Uber Technologies Inc has secured a US$1 billion investment from three Japanese companies, ahead of an initial public offering expected next month.
Denso Corp, Toyota Motor Corp and Softbank Group Corp’s Vision Fund bought stakes in the self-driving unit, valuing the arm at US$7.25 billion, according to a statement.
The deal would help Uber, which tallied a US$3 billion operating loss last year, to continue funding a very costly endeavor.
Uber publicly filed a prospectus to go public last week and is expected to begin a road show to promote the stock before the end of the month. The offering could value Uber at about US$100 billion, people familiar with the matter have said.
The autonomous vehicle investment is the second major deal struck in the weeks leading up to the IPO. Uber chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi said last month that the company had agreed to acquire Middle Eastern rival Careem for US$3.1 billion.
With Uber remaining the majority shareholder in the autonomous vehicle venture, public investors would still be exposed to a substantial expense.
Uber spent US$457 million last year on technology investments, including the self-driving vehicle business.
However, the pre-IPO deal would help the company argue that the autonomous program is a valuable component of its business.
The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, Uber said.
Together, Toyota and the auto supplier Denso are to invest US$667 million, while Vision Fund plans to chip in US$333 million for the self-driving unit.
Softbank was already the largest shareholder in Uber, with a 16 percent holding. Toyota has a smaller stake.
Softbank has not been able to take two board seats at Uber that were granted as part of its investment more than a year ago. Due to an impending US national security review, Softbank might never get those seats, but it would have rights to join a new board as part of the autonomous vehicle deal.
The new corporate entity is to have a board compromised of six Uber-appointed members, one appointed by Toyota and one from Vision Fund, a person familiar with the matter said. That seat would also require US security approval.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy