INVESTMENT
Start-up raises US$130m
Wolt Enterprises Oy, a food delivery start-up based in Helsinki, has landed US$130 million in new investment to increase its European expansion and fund a hiring spree. The company would use its new funding to accelerate its growth, adding new cities and countries, Miki Kuusi, Wolt’s 29-year-old cofounder and chief executive, said in an interview. The company would also hire an additional 1,000 people in the next 18 months, he added. It currently employs about 450 people.
SOFTWARE
Adobe revenue surprises
Adobe Inc reported quarterly revenue that topped Wall Street estimates, signaling that the Photoshop maker’s expanding product suite is continuing to fuel growth. Sales increased 25 percent to US$2.74 billion in the fiscal second quarter from a year earlier, the San Jose, California-based company said on Tuesday. However, it gave a profit forecast that fell short of analysts’ projections for the second consecutive quarter. Earnings, excluding some expenses, would be about US$1.95 a share in the current period, it said.
AIRLINES
Air NZ CEO to resign
Air New Zealand Ltd CEO Christopher Luxon is resigning after more than six years in the role, as he raised the possibility of a new career in politics. Luxon, 48, is to step down from day-to-day leadership of the airline on Sept. 25, the company said yesterday. An international search for his replacement is under way and a new CEO is expected to be announced in the near future, chairman Tony Carter said in a statement.
TAXATION
Islands to publish data
Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man plan by 2023 to publish secret information on ownership of companies registered in the crown dependencies, they announced yesterday, heeding calls for greater tax transparency. The islands have responded by jointly proposing “a series of steps regarding each jurisdiction’s central register of beneficial ownership information of companies and how they will move toward developing international standards of accessibility and transparency.”
MALAYSIA
Bank sees upside to dispute
The central bank, which has already downgraded its economic growth outlook for this year amid an escalating trade dispute, sees a partial offset as companies shift operations from China to sidestep higher US tariffs. In her first formal interview with international media since she took office almost a year ago, Bank Negara MalaysiaGovernor Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus said that the trade diversion could add about 10 basis points to this year’s growth rate. That would be on top of the bank’s current forecast of 4.3 to 4.8 percent for this year.
UNITED KINGDOM
Brexit fears erode prospects
Hotel operator Whitbread PLC and leather-goods maker Mulberry Group PLC yesterday reported lower sales in their home market as the uncertainty around Brexit erodes business prospects. Whitbread said that first-quarter comparable sales dropped 3.7 percent, while Mulberry reported that UK revenue fell 6 percent in the year through March, driving it to a £5 million (US$6.28 million) pretax loss. Whitbread said that the company is opening more rooms in London, but it is cautious about the outlook for travel elsewhere in the country.
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
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
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