Business News Today
AI Wars – Byte Dance Encroaching on Disney Designs
Disney has sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance accusing the AI image and video generating company of using Disney characters to train and power its Seedance 2.0 AI video generator without permission, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The letter alleges Chinese owned Seedance is reproducing, distributing and creating derivative works featuring Spider-Man, Darth Vader, and other characters. ByteDance will strengthen safeguards on its Seedance 2.0 AI video tool to prevent the unauthorised use of copyrighted characters and celebrity likenesses, the Chinese firm told the BBC on Sunday. Disney said ByteDance had pre‑packaged Seedance with a pirated library of copyrighted characters from franchises including Star Wars and Marvel, portraying them as if they were public-domain clip art, the person said.
Cocoa Demand Crashes
Ghana has slashed its farmgate cocoa rate paid to farmers, amid a drop in global cocoa prices. The move aligns the price with that of the international market to encourage more demand Ghana is the world’s second largest cocoa producer, however the slowdown in demand has resulted in the country having difficulty paying farmers as cocoa demand has plummeted, prompting global cocoa prices to halve over the course of a year to below $3700 per metric ton down 64% from a year ago, with prices down by 39% year-to-date. Weak buying interest is leading to stock accumulation among major cocoa producers, particularly the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Latest data showed cocoa arrivals at ports in Ivorian Coast ports reached 1.263 million metric tons by February 8 since the start of the season on October 1, down 4.5% from the same period last season.
AI Power Play Start-Up Raises $15 Million
Tech group start-up C2i (which stands for control conversion and intelligence) has raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from Yali Deeptech and TDK Ventures, bringing the two-year-old startup’s total funding to $19 million. The Indian startup is focussed on building plug-and-play, system-level power solutions designed to cut energy losses and improve the economics of large-scale AI infrastructure. AI data centres face major challenges in scaling such as processor chip shortages, but the biggest challenge is effective energy supply.
Much of this efficiency loss comes not from electricity generation, but from converting it efficiently inside data centre’s, where high-voltage power must be stepped down thousands of times before it reaches GPUs. This process currently wastes around 15% to 20% of their energy supply, C2i’s co-founder and CTO Preetam Tadeparthy explained in an interview. C2i was established in 2024 by former Texas Instruments power executives Ram Anant, Vikram Gakhar, Preetam Tadeparthy, and Dattatreya Suryanarayana, and are redesigning power delivery as a single, plug-and-play “grid-to-GPU” system spanning the data-centre bus to the processor itself.
Copper Prices Weaken
Futures in Copper dropped nearly 1% to around $5.75 per pound this morning, extending last week’s losses as mainland Chinese investors were away for the week-long Lunar New Year holidays, keeping trading volumes low and economic activity subdued. Other Asian markets, as well as the US, were also closed for public holidays. The metal had reached record highs above $6.5 per pound in late January amid speculative buying from Chinese investors, before falling as much as 15% as sentiment reversed. Still, copper remains supported by ongoing supply disruptions and strong global demand from power grids, data centers, and electric vehicles. This demand puts major industrial players, including China, the US, Canada, Europe, and India, in competition to secure supplies.
Breaking News Shorts:
- India is set to host the AI Impact Summit 2026 from today February 16 to 20 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, bringing together global policymakers, technology leaders and artificial intelligence innovators. The meet is being seen as the first major global AI summit to be held in the Global South. However Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang will not be attending for “personal reasons” according to reports
- Spotify this week during its fourth-quarter earnings call, indicated that their best developers “have not written a single line of code since December.” That statement, from Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström, came alongside other comments about how the company is using AI to accelerate development. Engineers are now using an internal Ai system called “Honk” to speed up coding and product velocity, the company told analysts
- Gold Futures have bounced back almost 2.5% this morning after slipping below R5020 on Friday and are trading around 5043 this morning. Gold futures are up around 9% in the last month and up 16.7% so far this year. Year-on-Year Gold futures are up around 75%
- Peter Steinberger, the founder of OpenClaw, is joining OpenAI, according to a statement made by Sam Altman yesterday. “Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents,” Altman said in a post on X, adding “OpenClaw will live in a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support.”
- Egypt’s unemployment rate dropped to 6.2% in Q4 2025 from 6.4% in the previous quarter, slightly above the record low of 6.1% seen in Q2, pointing to modest job gains and continued labor market stability toward year-end.
Markets by Numbers
Currency markets indicate the US dollar gaining ground to major currencies today, with the Greenback trading against the Euro at 1.18628 while trading against the Pound at 1.36362 to the US dollar. The Yen is currently trading at 153.22 to the dollar. The rand (ZAR) is currently trading at around R15.92 against the US dollar.
Commodities:
- Gold futures have gained momentum today, up by around 2.4% this morning, and currently trading at around $5043.92 per ounce.
- Copper prices are trending -0.7% lower today, with prices currently around $57.569 per pound
- Silver futures have spiked by around 3% today, and currently trading around $77.402. per ounce.
- Platinum futures are around-1.1% lower this morning, and currently trading at $2053.00, While Palladium prices are marginally up this morning, and currently trading around $1705.00 per ounce.
- Brent crude oil prices are trending lower today, and currently at $67.71 with WTI trading higher at $62.87
- Cocoa futures continue its downward momentum today, and currently trading around $3683 per ton.
- Coffee futures are currently trending lower today, and trading at around $2.9622 per pound
Crypto Currencies:
- Bitcoin prices are trending -0.6% lower today, and trading at around $68303 per coin currently
- Ether prices are down around -0.3% today, and are currently trading around $1955.03
- $Trumpcoin are currently trading around $3.481
(All prices quoted at approximately 07H40 Central African Time)
Africa News Briefs:
- The illicit trade in Cigarettes and alcohol is costing the South African fiscus R50 billion ($3.1 billion) every year according to the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA), which described this as a wake-up call for the government, which appears to finally be taking action with regard to the surging illicit economy. President Cyril Ramaphosa appears to have woken up to this destructive reality in his 2026 State of the Nation Address, which outlined some of the government’s efforts to tackle the scourge.
- South Africa experienced its second-highest number of service delivery protests on record in 2025, with 229 service delivery protest action occurring last year, equivalent to two thirds of the year. The protest data reveals rapidly rising social frustration and an increasing lack of participation in elections and other democratic processes. This poses a major threat to social stability in South Africa, particularly in relation to the looming local government elections, which are due to take place before the end of 2026.
