SoftBank Group’s mobile payment subsidiary PayPay inked a deal to acquire a 70% stake in T&D Financial Life Insurance Company for JPY134 billion ($840 million), part of an aim to broaden its range of financial services.

When launched in 2018 PayPay focused on providing contactless mobile payments but has since widened this to include credit cards and other banking services. It had a base of more than 74 million users as of May 2026.

Announcing the deal, PayPay said the move to buy the life insurance company from T&D Holdings was part of an ambition to “provide comprehensive financial services tailored to each stage of users’ lives”.

The company intends to grow T&D Financial Life’s business through use of its existing platforms and by creating “new customer experiences in the digital life insurance domain”.  

In a linked deal, asset management company One Investment Management intends to buy a stake of almost 15% in the insurance company from T&D Holdings. The current owner will retain the other 15%, though a call option on this is being inserted into the acquisition agreement.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval.

Alongside the proposed acquisition, PayPay agreed a “comprehensive business alliance” agreement 3with T&D Holdings, largely concerning the latter’s insurance brand Taiyo Life.

The pair will “explore the development and provision of services designed to enhance customer convenience and help address social issues, while also drawing on AI, digital technologies, and other capabilities of SoftBank Corp”.

The pact is set to include: offering T&D Holdings’ Taiyo Life insurance products on the PayPay app; exploring call centre enhancement and operational efficiency for Taiyo Life; and jointly exploring a “smart senior city concept”.

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T-Mobile US officially opened a global capability centre (GCC) in Hyderabad, India, with plans to hire around 1,000 staff by 2027, its first such facility outside of its home market.

The Indian government stated T-Mobile, through its TMUS Global Solutions Technology subsidiary, opened a site spanning 250,000 square feet in the city, which is situated in the state of Telangana.

It will operate as a strategic innovation hub within its global network, focusing on software engineering, DevOps, product development, cloud technologies, AI, data analytics, cybersecurity and next-generation digital solutions.

Posting on X, minister for IT Sridhar Duddilla said T-Mobile’s GCC represented another significant milestone in Telangana’s growth as a technology and innovation destination.

“The decision by T-Mobile to expand its presence here reflects the confidence that global companies have in Telangana’s talent, business-friendly environment, and strong digital infrastructure.”

Chandra Gupta, VP IT operations at TMUS Global Solutions, added the company decided to locate the facility in Hyderabad as it offers “a combination of technology talent and an established innovation ecosystem aligned with the company’s long-term goals”.

The Economic Times of India reported the company has already onboarded more than 500 people at the facility,

According to Reuters, India’s GCCs have evolved from low-cost outsourcing hubs to offices for global companies, supporting parent companies in several functions.

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Orange Business secured a deal to supply French public hospital group GHT Rouen Coeur de Seine with a generative AI (genAI) platform, equipping 15,000 health professionals across its network with secure sovereign AI tools.

The French operator’s enterprise unit will deploy Live Intelligence, its enterprise genAI platform, across the hospital group to provide a controlled alternative to unverified public AI tools. It stated the long-term partnership spans infrastructure, strategy and operational support.

Rouen University Hospital, the group’s support entity, selected the platform to govern AI usage and ensure secure deployment across its workforce. Orange Business said the platform intends to support and upskill staff across clinical, administrative and technical roles, creating a common framework for genAI training and responsible use.

The platform is hosted in France and can be connected to the hospital group’s information systems, with early use cases already in play. Research teams at Rouen University Hospital are using genAI to speed up grant applications, cutting the process timeframe from three weeks to two days. The operator added sourcing requests involving specifications and evaluation criteria could be reduced from two weeks to one day.

As part of the deal, the partners also plan to develop a long-term innovation programme with other university hospitals to build AI use cases relevant to the wider healthcare sector.

Claire Scotton, VP of healthcare and life sciences at Orange Business, said some hospital staff feel they have become “‘data managers’ as much as healthcare professionals”, adding the platform aims to help them “reclaim time to focus on what truly matters: patient care, meaningful work, and collaboration”.

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Telefonica chairman and CEO Marc Murtra (pictured, right) insisted European sovereignty will only be possible with simplified regulation and a commitment to building technology within the continent, while stressing strategic autonomy does not mean isolation.

Speaking at the 2026 Cercle d’Economia meeting held in Barcelona on a roundtable about AI and European technological sovereignty, Murtra argued Europe needs to accelerate the development of its own technologies to keep pace in a world shaped by AI, quantum computing and new autonomous systems.

Murtra said building out technologies had become a determining factor for countries’ economic competitiveness, productivity, resilience and “decision-making capacity”.

In this context, however, he does not believe taking such an approach will mean isolation on the global stage, rather it gives Europe the ability to develop and control critical capabilities in areas such as energy, digital infrastructure, semiconductors and AI.

“Strategic autonomy is the relevant concept. No economy is completely independent, but Europe must strengthen its capabilities to reduce excessive dependencies in key technologies,” he said.

Protect European values
Delving deeper into Europe’s needs, Murtra explained strategic autonomy requires combining investment, industrial capacity, innovation, talent and forming “a shared long-term vision”.

This vision, he added, should be centred on defending and preserving “very important values linked to democracy, human dignity and the ability to say what we think.”

On the point of regulation, the Telefonica executive believes simplifying rules and focus does not mean eliminating anything, but “rather prioritising what drives innovation, competitiveness and strategic autonomy”.

He concluded: “Europe has the GDP, the talent, the engineers, the companies and the institutions” to lead the next technological revolution.

Murtra’s comments coincided with a new European Commission (EC) proposal to boost the continent’s sovereignty, outlining renewed focus on semiconductors, AI, cloud and open source.

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Apple unveiled plans to open a facility for developers in Berlin, Germany, a site intended to help European companies in creating and improving apps for the iPhone-maker’s devices.

The developer centre will be Apple’s first of its type in Europe. It runs similar facilities in Singapore, Shanghai, Cupertino and Bengaluru.

It is set to host workshops for app developers, one-on-one appointments and other in-person sessions in an attempt to help companies elevate the design and performance of applications for iPhones, iPads, macs and other devices using its operating systems.

Apple added dedicated labs will also offer hands-on support across multiple languages.

The company’s VP worldwide developer relations Susan Prescott said Europe was “home to an extraordinary community of developers who are building apps that create connections, encourage creativity, and drive innovation”.

“We have always believed that when developers have the right tools and resources to do their best work, incredible things follow. That belief is what this centre is built on, and we look forward to seeing what the community continues to develop.”

The site, located in the Mitte district of the German capital, is due to open later this year.

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Meta Platforms unveiled an AI agent designed to help businesses carry out day-to-day tasks, as the social media giant looks to raise competition in the enterprise arena.

Meta Business Agent is an AI-powered tool designed to let any business, from a one-person shop to a global enterprise, respond to customers around the clock without missing a beat.

It also positions the company to better rival OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the enterprise AI market.

More than a million businesses are already using some version of the agent on WhatsApp and Messenger, but yesterday (3 June) Meta started offering it globally to businesses of all sizes.

Meta explained Business Agent can be setup up in minutes or plugged directly into an existing enterprise infrastructure.

The agent can handle conversations in business customers’ local languages and tone from the first day.

It can answer business-specific questions, recommend products from a catalogue, book appointments, qualify leads, and even close sales. When a situation calls for a human touch, users can decide exactly when a team member needs to step in.

The expansion to Instagram is also live and getting started is free. Meta stated paid subscription tiers are coming in the months ahead, with options built to fit businesses of every size.

Meta is positioning the agent as more than just a chatbot. The agent doubles as a daily partner, capable of delivering morning briefings which catch businesses up on overnight conversations while surfacing insights from customer threads.

It is rolling out the agent to a select group of businesses on WhatsApp Business, Instagram Pro, Messenger, and Meta Business Suite, with a waitlist open for others.

For businesses that want deeper customisation, Meta is also launching the Business Agent Platform, an enterprise-grade infrastructure layer which connects to hundreds of third-party systems including Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee, giving the agent the ability to take real action on a business’ behalf.

The social media giant is also making it easier for people to discover businesses powered by a Meta Business Agent directly on WhatsApp.

Soon, people on WhatsApp will be able to find businesses by searching a name or sharing a contact card in a chat, which means every new customer who reaches out gets a helpful response from the start.

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