AI-generated summary
Listen Labs was founded in 2023 by Florian Juengermann and Alfred Wahlforss, who met while studying at Harvard University. The company automates qualitative market research using AI and has customers such as Microsoft, Google and Nestlé. Earlier this year it announced that its annual revenue increased 15-fold in a year and surveyed more than a million people in nine months.
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AI outlook — possibilities, not facts
Salesforce and Listen Labs agree on a takeover within the next three months.
Possible · Within months

Asian stock markets fell on rising oil prices and geopolitical tensions following Iran's attacks on ships and the US sinking of Iranian oil tankers. In Tokyo, the Nikkei index fell 0.8 percent, while statements from the Japanese central bank fueled expectations of rapid interest rate hikes.

The escalation in the Middle East drove the price of oil above $100 and weighed on US stock markets with losses in the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq. While the energy sector was the only sector to gain, Meta limited the losses in the S&P 500 with a price increase of over six percent by introducing an AI assistant.
Saxony's Economics Minister Dirk Panter is calling on Volkswagen to come up with a timely concept for the Zwickau plant in order to secure vehicle production at the site. A conversion into an armaments location is not an issue in the short term. The VW supervisory board decided on a savings package with planned cuts of up to 100,000 jobs by 2030, although the future of the Zwickau, Hanover, Emden and Neckarsulm locations remains unclear.
After sabotage attacks on the power grid in several federal states, RWE boss Markus Krebber is calling for better protection of critical infrastructure, more secrecy instead of transparency and earlier detection of threats. He advocates a debate about physical self-defense and criticizes transparency laws. Police have arrested a 48-year-old suspect who is said to have tried to sabotage power lines near coal-fired power plants in North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg and Saxony.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is tripling the buyback of long-term US government bonds to $6 billion to calm the markets.

Despite rising interest rates, gold prices could rise in the coming weeks, due to growing US national debt and uncertainty before the congressional elections at the beginning of November, which could lead to market policy election gifts, says Astrid Dörner from Handelsblatt.