Krypton Evening Post | SpaceX Completes Its 200th Starlink Launch Mission, Musk Congratulates; Toyota: To Start Developing an Artificial Intelligence Platform with NTT in 2025.
Big Companies:
36Kr learned that Xusheng Group announced that the company received a notice from its controlling shareholder, Xu Xudong. Xu Xudong and his concerted actors are planning the transfer of the company's shares they hold, which may lead to a change in control rights. Due to the significant uncertainty of this matter, the company's stocks and convertible bonds have been suspended for two trading days from October 30 to 31, 2024. After applying to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the suspension will continue from November 1, 2024, and is expected to last for no more than three trading days.
Samsung hints at the possibility of starting to supply HBM chips to NVIDIA in the near future
South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. hinted on Thursday that it may provide advanced High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to the US artificial intelligence giant NVIDIA in the near future. The South Korean tech giant has been working to have its HBM3E chips pass NVIDIA's quality tests, while its local competitor SK Hynix Corp. has recently started mass-producing the industry-leading 12-layer HBM3E chips. Kim Jae-june, vice president of Samsung Electronics' memory business, said at a conference call after the announcement of the third-quarter earnings: "Currently, we are mass-producing 8-layer and 12-layer HBM3E products." (Sina Finance)
36Kr learned that recently, the global information technology research and consulting company Gartner released the "Authentication Magic Quadrant" report. Eleven institutions worldwide were selected, and ZOLOZ, a subsidiary of Ant Digital Technology, became the only manufacturer selected in the Asia-Pacific region. It is introduced that this is Gartner's first Magic Quadrant report focused on the authentication field.
Shell's third-quarter earnings exceed market expectations
Due to the continuous growth of the natural gas business, Shell's earnings exceeded market expectations, partially offsetting the impact of low oil prices and weak refining profit margins on the third-quarter results. Energy giant Shell announced on Thursday that its adjusted earnings for this quarter were $6.03 billion, a 4% decrease year-on-year, but exceeded the company's generally expected $5.36 billion. Based on market capitalization, the company announced a quarterly dividend of 34.40 cents and said it will repurchase $3.5 billion worth of stocks in the fourth quarter, which is in line with the previous guidance. (Sina Finance)
Hyundai Motor released the latest hydrogen fuel cell concept car named INITIUM in Seoul, South Korea. Based on the INITIUM concept car, Hyundai Motor will launch a new mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in the first half of 2025. It is introduced that the INITIUM concept car is equipped with low-drag wheels and low-rolling-resistance tires to reduce resistance, and its cruising range exceeds 650 kilometers. Hyundai Motor plans to display the INITIUM concept car at the Guangzhou Auto Show and the Los Angeles Auto Show in November. (Jiemian)
Volkswagen presents a cost-saving plan to workers in an attempt to avoid closing German factories
Volkswagen has presented a cost-saving proposal to workers that could avoid the closure of German factories. Arne Meiswinkel, the chief negotiator for the automaker, said the plan includes a 10% salary reduction and a modification of the bonus system. Currently, the Volkswagen brand is facing weak European demand and increased competition from China, and these measures are intended to revitalize the company. Volkswagen and labor leaders warn that if sufficient agreements on other measures cannot be reached, the closure of factories is still possible. (Sina Finance)
Li Auto: Net profit in the third quarter is 2.82 billion yuan, an increase of 0.3% year-on-year
36Kr learned that Li Auto released its third-quarter 2024 financial report. The financial report shows that the company achieved a net profit of 2.82 billion yuan in this quarter, an increase of 0.3% year-on-year; it is expected that the delivery volume in the fourth quarter will be 1.6 million to 1.7 million units, an increase of 21.4% to 29.0% year-on-year. Li Auto's US stocks fell more than 4% before the market.
36Kr learned that according to Fliggy, as of 24:00 on October 30, more than 500,000 pieces of Double 11 theme park and popular scenic area-related event products have been sold, surpassing the entire duration of last year's Double 11. Among them, the reservation rate of some popular products of top theme park brands has reached 90%, and the reservation rate of some ski season travel packages has exceeded 40%.
Investment and Financing:
Siemens agrees to acquire simulation software company Altair for $10.6 billion in cash
On October 30 local time, Siemens announced that it has agreed to acquire the simulation software company Altair Engineering for $10.6 billion in an all-cash transaction. Siemens will pay $113 in cash per share for Altair, valuing the latter at $10.6 billion. This offer represents a 19% premium over Altair's unaffected closing price on October 21, 2024. Altair, headquartered in Michigan, USA, sells data analysis technology and services to large enterprise customers in the industrial manufacturing, consumer goods, energy, and other industries. (Jiemian)
"LinkZhihua" completes a 23 million yuan seed round financing
36Kr learned that "LinkZhihua" recently announced the completion of a 23 million yuan seed round financing, with Qianyi Capital as the investor. The financing funds of this round will be used by LinkZhihua for team building, technology research and development, and the infrastructure construction of artificial intelligence core technologies. LinkZhihua was established in 2024 and is committed to providing data intelligence solutions for companies in various industries.
New Products:
Bainian Intelligent releases a one-stop solution
36Kr learned that today, Bainian Intelligent launched a one-stop large model commercialization solution, the 1 + 3 product matrix (full-link high-quality general training data, Baichuan4-Turbo, Baichuan4-Air two models, and the full-link domain enhancement toolchain). This solution is "with many tools, fast speed, good effect, and low cost", which can help enterprises achieve the best privatization deployment at the lowest cost. It also supports enterprises to mix the proprietary data with the full-link high-quality training data used by Bainian Intelligent to optimize and enhance the Baichuan4-Turbo and Baichuan4-Air models, achieving the industry's highest 96% multi-scenario availability.
Sibitech releases the AI office notebook Turbo
36Kr learned that Sibitech has released the AI office notebook Turbo, which is equipped with a professional cross-modal conference large model. Ma Binbin, the chief product officer of Sibitech's IOT business department, said that this model is optimized based on tens of millions of hours of conference training data, and can achieve cross-modal integration of handwritten input, image scanning, voice input, and historical note documents. The intelligent note based on large model technology is the core function of Sibitech's AI office notebook, including real-time conversion of meeting recordings into text, structured extraction of key points from AI notes, and automatic generation of meeting minutes after the meeting.
Toyota Motor: It will start developing an artificial intelligence platform with NTT in 2025
Toyota Motor said that it will start developing an artificial intelligence platform with NTT in 2025. It is expected that the total investment in the artificial intelligence platform with NTT by 2030 will reach 500 billion yen. (Caixin)
Today's Views:
SpaceX completes the 200th Starlink launch mission, and Musk congratulates
Elon Musk's SpaceX company posted on the social platform X that the company's Falcon 9 rocket completed the 200th low-Earth orbit "Starlink" launch mission on Wednesday. On Wednesday evening local time, a Falcon 9 rocket launched 23 Starlink satellites into space from Florida, which is the company's 200th "Starlink" launch mission. Starlink, a branch of SpaceX, provides low-latency network connections to more than 4 million people worldwide with the help of an orbital satellite network. In early September this year, the company said it has launched more than 7,000 Starlink satellites into space. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted to congratulate the SpaceX team on the successful launch. (Sina Finance)
Morgan Stanley: Lowers AMD's target price from $178 to $169
36Kr learned that Morgan Stanley's report shows that AMD's quarterly performance is in line with expectations, but the market reaction indicates that the company is facing challenges of high expectations. The bank still looks favorably on investment opportunities in the artificial intelligence field from 2024 to 2025, although some revenue and earnings expectations may be too high. Morgan Stanley lowers AMD's target price from $178 to $169, maintaining the "in line with the market" rating. It is expected that AMD's quarterly revenue as of the quarter ending in March next year will be $6.986 billion, the full-year revenue in 2025 will be $31.07 billion, and the revenue in 2026 will increase by 25% to 29%.
Other News Worth Noting:
36Kr learned that on October 31, the Office of the Beijing Stock Exchange and the Office of the National Equities Exchange and Quotations Co., Ltd. issued a notice, stating that it is planned to carry out the first full-network test for the optimization of the trading support platform in the near future. The participating institutions include the Beijing Stock Exchange, the National Equities Exchange and Quotations Co., Ltd., China Securities Depository and Clearing Co., Ltd., securities companies, fund companies, information providers, etc. The test time is November 2.
36Kr learned that recently, on the basis of summarizing the previous pilot experience, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange has decided to expand the areas for the pilot of exempting registration for domestic reinvestment by foreign-invested enterprises and the pilot of banks directly handling foreign debt registration to Tianjin, Anhui, Shandong (including Qingdao), Hubei, and Sichuan. The "Kehuitong" pilot area will be expanded to 16 regions including Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Xiong'an New Area in Hebei, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Hefei, Wuhan, Changsha, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Mianyang, Xi'an, and Shenzhen.
In 2025, the electricity market will enter the time window for the annual long-term contract signing, but currently, the medium and long-term electricity market has brought difficulties to power generation enterprises due to the imperfect mechanism. On October 25, 11 power generation companies in Guangdong Province jointly sent a letter to the Guangdong Energy Bureau and the Southern Regulatory Bureau of the National Energy Administration, requesting "to further improve the medium and long-term market mechanism". (21st Century Business Herald)