In today’s Digest, we discuss Sky agreeing to a £1.6bn deal to acquire ITV’s broadcast and streaming business, Uber pausing its European Eats expansion amid its pursuit of Delivery Hero, and Alibaba Cloud capturing 40.1% of China’s AI cloud market.

ITV & Sky strike $2.1bn TV Deal

Sky has agreed to acquire ITV’s broadcast channels and streaming platform ITVX for £1.6bn, creating one of the UK’s largest television groups to compete more effectively with global streaming rivals including YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and Disney. Both companies said the merger would strengthen investment in British programming while allowing ITV to retain its public service broadcaster status and licence commitments through 2034.

The combined business would control more than 70% of the UK television advertising market, including third-party sales contracts, and is expected to face an extensive antitrust and public interest review.

Uber stalls Europe delivery push

Uber has paused most of its planned Uber Eats expansion across Europe, shelving launches in five of the seven countries it had targeted this year, including Austria, Norway and Greece. The move comes as the company continues to pursue a takeover of Delivery Hero after its €10bn (£8.60bn) bid was rejected in May.

Uber said it is instead focusing on strengthening recently launched markets following successful rollouts in Finland and Denmark. 

Alibaba Cloud captures 40.1% of China’s AI cloud market

Alibaba Cloud held a 40.1% share of China’s AI cloud market in 2025, generating 23.9bn yuan (£2.58bn) in revenue across infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and model-as-a-service (MaaS), according to consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. The combined market reached 59.6bn yuan (£6.44bn), underscoring strong demand for AI infrastructure and hosted AI services.

Separate research from Omdia estimated China’s AI cloud services market at 51.8bn yuan (£5.59bn) in 2025, more than doubling from the previous year. Alibaba Cloud led the market with a 35.8% share in the first half of 2025, ahead of Volcano Engine (14.8%), Huawei Cloud (13.1%), Tencent Cloud (7%) and Baidu AI Cloud (6.1%). Alibaba also reported cloud revenue growth of 34% year-on-year in the quarter ended 30th September, with AI-related products delivering triple-digit growth for a 9th consecutive quarter.