delegation from Vietnam’s Agriculture Ministry visiting the United States signed memorandums of understanding (MoU) to buy raw materials for animal feed from Ohio worth US$600 million, the ministry said in a separate statement on its website yesterday. That comes after Vietnam announced five MoUs to buy products worth around US$800 million from Iowa over three years, including soybean meal, corn, wheat, dried soybeans and dried distillers grains. BERLIN: Global investors and advisers gathered at their annual conference in Berlin are looking at channelling funds into Europe’s defence industry, seeking to profit from governments’ ramped-up military spending and revive a sluggish private equity market. Private equity and venture capital-backed investment in Europe’s aerospace and defence sector is dwarfed by that funnelled into the US and Canada, which have absorbed 83% of all such investment since 2020, according to S&P. Once a controversial topic for investors in Europe concerned with environmental, social, and governance investment policies, the continent’s defence sector is now drawing private equity funds, said seven advisers and fund executives – some of whom are attending the SuperReturn conference this week. European money managers have been reconsidering policies on investing in defence, under pressure from clients and some politicians to loosen restrictions and help fund the continent’s race to rearm and reduce dependence on the US. “Defence used to be a topic that received

While none of them gave estimates of how much funding might shift to Europe from the US and Canada, private investors are looking in particular at opportunities in space technology, both for military and civilian use. Several panels on investing in Germany were held on Tuesday, ahead of the first main conference when tennis star Serena Williams was set to address an estimated 5,500 attendees. Germany’s recent infrastructure and defence investment programmes, including its €500 billion (RM2.4 trillion) initiative approved in March, have bolstered the country’s attractiveness to private equity firms. “We feel the momentum and change in sentiment that Germany and Europe are more in focus than before,” said Simon Pex,

Hanoi and Washington to speed up trade talks HANOI: Vietnam and the United States have agreed to speed up trade talks, Hanoi said yesterday, as it announced US$600 million (RM2.5 billion) in deals to buy US agricultural products.

Labourers working at Hung Viet garment export factory in Vietnam. – REUTERSPIC

Google. It also signed an agreement with US company Westinghouse Electric on nuclear power development. The Trump Organisation broke ground last month in Vietnam on a US$1.5 billion luxury resort and golf course 40km southeast of the capital Hanoi. – AFP

The Southeast Asian country was expected to sign deals with the United States to buy more than US$2 billion worth of agricultural products in total, the statement added. Vietnam has been seeking help to solve the tariff stand-off from several US tech and industry giants, including Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and

Clean energy investment rising despite economic uncertainty: IEA

Meanwhile, investment in oil, natural gas and coal is set to dip to US$1.1 billion, as companies react to falling prices and lower demand expectations. Most of drop is due to investment in US oil production, while investment in liquefied natural gas projects there and elsewhere is expected to lead to the largest-ever capacity growth in 2026-2028. – AFP

US$3.3 trillion as countries and companies seek to insulate themselves from a wide range of risks,” executive director Fatih Birol said as the IEA published its latest annual World Energy Investment report. The agency expects investment in clean technologies, including nuclear and electricity distribution grids, to hit a record US$2.2 trillion this year.

concerns as well as rising demand for electricity – including from artificial intelligence and data centres – is driving investment in clean energy sources. “Amid the geopolitical and economic uncertainties that are clouding the outlook for the energy world, we see energy security coming through as a key driver of the growth in global investment this year to a record

PARIS: energy technologies is set to strike a record this year despite global economic uncertainty, double the spending on fossil fuels that will dip for the first time since 2020, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday. While Donald Trump’s administration has been hostile to renewable energy sources and trumpets boosting oil production, the IEA said security Investment in clean