BT is benefiting from the recovery and sale of old copper cabling as copper prices hit record highs amid an AI-led surge in demand. The company has received a £99m upfront payment from recycler EMR, after taking £105m in 2024. As Openreach advances its full-fibre rollout, BT expects selling stripped copper over the next decade to generate more than £2bn in revenue.

Nintendo reported net profit for the quarter ended June surged 53.5% year on year to ¥147.4bn, far above market expectations, helped by the Trump administration refunding about $100bn in tariffs. Revenue fell 10% to ¥517.8bn. Following the results, the company’s Tokyo-listed shares rose 2.87%.

Eight of the world’s largest listed oil companies reported a combined $93bn in net profit for the second quarter of 2024, covering the three months to June 30, nearly doubling from about $50bn a year earlier. The surge followed a global oil supply crisis triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran, which at one point pushed crude above $126 a barrel. The article describes the shock as the most severe supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. It says soaring energy prices were the main driver of the profit jump.

Donald Trump said he had called off planned military strikes on Iran, easing geopolitical tensions. Brent fell 5% to $83.50 a barrel after touching $81.55, while US West Texas Intermediate dropped more than $5 to $79.47. Both benchmarks had gained more than 20% in July amid renewed US-Iran fighting and tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. The pan-European Stoxx 600 rose 0.4%, with energy stocks down 2% and travel and leisure shares up 2.1%.

China’s memory chipmaker CXMT surged 466% on its Shanghai Stock Exchange debut, taking its market value to 3.3tn yuan. Over the same period, AI-linked equities sold off across major markets, with South Korea’s Kospi falling a combined 17.5% over two sessions and the Nasdaq briefly moving into a technical correction. Nvidia fell more than 5% for the week, and Apple overtook it as the world’s largest listed company. The moves underscored pressure on AI-theme valuations across key tech indices and heavyweight stocks in China, South Korea and the United States.

China has begun mass production of specialty chips central to the AI boom, raising concerns that the global AI computing supply chain could be reshaped. Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, an open-source, open-weight model, is powerful enough to compete in some applications with proprietary and comparatively expensive products from OpenAI and Anthropic. The developments helped trigger a stock selloff that erased $1tn in market value from other chip manufacturers. The shift reflects simultaneous advances in hardware and models that increase competitive pressure on US companies reliant on high-margin closed systems.

Rising demand linked to the “proteinmaxxing” trend has sent whey protein ingredient prices sharply higher. Expana put whey protein concentrate 80 (WPC80) at €11,733 per metric tonne in July 2025, compared with €25,875 now. Demand has also increased for D90 demineralised whey powder, a key ingredient used in infant formula. In the UK, the average price of baby formula has already risen 4.8% over the past year to £12.11 for a 750g box, according to Office for National Statistics data.

Apple reported quarterly revenue of $109.4bn, above expectations of $108.65bn, and earnings per share of $2.02. Amazon posted quarterly revenue of $200.6bn, topping forecasts of $196.47bn. Both companies beat expectations, sending Amazon shares up more than 8% in after-hours trading. The results marked Apple CEO Tim Cook’s final earnings release before he steps down.

Rolls-Royce raised its full-year guidance for cashflow to £3.8bn–£4bn and for operating profit to £4.7bn–£4.9bn. The company’s order growth has been strong, with power generation orders up 55% over the half-year. Its small modular reactor technology is also drawing interest from hyperscale data centre projects in the US. The article also cites HSBC, with a £274bn market capitalisation, as a UK large-cap benchmark amid market attention on how valuations move across major British industrial and financial shares.