French state investment bank Bpifrance sold a 2.5% stake in Orange for approximately €1.1 billion, but maintained its position as the operator’s largest shareholder.

In a statement, the investment bank disclosed it successfully placed 66.5 million shares at a price of €16.57 each, a move made in conjunction with the state.

Following the transaction, it separately holds approximately 7.1% of share capital and 5.9% voting rights.

Acting jointly as the group’s shareholder with the French state, the duo hold a stake of approximately 20.4% and 27% of voting rights. Board representation remains unchanged.

Reuters first reported the French stake was planning to sell a small stake in Orange yesterday (30 July).

“Bpifrance reiterates its support and confidence in the Orange management team and in the strategy pursued within the framework of its Trust the Future plan,” the investment bank added.

Orange CEO Christel Heydemann laid out the five-year strategy in February, focusing priorities on customer growth, AI investment and monetising infrastructure assets.

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Anthropic disclosed it is investigating three instances of its Claude AI models conducting hacks into companies during a testing process, a week after OpenAI revealed a similar incident.

The company explained its Claude models “reached the internet” from within or while interacting with a third-party evaluation environment and then gained access to the real systems of three different organisations.

Anthropic blamed a “misunderstanding” between it and a partner, which resulted in the model being able to access the internet during a cybersecurity testing process.

This then led the model’s search to real systems on the open internet, treating them as part of the exercise.

“Operating under the false belief that all accessible entities were intended to be in-scope for the exercise, Claude compromised the impacted organisations’ infrastructure using basic techniques, such as exploiting weak passwords and unauthenticated endpoints,” Anthropic stated.

Anthropic added it did not find or “exploit any complex weaknesses”.

It did not reveal which companies had been attacked.

Review
The company stated the OpenAI incident, in which two models attacked Hugging Face, prompted it to conduct a large-scale retrospective review of its own cybersecurity evaluations.

In particular, it looked for evidence Claude, like the OpenAI models, was able to access “the internet from the testing environments that should have been sealed off”.

It found the breaches after reviewing 141,006 evaluation runs where Claude could have obtained internet access.

The incidents occurred on Claude models Opus 4.7, Mythos 5 and an internal research test model.

“Ultimately, many factors contributed to these incidents, but consistent with a blameless post mortem culture, we’re approaching the fixes as if the responsibility were ours alone,” the company added.

Nvidia this week led the way in the formation of an AI safety coalition in response to the OpenAI incident.

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The European Union (EU) outlined plans to provide €10 billion in funding to build seven AI gigafactories in addition to unlocking €20 billion in private investment for the project.

In its latest push to accelerate Europe’s technological sovereignty and close the gap to the US and China, the EU stated the initiative would expand AI compute capacity and give start-ups, SMEs, industry and others access to infrastructure for training, inference and tuning of advanced frontier AI models.

It explained the gigafactories would be used to combine advanced AI processors, software and cloud technology stacks, high-speed connectivity and energy-efficient data centres.

They will add to Europe’s network of 19 AI gigafactories with the aim of ensuring the continent can develop advanced AI on its own infrastructure in line with EU rules, following standards on data protection, security and ethics.

The first step is a call for tenders, with the EU inviting consortiums or special purpose vehicles bringing companies, public entities, investors and other partners to apply.

It explained the facilities can be established in a single member state, either on one site or across several locations.

They may also include cross-border developments in several member states through distributed AI computing facilities.

Applications will undergo a competitive valuation to select successful projects. The application process closes on 12 November, with successful bidders to be announced in 2027.

Facilities will need to become operational within 18-months of contracts being signed.

Henna Virkkunen, EVP for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy at the European Commission, said “access to the raw scale of computing power within AI gigafactories is a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates”.

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Singtel confirmed it was in discussions over selling a stake in Australian subsidiary Optus following media speculation infrastructure investor Morrison is eyeing a holding in the business.

In a brief announcement, Singtel stated it is in talks with interested parties, but added there is no certainty any transaction would occur.

It pointed to a previous statement indicating a willingness to collaborate with “an Australian minority partner” while reinforcing its commitment to Optus following a series of high-profile network outages which damaged the unit’s reputation.

Singtel’s latest statement appears to be a response to an Australian Financial Review report claiming New Zealand-based investor Morrison had entered a seven-week exclusivity period to acquire a 30% stake in Optus.

The outlet reported Morrison is looking for additional investors to take part in the project, pitching a potential deal as a way to “bring Optus home”.

This week, Morrison struck a deal with Orange to set up a data centre joint venture in France at a cost of around €3 billion.

ACMA probe
Separately, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) commenced court proceedings over an Optus network outage in September 2025 which affected users’ ability to contact emergency services.

ACMA alleges Optus breached two separate legal obligations on 1,005 occasions, failing to: give end users who made emergency calls access to emergency services; and ensure those emergency calls were carried to the relevant termination point.

If found guilty, Optus could be in line to pay a maximum penalty of AUD250,000 ($174,413) per contravention.

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US chip company Marvell Technology committed to invest $250 million in India over the next three years, expanding its facility in Bangalore to drive next-generation technology development.

Marvell stated the pledge coincides with its 20th anniversary in the country, during which it focused on advancing the semiconductor ecosystem and engineering talent.

It established operations in Bangalore in 2006, a site which has since become the company’s second-largest R&D organisation worldwide.

Through the $250 million outlay, Marvell stated it plans to double headcount, scaling up its site in Bangalore and expanding its presence in Hyderabad. It expects the expansion to strengthen its global innovation network, supporting the design and development of advanced semiconductors for AI, cloud and data infrastructure applications.

Navin Bishnoi, VP and India country manager, said the nation plays a critical role in helping Marvell advance infrastructure technologies which power leading global hyperscale companies and cloud providers.

“As we celebrate 20 years in India, we remain committed to expanding R&D investments, strengthening the country’s semiconductor ecosystem and developing the next-generation of technology talent.”

India has made a big push around boosting its semiconductor sector in recent years.

Earlier this month, the government committed to invest around $20 billion to boost chip and smartphone production as part of a long-term goal to become 100% self-reliant.

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