Femi Otedola, the chairman of First HoldCo Plc, acquired 147.7 million new shares in the banking group on Monday, taking his stake in the company to 27.49 per cent.

In a transaction announced in a regulatory filing signed by the group’s Company Secretary, Abiola Baruwa, Mr Otedola purchased 147,737,699 additional shares at N140 per share.

The additional shares, which represent 0.33 per cent of the company’s outstanding shares, were purchased through Calvados Global Services Limited and valued at N20.7 billion.

Following the purchase, Mr Otedola now holds a total of 12.05 billion shares in the financial institution, representing about 27.49 per cent of the company.

The First HoldCo chair’s total shareholding in the company is valued at about N1.65 trillion, based on the company’s share price of N136.90 as of 4:00 p.m. (WAT) on 17 August.

The businessman has continued to increase his investment in the financial institution since emerging as its largest shareholder in 2021.

READ ALSO: Otedola acquires additional 138 million First HoldCo shares worth ₦18.1 billion

The latest purchase is the second time in August that Mr Otedola has increased his stake, following his acquisition of about 138 million shares in the financial services group, valued at approximately N18.1 billion, about a week ago.

Also, on 30 July, Mr Otedola increased his stake in the financial services group by acquiring an additional 1.78 billion shares valued at about N222.2 billion.

Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation tool that was launched in 2021 with the goal of becoming the new Zapier, is shutting down, and some of its staff — including its top executive — are joining Google’s Chrome team.

Jacob Bank, Relay’s founder and CEO, shared a company announcement Monday that reveals the app will be shutting down access for paying customers on September 14. Free customers would have already lost access as of August 15. The app’s closure was initially announced in July.

Bank, who previously spent a little over six years at Google, revealed that he would now be rejoining the tech giant as VP of Product for Google Chrome, where he will lead the product and developer relations teams for Chrome, according to his LinkedIn.

“I’ve spent my whole career doing one thing: building tools that help people get more done with AI, without sacrificing their personal creativity or insights,” said Bank in a post on X. “And joining the Chrome team is an ideal opportunity to bring those experiences to many, many more people.”

“We have some really ambitious plans to help you work with AI in Chrome to get things done, and I’ll have more to share soon,” he added.

Bank originally joined Google in 2015 after his previous startup, a scheduling app called Timeful, was acquired by the search giant. At Google, he worked in a number of different areas, including as product lead for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Chat, before eventually leaving to launch Relay.

Similar to Timeful, Relay offered users productivity upgrades via workflow automation, allowing businesses to streamline repetitive tasks like document drafting and copyediting, as well as various project management tasks. TechCrunch reached out to Google and to Relay for more information.

Just how Bank and others plan to further integrate AI into Chrome is a hanging question, though Bank calls Chrome “a perfect place to collaborate with agents.”

The move follows a steady path of AI integration into Google’s user experience. The integration of Gemini into search has fundamentally altered Google’s front end — not to mention the rest of the internet. Gemini has also been integrated into Chrome, where it serves as an optional in-browser assistant.

Overall, users seem to be responding well to these integrations, as Google recently reported that Gemini had crested 1 billion users.