AI Startup Buys Law Firm, Robinhood's New Product Roadmap, Paramount Skydance makes bid for Warner Bros Discovery

12th September 2025

From the courtroom to the chatroom, today’s headlines show industries redrawing their lines. UK-based Lawhive just became the first AI-native platform to acquire a traditional law firm, signaling a shift in how legal work gets done. Robinhood, the brokerage made famous by meme traders, is now building its own social network to keep investors posting (and trading) in-app. Over in Hollywood, Paramount Skydance is preparing a bold bid for Warner Bros Discovery—just weeks after snapping up Paramount Global. Add in Merck scrapping a £1 billion London research hub, plus surging tariffs revenue and billion-dollar VC rounds, and you’ve got the full spectrum of disruption—legal, financial, and cultural. All this and more in today’s read-and-eat!

Major Headlines

• Legal AI platform Lawhive acquires UK law firm and sets sights on conveyancing sector

AI legal tech company Lawhive has acquired Woodstock Legal Services, in the first acquisition of a traditional UK law firm by an AI-native platform. The acquisition will allow Lawhive to target the £25 billion legal market in the UK, the company said. The deal will enable Lawhive to focus on the conveyancing market, where it says ‘administrative burdens routinely delay one of life’s biggest decisions – buying a home’. The company added: “Property lawyers spend hours manually filling forms and chasing documents, while stressed clients face uncertain timelines and communication constraints.”

Lawhive’s AI technology utilises an AI ‘colleague’ to work alongside and support lawyers. Known as Lawrence, the AI model is capable of carrying out work at the level of a paralegal or junior lawyer, the company said. “Lawrence drafts documents, completes case research and handles routine case management with minimal input – scoring 81% on the rigorous Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE), far above the 55% pass threshold. The goal is not to replace lawyers, but to augment their work, reducing repetitive tasks and legal admin.” Pierre Proner, CEO and co-founder of Lawhive, said the integrated model of a regulated law firm and tech platform will lead to better outcomes. He added: “We’re demonstrating that technology can support and enhance the best aspects of legal practice while creating communities where lawyers shape how that technology evolves.” 

Woodstock Legal Services is a full service law firm with strengths in property law and conveyancing, dispute resolution, family law, commercial law, private client and employment matters. Established by Carly Jermyn in 2014, the firm focuses on a consultancy model which it says prioritises the autonomy of its 50-plus regulated lawyers. ‘I’ve always believed a different kind of legal culture was possible, and with Woodstock, we’ve proven it’, Jermyn said. ‘Lawrence is the first legal AI focused on the consumer market where Lawyers’ most precious commodity – time – is under mounting pressure that risks compromising service quality and job satisfaction’, Lawhive said. Financial Times 

• Robinhood, a Broker Built for Social-Media Age, to Launch Its Own Social Network

  
  

Robinhood Markets, a popular brokerage with the crowd of individual traders who congregate online to talk about stocks, is now launching its own social-media network. Robinhood is adding a social platform to its mobile app that will allow users to post their trades, follow other investors and track the market moves of public figures like Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Robinhood Social features a feed of short posts similar to platforms like X or Reddit. Posted trades will be verified, and investors can see when a post’s author entered and exited a position. That solves one key challenge that investors can encounter on other social networks, Robinhood said, where it can be difficult to determine whether either the person—or the trade—behind a particular post is real.

Users can also check the performance of a post’s author, viewing their profit rate and other trading stats.

In addition to posting about trades on stocks, options, crypto and prediction markets, users will also be able to click on the symbol in a post to initiate a trade, the company said. Robinhood will roll out a beta version of the platform to roughly 10,000 users in the first quarter of next year, with a wider launch date to be determined. Wall Street Journal

• Paramount Skydance preparing bid for Warner Bros Discovery, source says

Paramount Skydance (PSKY.O), is preparing a bid to buy Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O), a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday, potentially bringing together two storied Hollywood studios and reshaping the entertainment industry. A bid for Warner Bros Discovery would be backed by the Ellison family, which includes Skydance head David Ellison and his father, billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news, citing unnamed sources. The audacious bid, coming just weeks after Skydance bought Paramount Global for $8.4 billion, would unite some of the best-known entertainment brands under a single corporate shingle, bringing together DC Comics superheroes like Superman and Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, science-fiction franchises like "The Matrix" and "Star Trek" and two major news networks, CBS News and CNN.

"This deal is the Hollywood equivalent of a sequel no one expected but everyone sort of saw coming," said eMarketer analyst Jeremy Goldman. No offer has been submitted and the plans could still fall apart, the WSJ reported. Still, shares of Warner Bros Discovery surged as much as 30% after the news while Paramount's jumped 15%. Paramount and Warner Bros declined to comment on the report. Warner Bros Discovery has been reorganizing its media business to split its declining cable television business from its studio and streaming units.

Skydance, however, is seeking to acquire all of Warner Bros Discovery's media assets, including its Warner Bros film studio, HBO, and CNN, in a mostly cash deal, the WSJ reported.

"For WBD shareholders, a cash-rich exit is far more appealing than waiting around for Zaslav’s restructuring magic to (maybe) pay off," eMarketer's Goldman said. That referred to CEO David Zaslav's plan to separate Warner Bros Discovery's cable business from its studios and streaming operations, unwinding a merger that took place less than four years ago. If successful, the deal would bring together two of Hollywood's best-known studios as well as streaming services HBO MAX and Paramount+. Reuters

• Merck Scraps £1 Billion London Hub in Fresh Blow to UK 

Merck (MRK.N),  said on Wednesday it was scrapping research operations in London, citing the UK's challenging business environment, and would relocate the research activity to existing sites primarily in the United States. The U.S. drugmaker no longer plans to occupy the Belgrove House site at King's Cross, which was due to open in 2027. The move will impact about 125 staff members. Pharmaceutical companies have been shoring up investments in the U.S. amid the Trump administration's tariff threats and pressure to move more manufacturing to the U.S.

Merck said its decision "reflects the challenges of the UK not making meaningful progress towards addressing the lack of investment in the life science industry and the overall undervaluation of innovative medicines and vaccines by successive UK governments." The company intends to also vacate laboratories occupied at the London Bioscience Innovation Centre and the Francis Crick Institute by the end of 2025. Merck earlier this year announced a series of major U.S. investments, including a $1-billion facility in Delaware to produce biologics and its blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda, which is expected to create over 4,500 jobs.

The plant is slated to be operational by 2028, with experimental drug production starting by 2030. Merck also opened a $1-billion facility at its North Carolina site in March. The company's animal health unit will also invest $895 million to expand its Kansas manufacturing and R&D site, part of a broader $9 billion U.S. investment through 2028. Bloomberg

Minor Headlines 

• Tariffs revenue neared $30 billion this August — the first month of Trump’s full 'reciprocal' tariff regime Yahoo.Finance

• Oracle stock marches higher, set to join $1 trillion club Reuters

• Apple is warming to idea of $2k iPhones  Bloomberg

• Microsoft, OpenAI reach non-binding deal to allow OpenAI to restructure Reuters

• Dubai's housing boom is stoking fears of another crash Bloomberg 

• Keir Starmer sacks Peter Mandelson over Jeffrey Epstein Bloomberg

• Brazil Supreme Court sentences Bolsonaro to 27 years over coup plot Aljazeera

• Labour MPs accused of using ChatGPT to write speeches Yahoo.Finance

• Opendoor stock soars more than 75% as Shopify COO hired to lead company Yahoo.Finance 

Earnings 

Technology 

• Oracle missed Q1 earnings but beat on revenue and absolutely smashed FY cloud infrastructure forecasts with booked cloud orders now seen at $500B; their stock surged 27% to become the tenth-most valuable US company and make Larry Ellison the world's second-richest person (CNBC) 

• Adobe beat Q3 earnings and revenue estimates on strong digital media sales driven by AI adoption; the firm raised FY digital media growth guidance to 11.3% while reaffirming Q4 guidance above estimates (CNBC)

Retail & E-Commerce 

• GameStop beat Q2 earnings and revenue estimates on strong sales in its hardware and collectibles segment as it embraces digital storefronts to battle competition from larger retailers and e-commerce platforms; their Bitcoin stockpile hit $500M (WSJ)

• Chewy met Q2 earnings estimates and raised FY sales guidance as active customers rose 4.5% and sales per customer increased to $591 (BN)

• Kroger issued a Q2 beat-and-raise on 3.4% identical sales growth driven by price cuts, private-label strength, resilient at-home food demand, and low tariff exposure, and announced plans to boost store openings by 30% in 2026 (RT)