A British start-up based on a west London trading estate is to help the American government build a fleet of nuclear-powered cargo ships. A public private partnership between the US Maritime Administration and Core Power, which is based in Chiswick Park, was signed in Washington DC on Monday.

The agreement, the first of its kind, aims to accelerate construction of a US-flagged fleet of rapid nuclear-powered merchant vessels, and to revive a US shipbuilding industry that has been decimated by cheaper competitors from China in recent years.

Core Power says it has raised 200 million dollars from backers including Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo, a trio of Japanese conglomerates, to help it develop the nuclear technology. It is targeting first construction of its nuclear propulsion systems in 2028, and will work with traditional shipbuilders to make the vessels’ hulls.

“China is already moving toward nuclear-powered commercial shipping,” Mikal Boe, chief executive of Core Power, said. “America does not regain maritime strength by building a better version of yesterday’s ship. Government can set the direction and co-ordinate; private industry must move the money and the steel. We are honoured to be working with the US Maritime Administration on this landmark programme.”

The company behind the deal

Core Power was founded in 2018 by Boe, a Norwegian shipping and commodities executive. In 2024, the most recent year for which its accounts are available, it made an operating loss of £19.4 million and employed 41 people. Its British arm, Core Power (UK) Ltd, is registered at an address on Chiswick High Road and last filed accounts made up to 31 December 2024, according to Companies House.

The partnership follows an initiative launched in May by Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, under which the Maritime Administration issued a request for information on small modular reactors for commercial shipping alongside the US Coast Guard, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. That call for industry input closed on 5 August.

Stephen Carmel, administrator of the Maritime Administration, said: “President Trump has made it clear that American energy dominance and maritime strength go hand in hand. This framework ensures that the United States leads the world with a secure US-flagged fleet.”

Why nuclear shipping has never taken off

Nuclear power has been used for decades in military submarines, but it has struggled to gain traction in commercial shipping, partly because of high costs but also safety concerns. Its proponents have argued that advances in the design of onboard nuclear reactors have improved safety, while the sheer power of nuclear-powered ships could offset the higher build costs.

Boe estimated that nuclear-powered vessels could move up to 75 per cent faster than traditional fossil fuel-powered ships, carry more cargo and be exempt from costly environmental taxes. Russia, through its use of nuclear-powered icebreakers, is currently the nation with the largest nuclear shipping fleet.

Regulation and financing of this nascent industry remains a hurdle, but the US government said it would work with Core Power to develop an “actionable commercial pathway”, including providing clarity on how insurance of nuclear-powered ships will work.

“Nuclear propulsion is a serious commercial opportunity, but it must be approached as a complete system: safe, secure, licensable and investable,” Carmel said.

What it means for British business

Nothing in the agreement lands directly on a UK balance sheet. The vessels will be US-flagged, the hulls will be built by shipbuilders working with the American government, and the jobs that follow will sit in American yards. What sits in west London is the design work and the intellectual property, which is a familiar pattern for British engineering firms that scale by selling into someone else’s industrial programme.

The freight economics matter more. Companies that import or export by sea have already seen how quickly a change in shipping conditions feeds through to their costs, with Red Sea disruption pushing container prices and delivery times up sharply for UK exporters and manufacturers. Boe’s claims about speed, capacity and tax exemption, if they hold, would change that calculation. They are claims about ships that do not yet exist, however, and the first propulsion systems are not due to be built until 2028 at the earliest.

There is a supply chain point too. Britain has been building an industrial base around compact reactors, from Newcleo’s plan to raise £900 million for a fleet of small reactors to Holtec’s choice of South Yorkshire for a mini-reactor factory. The engineering, fabrication and licensing skills that a maritime reactor programme needs overlap heavily with the ones those projects are already competing for, which is a recruitment problem for smaller suppliers and an opportunity for firms that can get qualified early.

For now, the practical test is regulatory rather than technical. Until insurers, flag states and port authorities agree how a commercial reactor at sea is licensed and covered, no cargo owner can plan around it.

---

Shares of Entero Healthcare Solutions rallied as much as 6% to their day’s high of Rs 1,625 on the BSE on Tuesday after Prashant Jain-owned 3P Investment Managers acquired a 2.5% stake in the healthcare product distribution and supply chain platform through open market transactions on August 24. With today’s gain, the stock is up 15% in two sessions.

The 3P India Equity Fund 1M and 3P India Equity Fund 1 schemes, managed by 3P Investment, bought 10.88 lakh shares of Entero Healthcare for Rs 104.99 crore. The acquisition represents 2.5% of the company’s paid-up equity, stock exchange data showed.

The shares were purchased from Prasid Uno Family Trust at Rs 1,377.8 apiece.

Surbhi Singh, through Prasid Uno Family Trust, held a 10.45% stake, equivalent to 45.5 lakh shares, in Entero Healthcare as of the June 2026 shareholding pattern.

Entero Healthcare Q1 results

Faridabad-based Entero Healthcare Solutions reported a 38% year-on-year increase in consolidated revenue from operations to Rs 1,940.5 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, compared with Rs 1,403.8 crore in the year-ago period.

Consolidated profit after tax (PAT) rose 72% year-on-year to Rs 52.1 crore, while profit before tax (PBT) increased 85% to Rs 67.1 crore. Profit attributable to owners of the company grew 37% year-on-year to Rs 38.2 crore.
The company’s operating performance also improved during the quarter, with EBITDA rising 94% year-on-year to Rs 97 crore. EBITDA margin expanded to 5% from 3.6% in the corresponding quarter last year.Entero said the MedTech market is large and growing, and has synergies with its pharmaceutical distribution business. It also sees significant consolidation potential in the segment, with distributors playing a high value-add role and having a higher margin profile than distributors in the pharmaceutical market.

The company’s existing MedTech business and acquisitions focus on the IVD and Cardiology/Orthopaedic devices segments, which it described as large and high-growth. The company has outlined these factors as the strategic rationale for its MedTech acquisitions.

Entero Healthcare share price performance

Entero Healthcare shares have gained more than 21% over the past month and around 32% so far this year. Over the past six months, the stock has climbed nearly 50%.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

Halliburton will help estimate how much lithium there is in the huge body of granite below ground

The company behind a huge lithium mining project in Cornwall has awarded a well drilling contract to a US oil industry giant as it moves towards commercial production.

Cornish Lithium, which last year became the first business to produce lithium hydroxide mined and refined in the UK, has appointed Houston-based Halliburton to provide well services for its Cross Lanes project near Redruth.

The project is examining the site’s potential for the commercial production of lithium – a critical component of lithium-ion batteries used in modern-day electronics including electric vehicles and smartphones.

Under the contract, Halliburton will provide subsurface modelling and well engineering, as well as equipment and services for the drilling and testing of two appraisal wells.

The work will help to estimate the amount of lithium contained within the geothermal system of the Cornubian Batholith – the large body of granite formed around 280 million years ago that lies beneath much of Cornwall and Devon.

According to Cornish Lithium, the commercial-scale wells will allow it to carry out extended testing to validate sustainable production conditions and explore the potential to harness geothermal heat for local homes and businesses.

Data gathered from the wells will inform the project’s final investment decision, while supporting the company’s wider ambition to develop a network of modular geothermal lithium production hubs across Cornwall, Cornish Lithium said.

Cornwall is home to the largest lithium deposits in Europe and has enough lithium to power at least 50 per cent of all EVs expected to be produced in the UK by 2030.

Martin Geissler, VP general manager for Lithium in Geothermal Waters at Cornish Lithium, said: “Halliburton brings deep industry expertise and knowledge, and will support the drilling and testing phases of our project, from well design to construction.

“Their team was highly proactive throughout the tender process, demonstrating a clear understanding of our requirements and a strong commitment to supporting the project’s objectives. We look forward to working with Halliburton and other collaborators as we continue to advance the project, support Cornwall’s proud mining heritage, and create high-quality jobs and long-term economic growth for the region.”

The Cross Lanes Geothermal Lithium Project is supported by a grant of £7.2m through the UK Government’s DRIVE35 programme to part-fund Cornish Lithium’s £14.5m programme of drilling and testing.

DRIVE35 is delivered by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade in partnership with the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK and Innovate UK.

Cornish Lithium first drilled and tested an exploration borehole at Cross Lanes in 2023, which confirmed that lithium‑rich geothermal waters circulate naturally through its underlying rock formations.

Jean-Marc Lopez, senior vice president, Europe, Eurasia, and Sub-Saharan Africa region at Halliburton, added: “Halliburton will support Cornish Lithium on the well services and testing scope for the Cross Lanes Geothermal Lithium Project.

“With more than 70 years of geothermal development experience and over a century of well delivery expertise, I expect our teams will execute the drilling programme safely and efficiently to support Cornish Lithium’s technical and operational objectives.”

This article was written by

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of TWO.PR.A either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

eDreams ODIGEO has moved its Prime travel subscription into full scale expansion in Poland, adding another market to a rollout that the company says will take it beyond 13 million subscribers by March 2030.

The Barcelona based group, listed in Madrid as EDR and traded over the counter in the United States as EDDRF, announced the move on 24 August. It said Prime had already delivered a strong attach rate in the country, with a high share of customers choosing to become subscribers, alongside what it described as a highly competitive member offering. Those results, the company argued, prove that it can scale its subscription proposition beyond its established Western European base.

Poland is an unusual test case. eDreams pointed to the country’s appetite for paid membership as the reason it chose to commit: the largest domestic e-commerce platform counts more than 7.5 million active subscribers to its membership programme in a country of roughly 38 million people. Paid membership, in other words, is already an ordinary part of consumer life there rather than something a travel brand has to explain from scratch.

The commercial prize is sizeable by regional standards. Poland’s online travel market is worth 3.4 billion euros, of which the online travel agent segment accounts for 2.5 billion euros and is growing at around 10 per cent a year, making it one of the largest and fastest growing online travel agency markets in Central and Eastern Europe, according to figures cited by the company.

The 2030 target behind the move

The Poland launch sits inside a strategic roadmap the company presented in November 2025, in which international expansion is one of the main levers on the path to more than 13 million Prime members. eDreams recently scaled the same proposition in Argentina and Mexico, where it says performance has met expectations, and it is also extending the subscription across a broader range of travel products as it builds towards what it calls a global, multi product subscription platform. The company said its existing financial targets and long term guidance are unchanged.

Dana Dunne, chief executive at eDreams ODIGEO, said: “We are delighted to take Prime to full scale in Poland. The strong appetite Polish customers have shown for Prime, echoing what we have seen in other recently scaled markets, such as Argentina and Mexico, proves that our subscription model travels well beyond our home markets. This is our strategy delivering exactly as planned. We look forward to bringing the benefits of Prime to many more Polish travellers as we progress towards our goal of more than 13 million members by March 2030.”

Why UK subscription businesses should be watching

For British firms, the interest is less in Polish flight bookings than in the model itself. Recurring revenue has become one of the most copied growth strategies in consumer and business to business markets alike, and the questions eDreams is answering in Poland, whether members join, whether they stay, whether the benefits are worth the fee, are the same ones facing any UK company weighing up which subscription model actually fits its customers. The pattern eDreams describes, proving demand in a market before committing to full scale, is also the textbook approach to entering a new territory without overcommitting capital.

The regulatory backdrop in Britain is about to change, however. The Department for Business and Trade says there are around 155 million active subscriptions in the UK, worth roughly 26 billion pounds a year in consumer spending, and a new subscription contracts regime under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 is expected to commence in spring 2027. Under those rules, traders will have to give clear information before sign up and let customers cancel online if they signed up online, send reminders before trials and long contracts renew, offer a 14 day cooling off period after those renewals, and refund customers within 14 days.

The government estimates the changes will save consumers around 400 million pounds a year, a figure that comes straight out of subscription revenues somewhere. Any UK business building a Prime style membership will be doing so under tighter rules on how easily people can leave it.

---

Shares of Netweb Technologies fell nearly 4% on Tuesday, hitting a low of Rs 5,220 on the NSE, after the company announced the successful completion of its Rs 1,200 crore qualified institutions placement (QIP).

According to a filing with the exchange on Tuesday, the company said that the Fund-Raising Committee of the Board of Directors approved the allotment of equity shares under the QIP at its meeting held on August 20, 2026.

The QIP marks the first equity capital raised by the company since its listing on the NSE and BSE in July 2023 and the QIP received a strong response from global and domestic institutional investors.

Also Read | Netweb Tech shares rise 4% as Nomura, Goldman Sachs invest in Rs 1,200 crore QIP

The company further said that participation from marquee investors such as Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Nomura Asset Management, Amundi Asset Management, Think Investments, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, Edelweiss Mutual Fund, Invesco Mutual Fund, HDFC Mutual Fund, Kotak Mutual Fund, Tata Mutual Fund, Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund, Bank of India Mutual Fund, Trust Mutual Fund, Helios Mutual Fund, among others, reflects their confidence in Netweb’s business and the structural growth of India’s high-performance computing market and AI ecosystem.

Global institutional heavyweights led the list of major subscribers in the fundraise. Japanese investment firm Nomura secured the single largest allocation of 13.10% (3,28,064 shares) through its Nomura India Investment Mother Fund.
Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs was another prominent participant, securing an 11.21% stake (2,80,740 shares) through the Goldman Sachs India Equity Portfolio.Domestic institutional investors also absorbed a substantial chunk of the placement. ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund picked up a total 16.67% stake (4,17,476 shares) across six of its underlying schemes, including its Flexicap Fund and Innovation Fund.

Foreign portfolio investor Think India Opportunities Master Fund LP acquired an 8.33% block (2,08,768 shares). Similarly, Edelweiss Mutual Fund schemes alongside Altiva Hybrid Long-Short Fund collectively secured an 8.33% allocation (2,08,768 shares), while Invesco India Flexi Cap Fund picked up a 6.25% share (1,56,577 shares).

Pursuant to the QIP, the company allotted 2,505,219 equity shares of face value Rs 2 each at an issue price of Rs 4,790.00 per equity share (including a premium of Rs 4,788.00 per equity share).

Netweb Technologies offers computing solutions with fully integrated design and manufacturing capabilities. Its HCS offering comprises HPC, private cloud and (HCI), AI systems and enterprise workstations, high-performance storage (HPS) and data centre servers and intends to utilise the net proceeds of the QIP towards funding its working capital requirements to support the execution of its anticipated growth in the order book and general corporate purposes, in line with the objects set out in the Placement Document.

“We are grateful for the trust shown by leading domestic and global institutional investors in Netweb. This QIP represents an important milestone in our journey and reflects confidence not only in our performance, but also in the long-term opportunity across AI and high-end computing infrastructure,” said Sanjay Lodha, chairman and managing director, Netweb Technologies.

Also Read | Ceigall India shares rise 4% after winning Rs 705 crore Arunachal Pradesh Frontier Highway project

“The capital raised strengthens our balance sheet and financial flexibility and enhances our ability to support the working-capital requirements in line with anticipated growth in our scale of operations and order book. We remain committed to strengthening our Make in India design and manufacturing capabilities, deepening our technology partnerships and investing in innovation to deliver sustainable long-term growth and value for our stakeholders,” Lodha further said.

IIFL Capital Services, CLSA India, & Resurgent India acted as the book running lead managers to the issue. Khaitan & Co. acted as domestic legal counsel to the company and the book running lead managers, and Hogan Lovells Cadwalader acted as international legal counsel to the book running lead managers. Uirtus Advisors LLP was advisor to the company.

Shares of Netweb Technologies hit a fresh 52-week high of Rs 5,813 per share on Monday on the NSE. In the last one month, the stock rallied 27.41% and nearly 123.25% in the last one year.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times.)

Songs that are largely or wholly created by AI have been banned from Australia’s music charts.

From this week, all releases must be “substantially human made” to be eligible.

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said the new code would help “promote the human nature of artistry”.

It follows a controversy around a cover of Madonna’s Like A Prayer by Australian DJ Josh Fawaz which recently topped the ARIA dance singles chart and peaked at number 2 on the country’s overall chart.

The song has become a staple of commercial radio station playlists and been streamed more than 48 million times on Spotify alone.

Fawaz later added generative AI credits to the song after a backlash.

ARIA said that Australian artists were competing for attention “in the most crowded market in history” and that it was “not interested in promoting or celebrating the success of AI-generated music that does not contain human artistry”.

Under the new rules, AI assistance can still be used, but humans must have written the song, and have performed the lead vocal and primary instruments.

AI can also still be used for mastering songs and, for example, using drum machines and auto tune.

Earlier this year a song was banned from Sweden’s music charts because it was created by AI.

And in July, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said AI guidelines would be rolled out in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia for use in their official charts.

The updated code, based on the IFPI directive, also excludes music that raises “stream or chart manipulation concerns”.

ARIA chief executive Annabelle Herd said: “These changes reflect our intent to remain dynamic and promote the human nature of artistry in what is, to say the least, a rapidly developing space.”

“Artists already use AI tools in their work, the charts can and should evolve to keep room for that, but music generated wholesale by services built on artists’ recordings is a different matter.”

She added: “A chart that rewards unlicensed AI output would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent.”

Artists will be required to declare AI use when they submit a song for chart consideration.

ARIA said that if it later emerged music was largely AI-generated it could retrospectively adjust chart positions, and if the piece topped the charts, it may request that awards given for reaching Number One were returned.

Artists and their representatives will be able to challenge their exclusion.

Among the artists supporting the move are Australian electronic act Peking Duk.

Last month, they shared an AI-assisted version of their 2014 hit High on Instagram, captioned: “When you re-record your own song with AI so Australian radio will play it.”

Band member Adam Hyde told Channel Nine’s Today show that AI-generated music was “removing the human experience from life”.

In July this year, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised “the strongest possible protection” from AI for Australian creatives.

Albanese pledged that writers and musicians would be able to choose if and how their work was used in the training of AI, saying it would be “theft” if creatives lost that control and were not paid for its use.