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Zepz, which owns the WorldRemit and Sendwave brands, has a total headcount of around 1,600.

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LONDON — Zepz, the owner of money transfer firms WorldRemit and Sendwave, is on the hunt for mergers and acquisitions after cutting 26% of its workforce last month, the company’s CEO told CNBC.

With a $5 billion valuation, Zepz is one of the largest fintech companies in Europe, backed by leading investors including Accel, TCV and Leapfrog.

The company enables users to send money from a smartphone or computer to people abroad, who can receive it in their bank account, mobile wallet, or as a mobile airtime top-up.

The service is a challenger to large banks and established money transfer services like Western Union, touting cheaper fees and the ability to move funds rapidly. A close rival is Wise, which also claims to offer cheaper international money transfers than banks.

Mark Lenhard, Zepz’s CEO, said the firm wanted to grow its portfolio of businesses in an effort to own a larger part of the global digital payments pie.

Lenhard didn’t identify which companies Zepz was looking to buy, but said the sharp slump in private fintech valuations made it an attractive time to kick off M&A exploration.

Digital wallets

The overall value of cross-border payments is forecast to increase from $150 trillion in 2017 to over $250 trillion by 2027, according to the Bank of England. It’s a highly competitive industry with various players operating and taking a slice of each transaction a consumer makes.

A particular focus for Zepz product-wise in the near term is digital wallets, Lenhard said, with the company planning to launch its first digital wallet “imminently.”

“We want to be a core financial hub for a very particular segment,” he told CNBC Wednesday, with a particular focus on migrant communities sending funds home.

The push into M&A is a surprise move in many ways as it follows a significant amount of cost reduction at the 13-year-old company. In May, Zepz laid off 420 employees, equating to about 26% of its global workforce.

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Zepz says it cut the jobs to consolidate its operations after its acqusition of U.S. remittances firm Sendwave led to a duplication of certain roles.

Still, at the time, Zepz said it wasn’t pausing hiring, and was actively trying to fill 200 roles.

It marked the second time in just under a year Zepz laid off staff. In June 2022, Zepz cut around 5% of its workforce, according to Sky News.

“Any time you’re laying off individuals it’s hard, it sucks, but it was certainly the right thing to do. We’ve expanded things out of that,” Lenhard said Wednesday.

He added that he hopes the company’s upcoming digital wallet product will convince customers to rely more on Zepz, rather than using competing digital banks and other financial apps which have grown their services to offer a much wider range of products.

PayPal, for example, offers users mobile wallets, the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, and buy now, pay later installment loans, among other things.

Like other fintechs, Zepz has been in cost-cutting mode as the industry faces huge pressure from a slump in technology valuations, stoked by a host of macroeconomic headwinds including higher inflation and interest rates.

Despite this, Zepz says it has been less susceptible to those economic pressures than other firms in the space. World remittances is less impacted by broader macroeconomic pressures than, say, banking, according to Lenhard.

Zepz’s overall customer transactions are up 25% year-to-date as of April 2023, the company said, while its customer growth accelerated to 30% on average and by as much as 80% in certain areas.

The company, which hit monthly profitability in the first half of 2022, wants to achieve profitability on a full-year basis this year.

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Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

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Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

Alibaba‘s Hong Kong-listed shares surged on Wednesday to reach their highest point since 2021 after the company said it will invest more in artificial intelligence and rolled out new AI products and updates. 

Shares of the company jumped over 6%, while its total gains year to date rose above 107%. 

The tech giant plans to increase spending on AI models and infrastructure development, on top of the 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years it announced in February, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu said Wednesday at Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship technology conference.

“We are vigorously advancing a three-year, 380 billion [yuan] AI infrastructure initiative with plans to sustain and further increase our investment according to our strategic vision in anticipation of the [artificial superintelligence] era,” Wu said. 

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Alibaba shares surge after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

So-called ‘artificial superintelligence’ refers to AI that would hypothetically surpass the power and intelligence of the human brain, with the hypothetical benchmark becoming a growing focus of major AI companies. 

Alibaba also officially unveiled the latest version of its Qwen large language models — the Qwen3-Max — on Wednesday, along with a series of other updates to its suite of AI product offerings. 

Wu highlighted that Alibaba Cloud is strategically positioned as a “full-stack AI service provider,” delivering the computing power required for training and deploying large AI models on the cloud through its own data centers.

“The cumulative investment in global AI in the next five years will exceed $4 trillion, and this is the largest investment in computing power and research and development in history,” he added.

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty $500 billion valuation in capital raise

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty 0 billion valuation in capital raise

Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.

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Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, is planning to raise as much as $20 billion in a deal that could put the crypto company’s value on par with OpenAI, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The crypto company is looking to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in exchange for a roughly 3% stake through a private placement, the report said, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. The transaction would involve new equity rather than existing investors selling their stakes, the people told the news service.

The report said that one person close to the matter warned that the talks are in an early stage, which means that the eventual details, including the size of the offering, could change.

However, the deal could ultimately value Tether at around $500 billion, according to the report. That would mean the crypto giant’s valuation would rival some of the world’s biggest private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. OpenAI’s fundraising round earlier this year valued the tech company at $300 billion.

Tether, which was once accused of being a criminal’s “go-to cryptocurrency,” has been furthering its plans to return to the U.S. in recent months, given President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance. The company earlier this month named a CEO for its U.S. business and launched a new token for businesses and institutions in the U.S. called USAT, which will be regulated in the U.S. under the GENIUS Act.

Stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) is pegged to the U.S. dollar with a market cap that recently surpassed $172 billion. In second place is Tether rival Circle’s USDC stablecoin, which is worth about $74 billion.

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.

The stock rose in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
  • Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected

Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.

The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.

Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.

“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.

Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.

Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.

However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.

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