Richard Milne / Financial Times: Klarna's US IPO listing is another deep blow to Europe, where the absence of a complete single market is pushing EU startups to choose US exchanges for an IPO — Until there is a single market in areas from services to capital markets, more companies will choose American exchanges
Daniel Thomas / Financial Times: ProRata, which is launching an AI search engine next month, inks licensing deals with DMG Media and more; sources say DMG bought a stake that values it at $130M — Groups including Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail agree licensing deals to ensure payment for content
Financial Times: How AI breakthroughs like diffusion models, vision language models, and liquid neural networks are transforming the way robots learn new skills and tasks — Advances in physical AI mean machines are learning skills previously thought impossible — “This is not science fiction,” …
Nikkei Asia: TechInsights: China's chip self-sufficiency rate rose from ~14% in 2014 to 23% in 2023 and is expected to hit 27% in 2027, as China rushes to boost chip supply — BEIJING — China's public and private sectors are accelerating efforts to boost domestic production of semiconductors …
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: Sources: Alibaba, ByteDance, and Meituan have been expanding their AI teams in Silicon Valley in recent months, despite US efforts to stymie Chinese companies — Alibaba, ByteDance and Meituan seek to poach top talent from US rivals despite Washington's chip curbs
Financial Times: Samsung unveils a $7.2B share buyback plan, its first since 2017, aimed at boosting its stock, which has fallen 30%+ in 2024 on concerns over Chair Lee Jae-yong — First repurchases in seven years are aimed at boosting stock and may help avoid margin call for founding family
Financial Times: Chinese smartphone manufacturers are ramping up their efforts in Europe to grab marketshare from Apple and Samsung with tech such as foldable devices — Realme, Oppo and Honor are looking to challenge Samsung and Apple on the continent with fancier handsets
Financial Times: Sources: xAI raised $5B at a $45B valuation, almost double its valuation a few months ago; SpaceX prepares a tender offer that would value the company at $250B+ — Billionaire's rocket builder plots huge share sale while AI start-up closes in on $5bn funding round
Financial Times: A profile of Klarna and its CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski as it filed for a US IPO on November 13; investors hope Klarna can achieve a $150B-$200B valuation — Swedish entrepreneur born to Polish immigrants seeks to list the ‘buy now, pay later’ fintech in New York
Yifan Yu / Nikkei Asia: Biden admin finalizes its $6.6B CHIPS Act grant to TSMC; money will be disbursed in stages and TSMC is expected to receive at least $1B by the end of 2024 — LIMA, Peru — The Biden administration has finalized its $6.6 billion CHIPS Act grant to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. …
Financial Times: Grubhub co-founder Matt Maloney says he led an effort to buy Grubhub for $1B+ around the start of 2024 and in 2022; Wonder bought Grubhub for $650M on Nov. 13 — Revelation comes days after Dutch group announced sale of its US subsidiary for $650mn — The founder of Grubhub said he twice attempted …
Financial Times: Media executives say that some brands were preparing to advertise on X once again, as Elon Musk was likely to gain an influential Trump administration role — Some brands had abandoned the site over moderation concerns — Elon Musk's support for Donald Trump is set to boost X's flagging business …
Financial Times: Analysts: Nintendo and Sony are heading into the holiday season with little to offer consumers; the Switch is seven years old and the $700 PS5 Pro is overpriced — Video game industry fears its most important quarter will fall flat with few new mass-market offerings
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: Baidu unveils smart glasses, powered by its Ernie LLM, that would “become a private assistant” by tracking calories, playing music, and more, launching in 2025 — Launch comes as Chinese internet groups jostle for dominance in hardware — Baidu has unveiled artificial …
Financial Times: Amazon's Annapurna Labs plans to unveil Trainium 2 AI chips in December, as part of taking on Nvidia; Anthropic, Databricks, and others are testing Trainium 2 — Big Tech group's Annapurna Labs is spending big to build custom chips that lessen its reliance on market leader
Financial Times: Sources: Elon Musk's US government advisory role will be structured to ensure he keeps control of Tesla, X, xAI, and others by installing acolytes and allies — Billionaire likely to push for government roles for acolytes and allies to cut regulation and protect his businesses
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, and other AI companies create their own internal benchmarks as new models approach or exceed 90% accuracy on existing public tests — Rapidly advancing technology is surpassing current methods of evaluating and comparing large language models
Nikkei Asia: The Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association says Taiwan's semiconductor production is on track to increase 22% YoY to a record $165B in 2024 on AI demand — HSINCHU, Taiwan — Taiwan's semiconductor production is on track for a 22% increase this year to a record 5.3 trillion New Taiwan dollars …
Nikkei Asia: Tencent partners with Visa to launch a palm biometric authentication payment service at stores and restaurants in Singapore, its first expansion outside China — GUANGZHOU — China's Tencent Holdings announced that it is partnering with Visa to launch a palm biometric authentication payment service …
Financial Times: Sources: TSMC told Chinese customers it would no longer manufacture AI chips at advanced process nodes of 7nm or smaller as of this coming Monday — World's biggest contract chipmaker acts to ensure it is in line with US restrictions on Chinese access to latest processors
Financial Times: A look at Trump's potential new administration, including Elon Musk, tasked with “a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” — The new US president is expected to prize loyalty in his picks for key posts — After clinching the election …
Financial Times: Elon Musk's gamble on Donald Trump pays off, as Trump wins the race; Trump gave Musk a lengthy shout out in his victory speech, calling him “a super-genius” — “A star is born: Elon,” said Donald Trump in a lengthy shout out to his biggest donor while claiming victory in the US presidential race on Wednesday morning.
Malcolm Moore / Financial Times: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company CEO Sultan al-Jaber says AI gives oil firms incentive to invest in renewables, as ADNOC unveils plans for integrating AI agents — Energy, tech and finance executives in discussion over how to fuel artificial intelligence — The rapid rise of artificial …
Anna Gross / Financial Times: The UK launches a platform with guidance and practical resources to help businesses conduct impact assessments and evaluations of the safety of new AI systems — Science and tech secretary Peter Kyle wants country to be global leader in testing safety of new technology
Kathrin Hille / Financial Times: TSMC CFO Wendell Huang says the chipmaker now expects to pay more for power in Taiwan than anywhere else; TSMC's electricity prices rose 25% in April 2024 — Industry loses competitiveness as government struggles to afford cheap-power incentives — Taiwan's laboured energy transition …
Financial Times: Sources: Meta's plans to build a US nuclear-powered AI data center were thwarted in part after a rare bee species was found on land earmarked for the project — Mark Zuckerberg is continuing to explore energy deals amid a Big Tech arms race over artificial intelligence
Tabby Kinder / Financial Times: Blackstone, Pimco, Carlyle, BlackRock, and others have loaned $11B+ to CoreWeave, Crusoe, and other “neocloud” companies, creating a lucrative new debt market — Wall Street's largest financial institutions have loaned more than $11bn to a niche group of tech companies based …
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson / Financial Times: An interview with Steve Ballmer on trying to turn USAFacts, his not-for-profit civic initiative, into a source of dispassionate statistics for US voters — Former Microsoft boss seeks to build better democracy with data — Elon Musk has used his ownership of X to promote Donald Trump's re-election as …
Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli / Financial Times: An interview with EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri on the Meta partnership, smart glasses replacing smartphones, and more, as the firm is valued at €100B — Eyewear giant chief Francesco Milleri says wearable technology developed with Meta will fuel growth
Stephen Morris / Financial Times: Uber reports Q3 revenue up 20% YoY to $11.2B, above est., gross bookings up 16% YoY to $41B, a $1.1B operating income, above est. and up from $394M in Q3 2023 — Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi points to ‘solid results’ in ride-hailing app's core business
Financial Times: China sanctions Skydio, the US' largest drone maker and a supplier to Ukraine's military; sources say Skydio is rushing to find new suppliers for critical parts — Skydio, the US's largest drone maker and a supplier to Ukraine's military, faces a supply chain crisis after Beijing imposed sanctions …
Financial Times: Sources: SoftBank plans to put Arm's tech at the center of a new network of data centers to train and run AI, setting Arm on a collision course with Nvidia — Almost 20 years ago, Intel made a decision that changed the course of computing history. — Soon after Apple started putting Intel inside …
Anna Gross / Financial Times: Sources: an upcoming UK government-commissioned report says the UK should streamline the visa process for AI experts and create special zones for data centers — Recommendations from Matt Clifford on boosting the tech industry also include special zones for data centres
Aanu Adeoye / Financial Times: Nigeria-based Moniepoint, which offers bank accounts, loans, and POS terminals, raised $110M led by DPI, sources say at a $1B+ valuation, after raising $55M — Company raises $110mn from investors including Google despite slowdown in fundraising for African start-ups
Financial Times: A UK judge sentences a 27-year-old man who used AI tool Daz 3D to create child sexual abuse imagery to 18 years in prison, a landmark prosecution over deepfakes — A man who used artificial intelligence technology to create child sexual abuse imagery was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Monday …
Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli / Financial Times: EssilorLuxottica gives “full support” to Chief Strategy Officer Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio after an Italian hacking probe; the company is not part of the probe — EssilorLuxottica has expressed its “full support” to chief strategy officer Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio …
Financial Times: Naspers and Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi says he is overhauling corporate culture and pay structures in search of growth beyond Prosus' $115B stake in Tencent — Fabricio Bloisi will overhaul corporate culture and pay structures in search of growth beyond its stake in the Chinese internet giant
Stephanie Stacey / Financial Times: Banks and regulators warn of a rise in QR code phishing scams, which experts say are most commonly deployed in emails to evade corporate cyber security filters — HSBC, Santander and the US Federal Trade Commission concerned over email attacks that bypass cyber-defences
Leo Lewis / Financial Times: Japan has too many startups that IPO too early amid a lack of late-stage funding, hurting unicorn ambitions; data: funding is set to fall ~33% from 2022 to 2024 — The country urgently needs a vibrant business pipeline to replace the unicorn's unambitious cousin
Ned Beauman / Financial Times: A look at Factorio, a strategy video game that is a cult hit among tech workers with ~4M copies sold over eight years, as it releases its first expansion pack — Tech workers cannot resist the cult video game that asks players to single-handedly restage the industrial revolution
Financial Times: Analysis: X is on track to fall well short of its goal of $100M in 2024 political ad revenue, raising just $15M to date, mainly from GOP and Trump campaigns — Social media platform has raised a fraction of $100mn target and mainly from Trump and Republicans
Richard Waters / Financial Times: A look at the dispute between Arm and Qualcomm, whose relationship soured after Qualcomm became one of the main opponents to Nvidia's attempted Arm acquisition — A licensing dispute clouds an important chip industry partnership — On paper, Arm and Qualcomm look like natural allies …
Financial Times: General Catalyst raised $8B, the most by a US VC since March 2022, and will put $4.5B in its core funds, $1.5B in creating startups, and $2B in other businesses — General Catalyst has raised $8bn, the largest amount by a US venture capital group in more than two years …
Nic Fildes / Financial Times: WiseTech Global co-founder Richard White steps down as CEO of Australia's largest listed tech company over allegations about bullying and his personal life — Billionaire Richard White steps down as WiseTech Global chief following 20% fall in company's shares
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: Both the Harris and Trump campaigns are using TikTok to reach Gen Z; CredoIQ: viral conservative content surpassed progressive content at the start of October — Both campaigns are using the short-video platform to try to reach Gen Z — A seven-second TikTok video posted this month …
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: A profile of, and interview with, Meta VP of AI Research Joelle Pineau on her career path, the FAIR lab, leading ~1,000 people across 10 locations, and more — Meta's head of research into the technology explains the career path that led to weighing questions on society's future
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times: Q&A with Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis on his Nobel Prize being “a watershed moment for AI”, biology, AlphaFold 3, Isomorphic Labs, drug programs, and more — Founder of the artificial intelligence R&D lab says scientific understanding can prevent mis-steps in developing the technology
Nicholas Fearn / Financial Times: ABI expects there to be 8,400 global data centers by 2030, as investors capitalize on the AI boom; Statista projects the industry will be worth $624B by 2029 — The assets offer consistent returns but come with risks including a high environmental impact — Spending time in a warm …
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: How OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are using different approaches to improve “model behavior”, an emerging field shaping systems' responses and characteristics — Leading artificial intelligence companies that are racing to develop the cutting-edge technology are tackling a very human challenge …
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: 01.ai, DeepSeek, and other Chinese companies are reducing costs to create AI models by focusing on smaller training data sets, as they deal with export controls — 01.ai, Alibaba and ByteDance have cut ‘inference’ costs despite Washington curbs on accessing cutting-edge chips