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Construction AI: the slump eased in September, but it's data centres pulling and housing still dragging

The S&P Global UK construction PMI rose to 46.1 in September, the slowest contraction in eight months, but it's still a contraction, housing is still the weakest corner and firms are still cutting jobs. And Mistral put out its biggest model yet, making the European-sovereignty case that for construction buyers is really the old question of where your data lives and whether you can leave.

• • The S&P Global UK construction PMI rose to 46.1 in September from 44.3 in August, the slowest contraction in eight months and ahead of the 44.9 the City expected, but still below the 50 line that marks growth; civil engineering was the strength, commercial had its smallest fall since May 2025, housing stayed the weakest sub-sector, and firms cut jobs for a further month, with employment now down every month since January 2025 (S&P Global, via ITV News and investing.com, 6 October).
• • Mistral released a public preview of Mistral Large 4, nicknamed "Le Chonk", on 6 October, a trillion-parameter open-weight model trained in its own European data centres; it claims a 49.8 per cent coding-agent score and 82 per cent on reproducing software vulnerabilities, though an independent Artificial Analysis index of 38.4 places it only eighth among open-weight models, behind seven Chinese systems and well behind the closed frontier (Brussels Signal and Kuwait Times, 6 to 7 October; the benchmark claims are Mistral's own).