Australia has just 36 days of petrol and 29 days of jet fuel left, and the government will temporarily allow dirtier petrol on the roads to boost the country’s energy supplies. That will allow around 100 million litres a month of new petrol supply that would otherwise have been exported. The announcement came after Brent crude surged nearly ten per cent to push above $US100 a barrel again yesterday, hitting the local share market. A slowdown in shipping through the Strait of Hormuz overshadowed the release of 400 million barrels from emergency reserves by the International Energy Agency. To give that some perspective, it is about the same as would flow through the Strait of Hormuz over 20 days.

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News in brief

Household spending fell last month for the first time since September 2024, marking a shift from steady growth, and raising questions about the need for more interest rate hikes.

The golden child of the local tech sector, Atlassian, will cut ten per cent of its workforce, saying artificial intelligence has reduced the number of people it needs, and the cost savings will be deployed in developing AI across the business.

At least 3.2 million Australians, or one-in-seven, experienced personal fraud last financial year, double the level of a decade ago, according to the ABS.

Netflix will pay as much as $US600 million ($840 million) for InterPositive, the AI movie making company founded by Ben Affleck, making the purchase one of the biggest ever by the streaming leader.

British bank notes are losing the political and literary figures, and welcoming hedgehogs and badgers. The next generation of pound notes will feature wildlife native to the UK, according to the Bank of England, after half a century in which that status was reserved for historical figures including Winston Churchill and Jane Austen.

Fear-o-meter

For some of the highest-flying Australian tech companies, including Atlassian, Canva and Wisetech Global, the “SaaSpocalypse” is here. This is either good or bad, depending on whether you think businesses that offer software as a service will thrive, or die, during the AI revolution.

Strictly speaking, the SaaSpocalypse describes the sell-off in the share prices of listed SaaS providers. Atlassian is down 66 per cent over the past year. Wisetech is down 30 per cent. (Canva isn’t listed.) Wall Street companies to suffer include Salesforce, Service Now and Snowflake.

The term gained prominence this year after Anthropic released it Claude Cowork platform which can autonomously perform multi-step, complex workflows. That is pretty much what SaaS companies offer.

The death of enterprise software has been predicted for years. While the introduction of AI is more influential than anything beforehand, Atlassian co-founder and chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes argues AI can help his business do more, and cheaper.

Putting aside the human cost in jobs, AI can revolutionise SaaS companies for the good. At this stage investors aren’t sure. Certainly, the weight of investor money suggests some SaaS operators won’t survive.

Fear & Greed Q+A today

On how he manages investor relations at one of the most widely-held companies in Australia, and inside the telco's AI strategy:

 

“First of all you need to make sure that the first principle of what you're doing is you're aligning to your strategy, and making sure that the technology isn’t the strategy — your strategy is the strategy and the technology supports it.

 

One of the things we think about with AI is we are making a bet on it. We want to be an AI-first company. We want to make sure that we’re brilliant at utilising AI.

 

AI companies are making a mountain of investment. I think the estimate is over $700 billion of CapEx this year across those AI companies, and that investment is going to look for a return.

 

So being really disciplined on our architecture, making sure that we don’t lock ourselves into single vendors and that we set ourselves up so we can swap between different vendors.”

Greed-o-meter

This snapshot from Bloomberg mid-week shows the comparative strength of the Aussie dollar right now.

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