Revolut

Santander's Joe Goldberg: AI won't kill emotional brand choice

Joe Goldberg, Santander's head of brand marketing and communications, argues that emotional attachment and brand-led positioning will remain decisive for consumer choice even as large language models and AI-driven recommendations grow. He describes Santander's recent creative and media unification efforts, a new first-time-buyer mortgage proposition with a £10,000 deposit paired with a saving vehicle, and the shift to campaigns that place talent (Ant and Dec) closer to everyday consumer realities. Goldberg stresses the marketing discipline must be commercially literate, highlights use of an atomistic customer tool called FRESCO for segmentation, and says the industry debate is moving from 'share of search' to 'share of model.' He predicts brand-led businesses will retain advantage over purely price-led competitors in an AI-assisted future.

Stripe in talks to buy OpenRouter for $10B

Payments giant Stripe is reportedly in talks to acquire AI model marketplace OpenRouter for about $10 billion — roughly eight times OpenRouter’s May valuation of $1.3 billion. The newsletter highlights that OpenRouter’s entire revenue comes from a 5.5% fee, contrasts Stripe’s AI Gateway and Ramp’s LLM routing approaches, and also notes Revolut’s new $115 billion valuation, making it the 8th most valuable bank in Europe. The article frames the deal as strategically important for Stripe’s position in AI routing and payment infrastructure.

Anthropic Outpaces OpenAI in the AI Race

Manager Magazin’s Tech Update (24 July 2026) reports that Anthropic has pulled ahead of OpenAI in the current AI race: its powerful supermodel Fable is kept restricted while the company grows revenue and investor valuations that already exceed OpenAI’s. The newsletter’s investigation highlights strategic, commercial and communication differences between the firms and examines market pressures from China-based open‑source models. The edition also covers related tech and policy items: AMD has signed a multi‑billion chip and investment deal with Anthropic; the EU fined Google €890 million under the Digital Markets Act; Revolut’s valuation rose to $115 billion amid employee share sales; a security incident at Hugging Face was later traced to OpenAI testing; and German political figures (Christian Lindner) and major e‑commerce players (Zalando, About You) featured in separate business stories. The piece is presented as an exclusive newsletter analysis by Sarah Heuberger and colleagues.