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IKEA has entered the UK home insurance market through a partnership with insurtech Urban Jungle, embedding home insurance at the point of sale for its customers. According to GlobalData's 2025 UK Insurance Consumer Survey, 30% of consumers said they would be willing to buy a home insurance policy from IKEA, the highest proportion among alternative providers, compared with 18.4% for Amazon, which discontinued a similar initiative in 2024. Only 15.4% of consumers were familiar with Urban Jungle, signaling a major win for the insurtech. The partnership offers contents and buildings cover during the same transaction as furniture purchases, with no further input required, unlike Amazon's price comparison website model. Following the partnership, the Financial Conduct Authority moved Urban Jungle into its Scale-Up Unit, a program giving fast-growing firms dedicated regulatory support.

Fully automated dark factories could redefine where advanced manufacturing for the energy transition becomes commercially viable, with GlobalData expecting their number to grow from a handful today to hundreds by 2030. The primary commercial argument is higher asset utilisation and more consistent production, not energy savings, which is particularly relevant for producers of batteries, power electronics, and other clean energy technologies facing pressure to cut costs and expand capacity. Labour shortages and rising wages in the US, China, and Japan, along with industrial policies treating renewable energy manufacturing as strategic, are accelerating automation and making reshoring easier to justify. China's leadership in robotics and AI gives its manufacturers an advantage beyond labour costs, forcing other regions to compete on automation capability as well as policy. Adoption will be incremental due to high upfront investment, complex software integration, cybersecurity risks, and the ongoing need for human oversight, but the selective shift could influence where new capacity is built and which investments offer the strongest long-term returns.