Author: Jaxon Bennett

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.On paper, Arm and Qualcomm look like natural allies in some of the chip industry’s most important new markets.As Arm’s low-power chip architecture moves into big new areas like data centre servers, PCs and cars, Qualcomm is one of the companies leading the charge, designing chips based on Arm’s technology. The two are natural allies as they look to move beyond their strongholds in the mature smartphone market.So when Arm sued Qualcomm more than two years ago in a licensing dispute, it…

Chinese companies are struggling to close the gap on US-based rivals in a crucial corner of the global semiconductor market. Electronic design automation software allows designers and manufacturers to develop and test the blueprints for new generations of chips, many of which consist of tens or even hundreds of billions of transistors, before they are put into production. While the EDA sector accounts for just 1.6 per cent of the $600bn global semiconductor industry, it serves as a critical bottleneck in the supply chain for developing the latest cutting-edge chips.“It’s the keys to the kingdom,” said G Dan Hutcheson, vice chair…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Chinese business & finance myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.China’s Hesai plans to sue the US government after the Pentagon put the world’s biggest producer of laser sensors for electric vehicles back on its blacklist of Chinese companies affiliated with the military.David Li, Hesai’s co-founder and chief executive, told the Financial Times the company planned to challenge the Pentagon’s decision in court. “We are not a military company . . . we don’t contribute to or have any connection with the Chinese military or military body,” he said. “We operate independently, free of government…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Japanese business & finance myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.When EcoNaviSta listed on Tokyo’s all-new Growth Market last year, shares in the artificial intelligence-powered big data sleep analysis healthcare start-up zinged nicely higher. Then it started to wobble. Then it began a slide that would destroy 60 per cent of its market value.Today, the company lolls in a broad pasture inhabited by one of Japan’s most intriguing industrial species: a large, whimpering herd of “punycorns”.The evolution and proliferation of this creature — the stunted, staid stablemate of the unicorn…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Tesla’s quarterly profit beat analysts’ estimates and it forecast a “slight growth” in deliveries this year, pushing the stock of the world’s largest electric vehicle maker more than 8 per cent higher in after-hours trading.Adjusted net income for the quarter rose 8 per cent from a year ago to $2.5bn, exceeding expectations for $2.1bn, according to a filing from the Austin, Texas-based company on Wednesday. Revenue rose 8 per cent to $25.2bn, slightly undershooting the average $25.4bn estimate.“Despite ongoing macroeconomic conditions, we…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Byju’s, an Indian edtech company, has gone from hero to zero in just two years. Following the pandemic tech boom, the online tutoring business — founded by Byju Raveendran — was India’s most valuable start-up in 2022, worth around $22bn. Its backers included BlackRock, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and even the World Bank’s investment arm. It sponsored the Fifa World Cup in Qatar and India’s illustrious cricket team. But last week, Raveendran said that the company was now in effect “worth zero”.…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Scientists have developed a new technology for using DNA genetic code to store data, boosting the quest for powerful solutions to save ever growing volumes of digital information more cheaply and sustainably.DNA is seen as a potential salvation for data-dependent economies because it is stable and just one gramme of it can theoretically store the equivalent of about 10mn hours of high-definition video. Now researchers from US, Chinese and German institutions have used a simple chemical reaction to mimic the binary system…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the German economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ambitions to turn Germany into a powerhouse in the chip industry have suffered a fresh blow after US tech company Wolfspeed shelved plans to build a factory in the country, prompting the opposition to claim his industrial policy was in tatters.Wolfspeed put plans for the €3bn factory in Saarland, a region near the French border and once a byword for industrial decline, on ice in response to cooling European demand for electric vehicles that use its chips. The move…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.SoftBank’s Arm has told US chipmaker Qualcomm it will cancel its chip design licence, raising the stakes in an intellectual property dispute set to go to trial in December.Qualcomm confirmed the move on Tuesday, accusing Arm of “strong-arm” tactics designed to increase royalty rates for its intellectual property, which will “disrupt the legal process” under way in the US.Many of Qualcomm’s chips use Arm’s design architecture, meaning a revocation of its licence potentially puts billions of dollars of revenue at risk. The relationship…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Songwriters from Abba and Radiohead and authors including Kazuo Ishiguro and James Patterson are among more than 11,000 artists warning against the threat of artificial intelligence to the creative industries. “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted,” the letter on Tuesday said. Alongside Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus and Thom Yorke and other members of Radiohead, signatories include actors Julianne Moore and…