CHIPMAKERS
Nvidia to buy Mellanox
Nvidia Corp is nearing an agreement to buy Israeli chipmaker Mellanox Technologies, which would help it gain technology used to speed the flow of information around data centers, people familiar with the matter said. The sale of Mellanox, which has a market value of about US$5.9 billion, could be announced as soon as yesterday, the people said. Nvidia is the leading bidder ahead of rivals including Intel Corp, the people said. Representatives for Nvidia, Mellanox and Intel declined to comment.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla prices to rise 3%
Tesla Inc said it plans to raise average vehicle prices by about 3 percent globally after it decided to shut down fewer stores than previously announced. The move comes days after Tesla said it would be winding down most of its physical stores and moving to an online-only platform. However, the company has since decided to keep “significantly” more stores open, it said on its blog. Potential Tesla vehicle buyers would have a week to place orders before prices rise for the Model S and Model X, the company said.
GERMANY
Industrial production sags
Industrial output fell 0.8 percent month-on-month in January, federal statistics authority Destatis said yesterday, adding to a picture of a slowdown taking hold across the 19-nation eurozone. Looking to different elements of production in January, makers of capital and producer goods saw lower output, while consumer goods firms booked an increase. Energy generation and construction also reported expansion.
BANKING
Net new yuan loans fall
Banks extended 885.8 billion yuan (US$131.7 billion) in net new yuan loans last month, a sharp drop from January loans and less than expected. A pull-back last month had been widely expected as banks tend to front-load loans at the beginning of the year to get higher-quality customers and win market share. Broad M2 money supply, which includes M1 — physical currency and coin deposits and checkable deposits — time deposits, foreign-currency deposits and mutual funds, grew 8.0 percent last month from a year earlier, below forecasts, People’s Bank of China data showed on Sunday. Outstanding yuan loans grew 13.4 percent from a year earlier, matching expectations and unchanged from January’s rise.
ENERGY
Petrobras to cut costs
Petrobras has announced plans to slash US$8.1 billion from its operational costs from this year to 2023 to “maximize value for shareholders.” The amount to be reduced is 6.6 percent of the US$122.6 billion originally budgeted for the period, the state-run oil company said in a statement on Friday. The company said it plans to introduce cuts to staff spending and reduce discretionary expenses such as sponsorships and advertising. A voluntary layoff plan is expected to be launched soon, but the company did not say when.
RETAIL
Amer Sports sold for US$5bn
A consortium led by Chinese companies has bought Finnish firm Amer Sports for 4.6 billion euros (US$5.17 billion), acquiring leading ski brands Salomon and Atomic. Amer Sports said the offer, announced in September and launched in December, had been successful with some 94 percent of its shares sold to the group. Estimated to be worth 4.4 billion euros, Amer Sports last reported annual sales of 2.7 billion euros and employs about 9,500 people.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to