John Healey has also revealed that UK AI chip startup Fractile has been valued at $7bn in its latest fundraising round.

The chancellor told MP that Fractile has just conducted a £500m funding round, including a contribution from the British Business Bank.

This lifted the valuation of this "British based company, British started company to $7 billion", through the "largest ever European semiconductor funding round", Healey adds proudly.

Fractile is developing chips designed to improve AI inference, the process through which AI models generate responses.

Tech shares are broadly higher on Wall Street in early trading, lifting the Nasdaq Composite index up by 1.2%.

CoreWeave is leading the risers, up 12%, after cheering investors with its financial results last night.

research director atsays the AI trade is turning a corner:

The roller coaster ride for markets continues, and US stocks are staging a recovery today, after Tuesday's post CPI sell off. US stocks are surging, led by Nvidia is higher by more than 2.5% so fa

Back in the tech world, Nvidia's shares have opened higher.

After two days of falls, Nvidia's share price is up 2% in early trading.

Chancellor John Healey says he is "dismayed" that the details of his bank tax plans leaked on the morning of the budget.

He tells the Treasury committee that he did not want any leaks out of the budget process, and takes all leaks seriously.

says he was determined as chancellor to avoid budget leaks, after seeing the damage caused by the flurry of reports ahead of the budget in 2025.

The chancellor explains:

There are real world impacts, not just moving the markets or the gilt yields. We saw last year with speculation, kite flying, leaks, briefings. We saw people cashing in their pension pots, where they didn't need to. We saw people cancelling and changing investment plans when they didn't need to.

Over in parliament, MPs are grilling top brass from the Treasury about last month's budget – starting with the leak of the chancellor's bank tax plans.

Q: Was this the worst type of breach you can think of?

permanent secretary at thesays it is "deeply regrettable and frustrating" that Bloomberg had "the shape" of the bank tax on the morning of the budget, before it was announced that afternoon.

[Reminder: Bloomberg reported that the surcharge would only rise by 3 percentage points, and would be temporary]

But no, he argues it is not the worst type – it doesn't compare to the situation last year, he argues.

Q: but was the leak an example of inside information?

replies that the market did move after the report (bank shares went up).

Chancellor steps in too, promising that the results of the investigation into the leak will be shared with this committee.

Europe's largest energy grid operator E.ON ⁠is reviewing whether former nuclear plant sites in Germany ⁠could be ⁠converted ​into data centres.

Finance chief Nadia Jakobi told analysts today:

"These former power plants can provide attractive industrial locations and ‌depending on the site, we can use the existing infrastructure, ​particularly the large grid connection.

She added that E.ON is taking a "first step" with ⁠US chip designer Nvidia.

Taylor Wimpey, one of Britain's biggest housebuilders, has cut its outlook for home completions for a second time this year and blamed rising mortgage and living costs – another sign of a weakening housing market.

The government's 1.5m new homes target over five years looks even more out of reach, as the company joined others in warning of a "subdued" autumn selling season. It comes after Britain's biggest brickmaker, Ibstock, issued a profit warning last week.

now expects to complete 10,500 homes this year, excluding joint ventures, ‌below its previous forecast of 10,600 to 10,800 homes. Adjusted operating profit is expected to be at the lower end of its £262m to £299m range. The firm also reduced its outlook in July.

Its order book declined to 6,839 homes as of 8 November, versus 7,253 a year earlier. has also been hit by higher build cost inflation, running at 3% to 4%, due to knock-on effects from the Iran war.

, the chief executive, said:

"The autumn selling season has been more subdued, as higher mortgage rates and living costs continue to reduce customer affordability."

Its share price fell 4.5% in early trading and is now 3.5% lower, and dragged down rival Persimmon, which is trading 1% lower.

The Bank of England raised its base rate last week, from 3.75% to 4%, which hit mortgage borrowers but will benefit savers. The Bank's governor, Andrew Bailey, said another hike could be needed soon, but this (partly) depends on a resolution of the Iran war and the consequent impact on energy prices and inflation.

To entice buyers, is offering more incentives than usual, for example a deposit top-up and one-off mortgage contribution. And it has cut its selling prices by 2.5% year on year.

It said it is well positioned to participate in the government's new Your First Home scheme aimed at first-time buyers. But the scheme won't launch until April, and experts have warned that the market could remain sluggish until then.

Investment bank Baird has cut its rating on Nvidia's shares to 'neutral', and slashed their target price for the stock, Reuters report.

Having previously predicted Nvidia could reach $500, Baird have lowered their target price to $200 (reminder, they closed at $168.89 last night).

The FT's Unhedged column has a handy breakdown of what we know about the Nvidia crisis…

• Nvidia is the indispensable supplier and, increasingly, financier of the infrastructure powering the entire AI boom;

• Huang is the boom's chief salesperson and its most influential figure who is not running one of the AI labs;

• Huang is a trusted adviser to Donald Trump on the US-China AI race and AI regulation;

• US intelligence has believed for months that Huang had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang.

And some things we don't know (but which Joon H. Kim may answer!):

• Did Huang mislead Nvidia's board? Did he disclose that he had a conflict of interest with a major and geopolitically sensitive customer?

• Did the board know US intelligence suspected Alice Huang of being linked to Chinese intelligence?

• Did the company know about the affair when it told The New York Times two weeks ago that the relationship was "not unusual or unexpected" for the executive of an important commercial partner?

• How strong is the evidence that has led US intelligence to conclude that Alice Huang is a spy

And the upshot is that removing Jensen Huang may simply be too big a risk, they suggest.

Although, as my colleague Nils Pratley wrote this week, Huang may look less powerful once the investigation has concluded…

Stocks in the AI sector are back in demand, after cloud computing provider Coreweave reported strong results last night.

Coreweave, which rents out computing clusters powered by Nvidia's GPU chips, predicted it would hit profitability in 2028, easing some concerns over its financial health.

The cost of insuring CoreWeave's debt against default has been rising in recent weeks, on concerns that AI demand might not be strong enought to support its borrowing.

Shares in CoreWeave are up 14.4% in premarket trading.