Poste Italiane has completed its public tender offer for Telecom Italia (TIM), securing an 85.8% stake in the operator after acquiring an additional 65.7% of shares in the second and final phase of the bid. The result, however, leaves the postal group short of its privatisation goal.

The takeover fight that ended this week began in July, when Poste launched a tender valued at around €13 billion, offering shareholders €1.67 in cash per share. Poste built its position on a 20% stake acquired last year, which replaced Vivendi as TIM's largest shareholder. In March the company outlined plans to take the operator private — a move requiring a 90% acceptance threshold. Reuters reported the final count fell well short, leaving Poste to consider other options.

TIM's board has already acknowledged Poste's exercise of "direction and coordination" over the operator and its subsidiaries, and approved new rules covering operational governance and information flows between the two companies. Alessandro Marchesini, a TIM board member, described the completed transaction as the closing of an "important financial chapter", adding: "now the industrial one begins". He said the focus would shift to "turning the opportunities created by this transaction into projects, collaboration and long-term value".

EU governments push back on high-risk vendor phase-out

Elsewhere in Europe, the region's governments are pressuring the European Commission to soften its plan for stripping so-called high-risk supplier equipment from mobile networks.

According to a draft document seen by Reuters, EU member states want amendments to an EC proposal that would require operators to remove network equipment supplied by vendors deemed high risk. The Commission published its Cybersecurity Act proposal earlier this year, outlining a fixed 36-month phase-out period for high-risk third-country supplier equipment in mobile networks. Member states have instead called for the timeline to be determined by several factors — the level of risk, equipment lifespans, compatibility requirements and the availability of alternatives — rather than a single deadline.

The rules are expected to hit Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE hardest, and the cost of compliance is substantial. A GSMA Intelligence report estimated that replacing mobile network equipment across the EU would cost the industry between €30 billion and €40 billion.

Mason Hurlocker of the Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute (BISI) said "the reforms carry a range of political, operational, security and economic risks", adding it is possible the EC narrows its provisions "given industry cost warnings and resistance from some member states to mandatory rip-and-replace obligations".

The outcome will determine whether Europe's operators face a hard deadline or a risk-based schedule for one of the largest equipment replacement programmes in the industry's history.

Nvidia's Huang defends AI model distillation

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has publicly split with US officials over AI model distillation, arguing the practice constitutes competition rather than theft.

In an interview with CNBC, Huang said developers are entitled to test competing products, comparing distillation to competitors taking Nvidia chips apart to understand how they work. "That's called competition," he said. He placed the burden on providers to control access, stating: "if you don't like people to use your products… disable the service."

The comments follow accusations from US officials that Chinese AI players have run industrial-scale distillation campaigns against US models. Anthropic separately alleged that Chinese companies including Alibaba and DeepSeek used large numbers of accounts and proxy networks to extract capabilities from its Claude model.

Analysts were quick to challenge Huang's framing. Otis Yi, programme director at digital entertainment platform GashPoint, said "the dispute centres on how those outputs are obtained and whether the model owner has authorised their use", adding that industrial-scale extraction raises "separate questions about contracts, intellectual property and enforcement". Mark Seery, founder of consulting and technology advisory firm Bohcay, argued: "Competition matters. So does authorisation." He noted that "the customer does not own the underlying infrastructure", and when they exceed agreed rights, "that is not simply 'testing a product'; it may be a contractual violation with legal consequences".

For Nvidia, the dispute cuts close to home: the chipmaker supplies the accelerated computing hardware behind many of the models now being distilled, while its own position on testing competitors' products sets a precedent policymakers in Washington may not accept.

The debate over distillation rules, the EU's final high-risk vendor text and Poste's next moves on TIM's remaining minority shareholders are all likely to move in the coming months.