Welcome to the eighth edition of The Weekly Briefing!

Each week, we will recap the most interesting commercial news stories shaping the market, from corporate deals to regulatory shifts and highlight why they matter to businesses and law firms.  

We aim to help readers sharpen their commercial fluency while keeping track of the legal angles behind the headlines.

ITV in Talks to Sell Its TV Business to Sky for £1.6 Billion

Reports suggest ITV is in talks to sell its television and streaming division, including ITVX and its flagship free-to-air channels, to Sky in a potential £1.6 billion deal. The sale wouldn’t include ITV Studios, its global production arm.

The move comes as ITV struggles to compete with global tech and streaming giants, such as Netflix, Amazon, and even social platforms like Facebook and TikTok, which now dominate news and entertainment.

If completed, this deal would consolidate 3 of the UK’s 4 major broadcasters (BBC, Channel 4, ITV, and Sky) into two dominant players: Sky and the BBC. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and Ofcom would almost certainly review the deal to assess its impact on competition, advertising, and news plurality.

Competition and media lawyers will play a central role in handling merger filings, public-interest tests, and licensing obligations. If approved, Sky could be required to maintain ITV News, guarantee free-to-air access, or separate its advertising operations from the rest of its business.

Even if talks stall, they underscore how traditional media companies are restructuring to survive in the streaming era and how regulators are preparing for the transition.

OpenAI Signs Cloud Deal with Amazon Despite Microsoft’s Stake

OpenAI has struck a seven-year deal worth $38 billion with Amazon Web Services, allowing OpenAI to access hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs and scale its AI infrastructure rapidly. The move surprised many in the tech world because Microsoft owns around 27% of OpenAI and already hosts the majority of its infrastructure on Azure.

This deal shows how cloud computing the servers and data centres that power AI has become the real battleground for tech companies. By choosing Amazon over Microsoft, OpenAI is spreading its bets, showing that no single company can dominate AI infrastructure forever.

For future lawyers, this touches three key areas:

  • Competition law: Regulators may look at whether one company controlling most of the AI computing power could limit fair access for others.
  • Commercial contracts: Multi-billion-dollar tech deals like this require airtight agreements covering data use, performance, and intellectual-property rights.
  • Regulation and policy: Governments in the US and UK are starting to question how much influence Big Tech should have over the AI ecosystem.

In short: it’s a reminder that every “tech deal” is also a legal deal and that understanding who controls the infrastructure behind AI is just as important as the algorithms themselves.

Are Investors Losing Patience with the AI Hype?

This quarter’s earnings calls have been dominated by one word: AI. For context: every few months, public companies host earnings call presentations where companies report performance to shareholders, discuss upcoming plans, and try to convince investors that their strategy is working.

From Microsoft and Google to Meta and Amazon, tech giants are investing trillions in cloud infrastructure, chips, and partnerships with companies like OpenAI, Nvidia, and AMD. While some, like Microsoft and Google, have clear revenue paths through AI-driven cloud services, others are starting to feel investor fatigue.

Even companies outside the U.S. are seeing similar reactions. Rightmove’s shares fell this week after it announced increased spending on new AI features, despite meeting performance targets, a sign that investors are now more cautious about costly “AI plays” without immediate returns.

AI has quickly shifted from a growth story to a discipline test. Investors are asking not just who’s building AI but who’s profiting from it. For lawyers and analysts, this shift could reshape AI deal structures, investment valuations, and competition law as regulators scrutinise who’s actually delivering value. 

We’re at a turning point: enthusiasm is giving way to expectation.

Next week, we’ll explore whether this moment signals the start of an AI bubble and what it might mean for the next generation of tech, law, and finance.