TECHNOLOGY
Google toughens jab rules
Google told its employees that they would lose pay and eventually be fired if they do not follow its COVID-19 vaccination rules, CNBC reported on Tuesday. A memo circulated by Google’s leadership said that employees had until Dec. 3 to declare their vaccination status and upload documentation, or to apply for a medical or religious exemption, the report said. After that date, Google would start contacting employees who had not uploaded their status or were unvaccinated, and those whose exemption requests were not approved, CNBC reported. Employees who have not complied with the rules by Jan. 18 would be placed on “paid administrative leave” for 30 days, followed by “unpaid personal leave” for up to six months and termination, it reported.
SINGAPORE
Home sales soaring
Singapore home sales surged to a four-month high after the city-state gradually eased social restrictions in a bid to live with COVID-19. Purchases of new private apartments last month climbed to 1,547 units, figures released yesterday by the Singaporean Urban Redevelopment Authority showed. That was higher than the 911 units sold in October and the most since July. The rebound came after Singapore began to relax its strict virus curbs early last month, allowing more people to view new homes. “Developers were eager to ride the wave of positive sales momentum and close more deals before the year ends,” OrangeTee & Tie (橙易產業) senior vice president of research and analytics Christine Sun (孫燕清) said.
CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Binance grows in Indonesia
Binance Holdings Ltd has set up a joint venture to develop a digital asset exchange in Indonesia with a unit of a local telecommunications operator. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is partnering with a consortium led by MDI Ventures, the venture-capital arm of state-owned telecom PT Telkom Indonesia, the two entities said in joint statement yesterday. The deal would also expand the use of blockchain in the world’s fourth-most populous country. The partnership gives Binance greater access to a country where it has an investment in Tokocrypto, a major trading platform for digital coins. Telkom Indonesia is the country’s largest telecom.
TECHNOLOGY
Uber looks to sell Didi stake
Uber Technologies Inc is looking to sell stakes in what it considers nonstrategic investments in other companies, including its shares in ride-hailing company Didi Global Inc (滴滴), Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on Tuesday. “Our Didi stake we don’t believe is strategic. They’re a competitor. China is a pretty difficult environment, with very little transparency,” Khosrowshahi said in a virtual interview with a UBS analyst. “Those kinds of stakes we look to monetize smartly over time,” Khosrowshahi added.
TECHNOLOGY
Musk is ‘Person of the Year’
The Financial Times followed Time magazine in naming Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk “Person of the Year,” with the British newspaper lauding the world’s richest man’s role in shifting the automotive industry toward an all-electric future. “Even if Tesla were somehow to collapse next year ... Musk would have transformed one of the world’s most important industries in ways that could have profound implications for governments, investors — and for the climate,” the paper said.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
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