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No choice but to cut spending, IMF tells developing countries

Bumble in advanced talks to be taken private by Ithaca NEW YORK: Bumble is in advanced talks to be taken private by Ithaca Holdings in a deal valuing the dating app operator at roughly US$1 billion (RM4.1 billion), a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday. Shares of the Austin, Texas-based company closed around 50% higher on Monday at US$3.80, marking their biggest-ever percentage gain in a single session. The company had a market value of roughly US$389 million at Friday’s close. Bumble and Ithaca, a holding company for technology businesses founded by Silicon Valley executives Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman, did not immediately respond to Reuters’requests for comment. Reuters exclusively reported earlier this year that Bumble was exploring a sale amid slowing growth in the online dating sector. Dating apps such as Bumble and its larger rival Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, have come under pressure as younger Gen Z subscribers grow disillusioned with endless swiping, leading to softer user engagement. “Going private looks less like a strategic masterstroke and more like an admission that Bumble‘s current strategy is failing,“ said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore. “A change in ownership will not magically fix these fundamental problems.” Founded in 2014 by CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, Bumble pioneered the “women-first” approach to online dating. But after its US$14 billion blockbuster Nasdaq debut in 2021, the company has struggled with a post-pandemic slowdown in growth. AI models may soon replicate themselves, warns Anthropic BENGALURU: Small artificial intelligence (AI) models could be just months away from being capable of replicating themselves across internet-connected devices without human intervention or access to data centres, according to AI developer Anthropic. The company said yesterday that its experiments suggested small AI models could soon be capable of autonomously spreading across commercial Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including smart ovens, Android television boxes and other internet-connected appliances. In its research, Anthropic examined whether AI models could identify vulnerable devices, copy themselves onto those devices and continue spreading without human assistance. The experiments found that smaller AI models with fewer than 30 billion parameters were capable of performing the multiple steps required for self replication, although they still struggled to complete the entire process from beginning to end. However, in simplified tests where certain security measures were removed, Anthropic found that GLM-5.2 and more advanced models were capable of completing the full replication process autonomously. The company warned that self replicating AI models could be particularly difficult to contain because they would not have a central shutdown mechanism. – Reuters

war and whether they were integrated into AI supply chains. The world’s advanced economies were forecast to grow 2.1% in 2026, with those in the AI supply chain such as Taiwan and South Korea posting significantly higher figures. Koeva Brooks told AFP that if AI investment activity were to slow, the world economy “would see a negative impact on output, not only in advanced countries like the US but again through trade linkages also in Asia”. The IMF warned that global GDP forecasts for 2028 could fall by up to 0.4% if AI fails to deliver expected productivity gains. Climate-related risks were another key part of the World Economic Outlook this year, and Koeva Brooks told AFP that some of the effects of a particularly intense El Niño phenomenon had already been taken into account in higher prices for certain food items. The warming phase of a natural climate cycle, El Niño raises sea temperatures in the tropical Pacific, triggering changes in weather that can increase the risk of drought and flooding, and exacerbate man made global warming. – AFP

investment boom as being the most vulnerable to the shocks from the Iran war. “For those countries that are most vulnerable, this is where the consumption basket is heavily weighted towards energy and food, and so indeed it is much much more difficult,” she said. “But unfortunately there is no other choice.” The senior IMF official added that “many” low-income countries were in debt distress, or close to it, and that they should seek debt restructuring if they were not able to address the issue. “Where debt is not sustainable, then resolving that debt and having orderly and timely restructuring is always better than waiting, because then the cost of restructuring down the road is going to be much higher,” she said. In its World Economic Outlook, the IMF raised its forecast for 2026 global growth, largely on the back of advanced economies enjoying a boost from AI-related investments and economic activity. Growth outcomes were highly uneven across economies, depending on their exposure to the

o Heavily indebted, oil-importing nations face worst of Iran war-fuelled energy shock

BANGKOK: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned yesterday that while low-income developing countries were dealing with the disproportionate impacts of the Iran war-fuelled energy shock, many had “no choice” but to cut spending or potentially face debt restructuring. Speaking to AFP on the sidelines of the organisation’s Annual Meetings in Bangkok, IMF deputy director of research Petya Koeva Brooks said heavily indebted, oil importing countries were facing the worst of the energy shock, and had difficult choices in helping their citizens through the crisis. “Unfortunately, after years of the global economy being hit (by) shock after shock, debt levels have increased quite a lot, and at the same time, inflation has become a problem,” she said. The US war on Iran has plunged the Middle East into conflict and sent global energy prices soaring, as

Tehran’s retaliatory action targeted Washington’s Gulf allies and curtailed oil and gas supplies. Those prices have begun to bleed into other goods, with the crisis also having an effect on crucial fertiliser supplies. The IMF has called on countries to offer narrow, targeted subsidies in the wake of the crisis, while also recommending all governments work to rebuild fiscal buffers and address rising debt after years of fighting economic shocks since the pandemic. “Our messages indeed apply to most countries, but again, the trade-offs and the choices that have to be made are much more difficult for the most vulnerable countries,” Koeva Brooks said. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook, released yesterday, identified low-income developing countries that are net oil importers and are not exposed to the ongoing artificial intelligence technology

IMF chief economist Silvana Tenreyro (centre) speaks during the World Economic Outlook press briefing, alongside Koeva Brooks (right) and communications officer Jose Luis De Haro in Bangkok yesterday. – AFPPIX

NYT, Economist join fight against unpaid AI use BENGALURU: The New York Times, Agence France-Presse and The Economist on Monday joined more than 40 publishers in a coalition aimed at preventing AI firms from using or profiting from their content without permission. members such as the Financial Times , BBC and Associated Press . York Times . SPUR, which is funded entirely by its members, is developing industry wide standards and technical systems to help publishers track and control how AI companies use their content and facilitate licensing agreements, according to its website.

and chief of staff, said in a statement. Publishers are also grappling with declining referral traffic as search engines roll out AI-generated answers that allow users to consume information without clicking through to websites. Google organic-search referrals to more than 2,500 websites fell 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025, according to a Reuters Institute report, citing data from Chartbeat. – Reuters

Publishers are stepping up legal efforts to prevent AI companies from using their content without permission to train large language models. Earlier this month, USA Today and several newspapers it owns sued OpenAI, alleging copyright infringement. OpenAI and its backer, Microsoft, also face similar copyright claims from prominent authors and news organisations, including the New

The Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, launched in February, now has more than 80 members across over 20 countries. New members include The Atlantic and Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers, joining founding

“Intellectual property protection and technological advancement can and must co-exist,“ Rebecca Grossman-Cohen, the New York Times ’ head of strategic partnerships