Traffic passes around the Old Street roundabout, also referred to as “Silicon Roundabout,” in the area known as “Tech City” in London, U.K.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tech Nation, the U.K. startup accelerator program, is set to close its doors after failing to renew its funding from the government, the organization said Tuesday.
The tech industry body said in a statement that it will be “ceasing all existing operations through a carefully planned wind-down and has commenced a redundancy consultation process.”
The group is “actively seeking interested parties to acquire its portfolio of assets to take forward in a new guise,” it added.
Created in 2010 under the premiership of ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, Tech Nation was a hallmark of the U.K.’s bid to create billion-dollar tech companies of global significance and rival the likes of Silicon Valley.
It claims to have helped produce household names in the U.K.’s tech scene, with a diverse range of alumni on its projects hailing from the likes of Monzo, Revolut, Deliveroo, Just Eat, Darktrace and Ocado.
According to Tech Nation, more than a third of all tech unicorns and decacorns created in the U.K. graduated from a Tech Nation program. Tech Nation graduates have also raised more than £28 billion ($35.4 billion) in funding to date.
While 80% of startups fail in their first two to five years, over 95% of startups on Tech Nation’s accelerator programs have gone on to scale, the group said.
Earlier this month, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport awarded its £12.09 million Digital Growth Grant to Barclays Bank. The lender’s Eagle Labs incubator, which operates independently of Barclays, is set to replace Tech Nation as the recipient of the grant.
The government put the contract out to tender last year after raising concerns that Tech Nation was in breach of state aid rules after failing to become “self-sufficient,” The Sunday Times reported.
Tech Nation says the DCMS grant accounted for roughly 62% of its funding in 2021/22. The remainder of its income came from sponsorship, commercial partnerships and other government contracts.
As a result of the move, Tech Nation said its current activities were “not viable on a standalone basis” and would therefore need to be wound up.
For employees whose primary role is government delivery work, Tech Nation has begun discussions with Barclays Bank about transferring those workers over to the lender.
The Home Office has also been notified of the move and its visa program for foreign tech workers “will continue in the immediate term,” Tech Nation said.
The next Silicon Valley?
The move has raised questions over the U.K.’s ambitions to rev up its digital leadership on the global stage following its exit from the European Union. Just days ago, Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt had talked up the U.K.’s chances of becoming the “world’s next Silicon Valley.”
“As an entrepreneur and digital champion, I’ve witnessed first-hand the impact that Tech Nation has had in creating one of the most exciting and dynamic parts of our economy,” Martha Lane Fox, founder of lastminute.com and currently president of the British Chambers of Commerce, said in a statement Tuesday.
“The skills they’ve equipped entrepreneurs with and opportunities they’ve created have been second to none. They will be missed.”
It also adds to the woes of the U.K.’s tech sector, which is currently reeling from a global slump in venture capital funding amid fears of an oncoming recession.
On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund said the U.K. was the only nation among all advanced economies on track to contract in 2023. Even sanctions-hit Russia is forecast to grow.
“The UK tech ecosystem has today lost an important member of its community,” said Russ Shaw, founder of Tech London Advocates, the U.K. tech network.
Total VC funding to startups in the U.K. totalled $29.9 billion in 2022, down 27% from $41 billion a year earlier. Global startup investment sank to $233.3 billion, down 33% from $359.6 billion in 2021.
CEO of Workday Carl M. Eschenbach and Ana Eschenbach attend the Allen and Company Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at The Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., July 10, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Workday reported an earnings beat on Thursday, but issued guidance that was inline with estimates and warned of pressure in some areas. The shares slipped in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did relative to LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.21 adjusted vs. $2.11 expected
Revenue: $2.35 billion vs. $2.34 billion expected
Revenue increased 13% from a year earlier in the fiscal second quarter, which ended on July 31, according to a statement. The company’s net income rose to $228 million, or 84 cents per share, from $132 million, or 49 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
For the current quarter, Workday called for $2.24 billion in subscription revenue and $180 million in professional services, which implies $2.42 billion in total revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected a total of $2.42 billion. The company sees an adjusted operating margin of 28.0%, just below the 28.1% consensus among analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.
Workday, which provides software for finance and human resources departments, now sees $8.82 billion in subscription revenue for the full year, and $700 million in professional services revenue, implying a total of $9.52 billion. The LSEG consensus was $9.51 billion.
The part of Workday that works with state and local governments faced challenges during the quarter, CEO Carl Eschenbach said on the earnings call.
“I think we’ll continue to see that as people are trying to figure out what the funding slowdown is going to look like, all the way to the state level,” he said.
Meanwhile, higher education in the U.S. is facing pressure from President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order in March to shut down the Department of Education.
“If it’s a higher ed university that includes a healthcare system, they too are getting a little pullback in funding,” Eschenbach said. “So it’s something we’re keeping our eye on.”
Also on Thursday Workday said it’s acquiring Paradox, a company with conversational artificial intelligence software for recruiting, for undisclosed terms. During the quarter, Workday announced AI agents for extracting accounting details from documents and reporting absent days.
As of Thursday’s market close, Workday shares were down about 12% this year, while the Nasdaq is up about 9%.
According to documents posted to NHTSA’s website on Thursday, the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation had “identified numerous incident reports” from Tesla concerning crashes that had “occurred several months or more before the dates of the reports” to the agency.
The delayed reports were likely “due to an issue with Tesla’s data collection, which, according to Tesla, has now been fixed,” according to NHTSA’s explanation for the probe.
Automakers must report on collisions that occurred on publicly accessible roads in the U.S. that involved the use of either partially or fully automated driving systems in their cars within five days of the companies becoming aware of any crash.
The agency will now conduct an “audit query” to figure out if Tesla is in compliance with its reporting requirements, and to “evaluate the cause of the potential delays in reporting, the scope of any such delays, and the mitigations that Tesla has developed to address them.”
NHTSA will also investigate whether Tesla neglected to report any prior relevant collisions, and whether its reports submitted to the safety regulator “include all of the required and available data.”
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Tesla stock was little changed Thursday.
The company sells electric vehicles equipped with a standard Autopilot system, or premium Full Self-Driving Supervised option, which is also known as FSD, in the U.S. Both require a driver at the wheel ready to steer or brake at any time.
A site that tracks Tesla-involved collisions drawing on news reports, police records and federal data, TeslaDeaths.com, has found at least 59 fatalities resulting from crashes where Tesla Autopilot or FSD were a factor.
The new NHTSA probe comes as Musk, Tesla’s CEO, is trying to persuade investors that the company can become a global leader in autonomous vehicles, and that its self-driving systems are safe enough to operate fleets of robotaxis on public roads in the U.S.
A manned Tesla Robotaxi service launched in Austin, Texas in June, and the company is running another manned car service in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Riders can book trips via the company’s Tesla Robotaxi app.
Tesla has not begun driverless ride-hailing operations that would make it directly comparable to Alphabet-owned Waymo, or Baidu’s Apollo Go and other autonomous vehicle competitors yet.
The company is facing a sales and profit decline, due, in part, to a consumer backlash against Musk’s incendiary political rhetoric, his work to re-elect President Donald Trump, and his work leading the Department of Government Efficiency to slash federal spending and its workforce.
Still, many Wall Street analysts and shareholders remain optimistic about Musk’s vision.
“We think it is a positive that Tesla has begun robotaxi operations which puts it on the path to addressing a large market (we estimate that the US robotaxi market will be $7 bn in 2030 as discussed in our recent AV deep dive report),” Goldman Sachs autos industry analysts wrote in a note Wednesday.
Musk and Tesla have not given investors a sense of what they expect in terms of Robotaxi-related revenue or the technical performance of vehicles in its rideshare fleet, so a “debate on the pace of robotaxi growth will continue,” the research note said.
Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Apple is taking a cue from some of its competitors.
The technology giant’s Apple TV+ monthly subscription is now $12.99, starting Thursday in the U.S. and other countries.
Apple said the new price will hit current subscribers 30 days after their next renewal date. The annual subscription price will not change.
For new subscribers, the $12.99 monthly price begins after a seven-day trial period.
The change marks Apple’s first price hike for its streaming service since 2023. At the time, Apple lifted its monthly price to about $9.99 from $6.99. The company raised the price in 2022 from $4.99.
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Apple TV+ is one of the company’s most popular services, but Apple does not release viewership numbers. A report from The Information earlier this year said the streaming service is losing more than $1 billion annually as subscriptions rocketed toward 45 million, citing people familiar with the matter.
Apple isn’t the only streaming company hiking prices this year to either fund new content or reap returns on their investments. Earlier this year, both Netflix and NBCUniversal’s Peacock boosted prices. Music streaming platform Spotify also raised prices in multiple markets.
Earlier this year, Apple introduced its streaming service to Android phones in a move that could open the company to more people worldwide.
The company is fresh off the release of its highest-grossing theatrical film, “F1: The Movie.”
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.