The Group Chief Executive Officer of Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO), Segun Agbaje, has said Nigerian banks had ample notice to prepare for the end of regulatory forbearance, and therefore the recent decision by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to phase it out should not come as a surprise.

Agbaje made the remarks on Thursday, July 10, during an event commemorating the company’s secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), where GTCO officially began trading under the ticker “GTHC.”

“We had letters — there was enough time”

Addressing the issue of regulatory forbearance, a temporary relief policy introduced to ease the pressure of non-performing loans during turbulent periods, Agbaje was unequivocal.

“I don’t think forbearance or the exit of forbearance should have come as a surprise to banks. We all basically had letters saying it would end in 2023. Therefore, we should have exited by the end of 2024. So whatever the regulators chose to do should not have come as a surprise,” he said.

The remarks come amid complaints from some bank executives who described the CBN’s timing as abrupt. But Agbaje’s comments appear to challenge that narrative, suggesting the industry had more than enough time to align with the exit timeline.

On CRR and inherited liquidity overhang

On the broader regulatory environment, Agbaje also weighed in on the controversial Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR), which banks say locks away an excessive portion of their deposits at the CBN, thereby tightening liquidity and curbing lending ability.

“CRR is a result of a liquidity overhang that was inherited by this government and this central bank. You have to find a methodical way of getting rid of the liquidity,” he said, defending the CBN’s posture. “My belief is that as the central bank sees normalized liquidity, they will reduce CRR over time. But I don’t think it’s realistic to expect them to just release CRR in the midst of what is a large liquidity overhang.”

The CBN has faced criticism for sequestering over N15 trillion in the banking sector CRR — a situation many analysts argue restricts banks’ ability to lend and weakens earnings. But Agbaje’s stance suggests an understanding of the regulator’s cautious approach to liquidity management.

Navigating tough international regulatory terrain

Agbaje also spoke about the intense regulatory scrutiny faced by GTCO during its London listing process, including requirements from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

“It’s very challenging. It’s not only the exchange that you have to meet. You have to meet the FCA — it’s the financial regulator here,” he said. “Honestly, the takeaway is you have to learn how to play by the rules. Because you’ll be surprised how much pops up.”

He further stressed the importance of responsible journalism, saying misinformation — particularly in Nigeria — can complicate international due diligence exercises.

“When you do a due diligence on a company, everything that has been said about that company or the individuals pops up. And you have to defend it… But people don’t see that. So you go through a lot of that. And you have to debunk. You have to confirm. You have to explain.”

GTCO’s London listing: A West African first

GTCO’s secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange marks a significant step in its strategic global expansion. On July 9, the company announced the admission of its Ordinary Shares to the LSE’s main market, making it the first financial services institution in West Africa to dual-list shares on both the Nigerian and London exchanges.

The listing follows a fully marketed offering that raised $105 million through the issuance of 2.29 billion new ordinary shares, attracting a strong mix of long-term institutional investors.

The company’s shares are now trading under the ticker “GTHC”, with a planned shift to “GTCO” following the cancellation of its Global Depository Receipts (GDRs). The transition reflects GTCO’s current corporate structure and rebranding efforts.

GTCO’s listing comes at a time when Nigerian banks face steep regulatory demands and macroeconomic uncertainty. Yet, the firm’s ability to meet the LSE’s stringent standards — including anti-money laundering protocols, board composition rules, and audit transparency — suggests GTCO is positioning itself to attract more foreign capital and assert its footprint beyond Africa.

Agbaje’s remarks not only defend regulatory policies back home but also highlight the burden of perception that Nigerian companies must overcome on the global stage — especially in an era where public narrative largely influences investor confidence.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is reportedly preparing to raise new funds in a deal that could catapult its valuation to as high as $200 billion, according to the Financial Times, citing sources close to the matter.

The potential raise underscores growing investor confidence in Musk’s AI ambitions, coming just months after xAI’s multibillion-dollar infrastructure expansion and a recent $10bn raise to supercharge the AI race with a massive data center.

While Musk publicly denied the need for new capital, writing on X that “xAI is not seeking funding right now. We have plenty of capital,” insiders suggest otherwise. The FT report reveals that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is expected to play a significant role in the upcoming round through its indirect stake via Kingdom Holdings, which already has an $800 million investment in xAI.

The valuation target — between $170 billion and $200 billion — would make xAI one of the most highly valued AI startups globally, only rivaled by OpenAI, which is also preparing a fundraising round at a projected $300 billion valuation. Notably, xAI was valued at $80 billion in March following its all-stock acquisition of X.

The fresh talks come on the heels of a major $10 billion capital infusion facilitated by Morgan Stanley in June, split equally between debt and strategic equity. The package included floating-rate loans and bonds with interest rates as high as 12%, reflecting both investor appetite and cautious optimism over xAI’s future earnings.

According to Morgan Stanley’s projections, xAI is expected to generate over $1 billion in gross revenue by the end of 2025, and more than $13 billion in annual earnings by 2029, powered by the rollout of its Grok AI model and massive infrastructure investments.

The company has pledged to invest $18 billion in data centers as part of its expansion into AI infrastructure. Central to this push is its Colossus supercomputer, located in Memphis, Tennessee — powered by natural gas turbines and now home to hundreds of thousands of GPUs. Musk’s goal is to scale Colossus to 1 million GPUs, positioning it as a cornerstone of xAI’s computing backbone.

On Wednesday, the company launched Grok-4, the latest iteration of its chatbot model, claiming benchmark-topping performance in reasoning and code generation. This positions Grok in direct competition with OpenAI’s GPT-4, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini.

Strategic Acquisition of X and Platform Synergies

In March, xAI acquired social media platform X in an all-stock transaction that valued the combined entity at $113 billion — $80 billion for xAI and $33 billion for X. This merger gives xAI a direct distribution platform for Grok and potentially unlocks significant synergies between conversational AI, content recommendation, and advertising infrastructure.

The strategy mimics Musk’s multi-pronged approach to scaling: combining product ownership (X), infrastructure (Colossus), capital leverage (Morgan Stanley’s syndicate), and a relentless focus on vertical integration.

The expected involvement of the Saudi PIF highlights growing geopolitical interest in controlling AI infrastructure and capabilities. PIF’s backing — via Kingdom Holdings — signals confidence in xAI’s potential to be a global AI leader. Given the U.S.–China rivalry and tightening chip export restrictions, Musk’s control over critical AI supply chains is viewed by some analysts as a strategic advantage.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government tightened export rules on Nvidia’s AI chips to China, blocking sales of even downgraded processors like the H20. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described the move as effectively shutting off a $50 billion China market for U.S. chipmakers. In that context, xAI’s domestic infrastructure ambitions — from energy sourcing to compute deployment — could help to expand the U.S. domestic AI market.

However, xAI’s ambitions place it in a fierce AI arms race alongside OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic. Microsoft has committed $80 billion toward AI infrastructure in 2025, and OpenAI is scouting for another $40 billion to maintain its lead. Meanwhile, Google is absorbing top AI talent, including from Windsurf and other startups, to bolster its Gemini platform.

But with a sprawling infrastructure buildout, an integrated consumer platform, and now–growing financial backing, Musk’s xAI is rapidly evolving from a startup challenger into a full-stack AI conglomerate.

Meta Platforms Inc. has completed the acquisition of PlayAI, a small but innovative artificial intelligence startup specializing in voice synthesis and voice creation platforms.

The deal, confirmed in an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg, marks Meta’s latest maneuver in a fast-intensifying battle for talent and technology among Silicon Valley’s biggest players.

According to the memo, the “entire PlayAI team” will join Meta next week and report directly to Johan Schalkwyk, a seasoned voice technology expert who recently joined Meta after leaving Sesame AI, another voice-focused startup. The PlayAI team’s deep expertise in developing naturalistic AI voices and creating scalable voice-generation tools is expected to enhance Meta’s efforts across a wide array of projects—particularly its AI Characters initiative, Meta AI, wearables, and content creation platforms.

Meta did not disclose the financial terms of the acquisition, and a company spokesperson confirmed the deal but declined to comment further.

Part of a Broader Pattern: Meta Leads AI Talent Acquisition Surge

The PlayAI deal is the latest example of a growing trend in Silicon Valley, where top tech giants are acquiring smaller AI startups not just for their intellectual property, but to secure elite talent in an increasingly competitive race for dominance in generative AI.

Meta, under CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership, has made AI the company’s top strategic priority this year. Beyond infrastructure investments in AI chips and next-generation data centers, Meta has been aggressively restructuring and consolidating its AI divisions. In April, the company created Meta Superintelligence Labs, placing former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang at the helm. The move came after Meta quietly brought in several Scale AI researchers and product leads in what insiders described as a “soft acqui-hire”—a pattern of absorbing smaller startups to boost in-house capabilities.

PlayAI’s integration follows that same playbook: a highly specialized startup with a focused product is folded into Meta’s much larger AI roadmap, plugging key gaps in capability—in this case, human-like voice synthesis that could eventually power avatars, assistants, and immersive VR/AR experiences in Meta’s long-term metaverse strategy.

Google Joins the Chase: Windsurf CEO Snapped Up

Meta is not alone in this strategy. Its main rival in the AI space, Google DeepMind, recently made a similar move by acquiring Windsurf AI, a low-profile startup working on energy-efficient transformer models. The startup’s CEO and chief scientist, who had published cutting-edge research in multimodal AI, was swiftly appointed as Director of Applied Research at DeepMind, effectively replicating Meta’s Scale AI-style acquisition in a quieter form.

Industry analysts have noted that these quiet takeovers signal a shift in the AI arms race: rather than waiting for academic breakthroughs or internal R&D to catch up, Big Tech is choosing to fast-track innovation by absorbing startups wholesale—including their leadership, researchers, and proprietary models.

PlayAI’s contribution to Meta’s roadmap is expected to be especially impactful in enhancing voice-first user interfaces. The startup’s platform, which enables rapid voice cloning and expressive, real-time speech synthesis, aligns with Meta’s vision of building conversational, emotionally responsive AI agents.

Such voice capabilities are increasingly seen as foundational to the future of human-AI interaction. Whether through smart glasses, AI assistants, or immersive digital characters, the ability to talk and respond naturally is central to Meta’s concept of the “Everything App.”

Moreover, PlayAI’s voice tech may bolster Meta’s ability to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT voice interface, Google’s Gemini, and Amazon’s Alexa—all of which are rapidly evolving with increasingly sophisticated speech-to-text and voice generation abilities.

The acquisition also reinforces Silicon Valley’s transition from open collaboration to tight vertical integration, as firms seek to control every part of the AI value chain—from model development and training infrastructure to user-facing features like chatbots and avatars.

As Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon continue to court AI engineers and absorb nimble startups, the pressure is rising on mid-size tech firms and independent labs, many of which now face a decision: partner, compete—or get bought.

With the PlayAI team now under Meta’s umbrella and more strategic acquisitions rumored to be in the pipeline, the generative AI landscape is being redrawn—not only by code, but by who controls the talent building it.

Linda Yaccarino’s sudden resignation as CEO of X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday is being widely linked to the latest controversy engulfing the Elon Musk-owned platform: the Grok AI chatbot’s antisemitic outburst, which is now believed to have shattered whatever fragile trust remained between the company and advertisers.

Though Yaccarino didn’t cite specific reasons for her departure, the timing—just hours after Grok was taken offline for spewing antisemitic content—has fueled speculation that the incident was the tipping point in what has been a tumultuous tenure.

She wrote in her resignation note: “When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime… I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”

Musk’s only public comment was a brief, “Thank you for your contributions.”

But industry analysts are drawing a clear connection between Yaccarino’s exit and the Grok fiasco.

“Linda Yaccarino stepping down as CEO of X can’t be a coincidence in the aftermath of Grok going rogue yesterday and spewing out streams of antisemitic garbage,” said Gary Black, Managing Partner at The Future Fund.

“This incident likely wrecked any chance of X attracting increased advertising dollars this year, making Linda’s job untenable,” he added.

The Grok incident, which led to the AI chatbot being pulled offline just before the expected launch of Grok 4, was the latest blow to X’s efforts to restore credibility among advertisers. It came after months of tension between Musk’s increasingly controversial rhetoric and Yaccarino’s attempts to maintain professional relationships with corporate brands.

Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal advertising executive, was brought in specifically to stem the exodus of advertisers that began shortly after Musk acquired the platform in late 2022. But her task quickly became impossible as Musk used his personal X account to promote conspiracy theories, including the antisemitic “Great Replacement” narrative, as well as other far-right talking points.

His posts drove away major advertisers including Apple, IBM, Disney, Coca-Cola, and Comcast, after watchdog organizations revealed that their ads were appearing next to extremist content.

In response, Musk sued nonprofits like the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Media Matters, claiming they were intentionally damaging the platform’s reputation. The lawsuits only deepened advertiser skepticism, as executives questioned the platform’s commitment to content moderation and brand safety.

The latest controversy involving Grok’s antisemitic outputs has been particularly damaging because it directly threatens one of the company’s supposed growth pillars: AI integration. Grok was envisioned as a core component of X’s evolution into an “Everything App,” merging social media, payments, and AI tools. Its repeated missteps, however, have instead underlined the platform’s inability to manage the integration responsibly.

Multiple reports suggest that Grok’s behavior horrified advertisers and reinforced fears that X’s environment remains unsafe and volatile. Given that many advertisers had only just begun testing the waters again, the scandal appears to have dashed hopes for any significant return of ad revenue this year.

Yaccarino, who once claimed she could steer X toward advertiser trust while preserving Musk’s commitment to “free speech,” ultimately found herself isolated—caught between Musk’s erratic behavior and an industry demanding accountability and consistency.

Even before Grok’s latest misfire, reports had emerged of growing tensions between Yaccarino and Musk, with insiders noting that her authority was routinely undermined and that key decisions continued to flow through Musk directly.

With X’s ad revenue still down more than 50% since Musk’s takeover, according to internal estimates, and subscriber-based revenue from X Premium failing to offset those losses, the platform is under increasing financial pressure.

No successor has been named, and speculation is rife that Musk may resume direct control, potentially accelerating the platform’s pivot toward alternative monetization models like subscriptions, AI features, and cryptocurrency-based payments.

Many believe that the Grok’s misfire is a crisis of governance, accountability, and direction. And unless Musk changes course—which seems unlikely—X’s efforts to woo back advertisers will be in vain.