BUSINESS

Sydney-based fintech OpenDebt has secured $2 million in seed funding to expand autonomous voice agents for debt recovery, targeting Australian lenders, utilities and collection agencies.

Dollarama's reported Australian expansion is expected to intensify competition for accessory distributors and major retailers as the discount chain applies its direct-from-factory sourcing model.

Apple has begun selling the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max globally, featuring a variable-aperture camera, Siri AI powered by Google Gemini models and new image-authentication tools.

Amazon is expanding refunds under its FTC settlement over Prime enrolment and cancellation practices, allowing more customers to receive automatic payments of up to $200 without filing a claim.

Robinhood shares rose nearly 9% after the SEC introduced an exemption for tokenised stocks, adding to optimism around the company's blockchain strategy despite ongoing regulatory uncertainty.

Coinbase shares rose 11.72% to US$194.36 as bitcoin climbed above US$80,000, while an SEC tokenisation exemption and a new partnership with X boosted investor sentiment.

Strategy shares rose 13.66% to $150.32 as bitcoin rallied, analysts lifted price targets and investors continued to treat the company as a leveraged proxy for cryptocurrency prices.

Braveheart Bio shares rose 5.5% after the company began its pivotal Phase 3 trial of BHB-1893 and reported financial results supporting development of two late-stage programmes.

Attovia Therapeutics shares rose 8.36% to $24.63, extending a run of sharp, unexplained moves as investors await clinical updates from the biotechnology company's pipeline.

Alamar Biosciences shares jumped 15.9% to $37.10, nearing their 52-week high as investors responded to analyst upgrades, partnerships and progress in precision proteomics.

Bitcoin rose 6.03% to US$80,947.85 after investors interpreted the Federal Reserve's latest projections as signalling a less aggressive path for future interest rate rises.

Maye Musk says Elon Musk disregarded her advice to choose one venture after selling PayPal, instead pursuing electric vehicles, rockets and solar energy at the same time.

The FTSE 100 dropped 1.25% on Friday as geopolitical concerns and uncertainty over the Bank of England's future rate decisions outweighed stronger retail sales and lower oil prices.

Agile Energy research says demand charges based on a business's highest 30-minute electricity use can add thousands annually, while network location may create much larger cost differences.

South Korea's KOSPI rose 2.81% to 6,903.94 as lower oil prices and an anticipated US Federal Reserve rate rise eased inflation concerns, with institutions driving broad gains.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says lowering net overseas migration will create economic trade-offs, with farmers warning that limits on working holidaymakers could worsen labour shortages and raise food prices.

IBM shares fell 3.2% amid pressure on infrastructure and mainframe operations, despite resilient software growth, strong cash flow and ongoing investment in AI and quantum computing.

Forgent Power Solutions shares rose nearly 12% after the company reported record quarterly results, strong bookings and backlog growth, and raised its full-year earnings guidance.

AMD shares rose 4.15% in midmorning trading as semiconductor stocks recovered from recent losses linked to concerns that AI safety debates could slow infrastructure spending.

Intel shares climbed after reports that SK hynix is considering using Intel's US capacity and CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the company can meet only about half of customer CPU demand.

Riot Platforms shares gained as investors continued backing its shift into AI data centres, following a long-term Anthropic capacity agreement worth an estimated $9.1 billion.

Salesforce shares traded nearly flat after a global outage disrupted hundreds of customer instances during Dreamforce, as investors appeared to treat the technical failure as temporary.

Cipher Digital shares rose 11.25% as investors focused on its transition from bitcoin mining to AI data centres, a growing hyperscale backlog and upcoming facility launches.

GameStop's pursuit of eBay remains unresolved, with reports suggesting Ryan Cohen may favour a partnership over the proposed $56bn takeover while retaining a substantial stake in the company.

Salesforce resolved a global service outage lasting about four hours, but the company has not disclosed its financial cost, while customer losses and reputational damage remain difficult to quantify.

A global Salesforce outage disrupted access to core services across several countries during Dreamforce, with the company tracing the incident to an internal login service bottleneck.

Owala is releasing five Pokémon-themed FreeSip water bottles exclusively at Target to mark Pokémon's 30th anniversary, with designs featuring several of the franchise's best-known characters.

Elon Musk leads Forbes' wealthiest Americans for a fifth consecutive year with $908 billion, while the combined fortune of the Forbes 400 reaches a record $8 trillion.

Samsung co-led a $231 million funding round for Dutch startup Euclyd, seeking exposure to AI inference chips, memory-centric architecture and alternatives to Nvidia's market dominance.