Walmart Inc. breezed to another quarter after the results which showed sales growth and said it now expects the full year to be slightly better than planned as the big-box retailer attracts consumers looking for essentials and discounts.

U.S. consumer prices rose

There has been concerns placed by some U.S. retailers in recent weeks that consumer spending is waning, but Walmart is not one of them.

Overall, U.S. consumer prices rose less than expected in April, but domestic demand has shown signs of cooling as Americans struggle with higher rents, gas prices and car insurance premiums. In the 12 months through April, the consumer price index was up 3.4%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released on Wednesday, though far below the 9.1% pace hit in June 2022.

“These are not inflation-driven results,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on a post-earnings call.

Quarterly results were driven by more visits to stores and the website by wealthier shoppers and the price gaps it is maintaining against rivals, McMillon said.

Walmart’s sales

In it’s quarterly result on Thursday, Walmart said total U.S. comparable sales rose 3.9%, excluding fuel, in its first quarter ended April 30. The average bill at the cash register was flat but the number of transactions rose. Analysts expected those sales to rise 3.15%, according to LSEG.

Online sales in the U.S. surged 22%, surpassing the 17% growth Walmart posted during the typically robust holiday season.

Walmart’s growth

Growth was driven by Walmart’s pickup & delivery services and increased sales of apparel through its third-party marketplace, which now offers more than 420 million items of mostly discretionary products. Walmart attributed much of the online gains to households earning more than $100,000 per year.

Boost in grocery business

As per Walmart executives lower-income consumers maintained their spending habits but tended to prioritize less expensive items. Also the price gap between eating at home and dining outside had increased, boosting its grocery business, which accounts for about 60% of total revenues.

A 45% increase in the number of food and consumables items it offered on discounts, which it calls rollbacks, in April resonated strongly with shoppers.

“As we continue to work closely with our suppliers to lower cost, we’re managing our … competitive price gaps and customers are responding favorably, resulting in sustained sales growth and higher gross margins,” Walmart’s finance chief John David Rainey said.

Gross margins rose about 0.4%, helped by newer business such as advertising and Walmart+ membership, Rainey said.

Walmart sales forecast

Walmart reported Q1 adjusted earnings of 60 cents per share, easily beating the 52-cent average forecast. Total revenue of $161.51 billion also topped estimates.

For its fiscal year ending January 2025, Walmart expects sales to rise at the high end or slightly above its prior forecast of 3% to 4% growth, and adjusted profit per share to be at the high end or slightly above its prior estimate of $2.23 to $2.37.

While Americans have generally managed to navigate through higher prices, prolonged inflation has sparked worries that lower-income consumers might be more pressured and potentially slow down an anticipated recovery in spending.

Walmart share price 

The largest U.S. retailer sounded uniformly positive in its outlook on Thursday, which rose its share by 7% to an all-time high price of $64.22. The rally was the sharpest single-day gain for Walmart’s stock since March 2020. This Walmart share price rally today helped lift the Dow industrials past 40,000 for the first time.

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Berkshire owned 25.92 million shares in Chubb as of March 31, according to a regulatory filing that details Berkshire’s U.S.-listed holdings as of that date. The property and casualty insurer became Berkshire’s ninth biggest holding at the end of March.

Chubb stock

The Chubb stock, which edged slightly lower by 0.13% during the day’s trading session, soared by more than 7.5% in after-hours trading to $271.96 a share as of Wednesday evening following the news of Berkshire’s stake. The stock was a record high price. The Chubb stock has gained about 12% year to date.

Effect of Buffett stake in Chubb

The gains in Chubb shares mirror the tendency of stocks rising after Berkshire Hathaway reveals them as new stake in its portfolio as it reflects what investors view as Buffett’s seal of approval.

Warren Buffett investment

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a sizable new investment in insurance firm Chubb in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

“Chubb is an attractive equity investment for Berkshire because it operates in a business Berkshire knows well: property-casualty insurance,” Cathy Seifert, a CFRA Research analyst who covers Berkshire, said in an email reviewed by Reuters.

The filing indicated that Berkshire ended the month of March with $189 billion in cash and equivalents a record high stockpile for Buffett’s conglomerate.

Rise in Berkshire cash stake

Buffett had signaled at Berkshire’s annual meeting on May 4 that the company’s cash stake could rise to $200 billion by June. He said at the time that holding cash looked “quite attractive” as an alternative to high-priced stocks and uncertainty around “what’s going on in the world.”

Warren Buffett cuts Apple stake

Berkshire reduced its stake in Apple by about 22% to $135 billion as of March 31, a sale that resulted in an $11.2 billion after-tax gain on the investment. Buffett said that he expects Apple to remain Berkshire’s largest stock investment for the foreseeable future despite paring back its stake in the tech giant.

Buffett’s Chubb stake

The company began buying Chubb stock in the Q3 of last year and obtained permission from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to temporarily keep its purchases confidential.

Buffett’s firm occasionally makes such requests to defer the public disclosure of investments until it has bought the intended amount of shares in the stock to prevent other investors and the public from piggybacking on the purchases.

Buffett’s other investments and plan

Buffett, 93, has run Berkshire since 1965 and spoke at length about his succession plans at Berkshire’s annual meeting earlier this month.

Buffett outlined his succession plan for Berkshire Hathaway at the company’s recent annual meeting. Berkshire has in recent years obtained similar SEC permission for its investment in Chevron and former investments in ExxonMobil, IBM and Verizon.

The filing doesn’t indicate whether the investments were made by Buffett or Berkshire portfolio managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler.

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Iger said he looked expansively at traditional media when he came out of retirement to return to Disney as CEO in November 2022. He added, to prioritize streaming services, Walt Disney Co has significantly reduced its investment in traditional TV networks.

Disney cuts TV spending

Bob Iger added on the TV budget that traditional channels such as ABC still serve as an important marketing tool and help reach older viewers who are not watching series such as “Abbott Elementary” on Disney’s streaming platforms.

Still, the company has reduced “pretty dramatically our investment in content specifically aimed at those traditional networks,” Iger said at the MoffettNathanson’s 2024 Media, Internet and Communications Conference in New York.

“We feel comfortable with our hand right now, because we’re using those networks efficiently and effectively,” he said.

Disney’s focus on streaming service

Shows such as “Abbott” or “Grey’s Anatomy” move quickly to Disney’s Hulu streaming service, where they attract a younger audience, Iger said.

The strategy to focus on streaming service allows Disney to amortize costs across platforms, the CEO added. One executive, Dana Walden, oversees the traditional entertainment networks and streaming.

“We’re basically aggregating greater audience, and we’re amortizing costs and we’re using the marketing of the traditional network, really, to help in some cases,” Iger said.

“We’re doing that across the board, Disney Channel, ABC, National Geographic, and it’s working,” he added.

Disney’s theme parks

Iger said he expected continued growth from Disney’s theme parks business, but perhaps not at the same rate as in recent years.

“We’ve had double-digit revenue growth in that business for quite some time, and that’s extraordinary,” he said. “But I think we’re being realistic, too, in that delivering double-digit revenue growth … well into the future is not necessarily that achievable.”

Why Disney TV spending cut matters?

Disney’s Q2 earnings showed a 1% year-on-year revenue growth to $22.08 billion, slightly missing the consensus of $22.11 billion. The company’s entertainment revenue declined by 5% year-over-year to $9.8 billion, while sports revenue grew 2% year-over-year to $4.3 billion.

During the earnings call, Iger announced a global crackdown on password-sharing, citing Netflix Inc. as the “gold standard” in streaming.

Disney stock

Disney shares fell 2.5% to close at $102.77 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

The post Disney CEO Bob Iger’s Strategic Cut in Traditional TV Spending appeared first on Industry Leaders Magazine.

Already a household name in China, Xiaomi is popular for smartphones and home appliances.

Xiaomi in electric vehicle market

Xiaomi joins other upstarts like Nio and Xpeng in electric vehicle market as new automakers focused on electric vehicle production. The category excludes legacy brands like Volkswagen and established EV makers such as Tesla, BYD and Geely.

Xiaomi SU7 launch

Xiaomi EV sold 7,058 of SU7s in April in China, its first full monthly sales since the model was launched in late March, and it is targeting more than 100,000 deliveries this year, which would correspond to monthly average sales of 11,618 units for the remainder of the year.

It replaced the Avatr EV brand from state-owned Chongqing Changan Automobile as the country’s 8th largest EV upstart, according to Reuters’ analysis of monthly sales data from ByteDance’s car information platform Dongchedi.

China’s EV market

China’s EV market has been crowded by an increasing number of upstarts that include pure EV manufacturers such as Nio and Xpeng as well as EV sub-brands from traditional automakers including GAC’s Aion and Geely’s Zeekr.

Huawei-backed Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA) is also among the new upstarts. Brands under the HIMA include Aito and Luxeed and their combined EV sales totaled 20,819 units in April, according to Dongchedi data.

Xiaomi’s EV sales better than competition

Xiaomi’s estimated monthly sales of more than 11,000 units for the remainder of the year also puts it in a close competition with Volkswagen, which has fared better than most other foreign legacy auto brands in competing with Chinese EV players.

VW delivered 13,108 EVs in April under its ID series through two Chinese joint ventures, with the models starting at a lower price than Xiaomi’s standard SU7 at $29,845.59.

EV makers shifts focus

As EV makers grapple with growing competition in the China market, many are now shifting their focus to overseas markets.

China’s passenger vehicle exports surging to a record high in April, whereas domestic sales contracted 5.8% from a year earlier, data from the China Passenger Car Association showed.

Market bullish on Xiaomi

The market is set to turn even more bullish on Xiaomi in coming years, according to some analysts. HSBC Qianhai forecasts sales of the Xiaomi vehicle at 240,000 units in 2025 and 348,000 units in 2026.

Local champion BYD topped China’s EV sales rankings with 120,234 units last month. Sales were largely driven by affordable models much cheaper than the SU7.

U.S. giant Tesla netted 31,421 units in Model 3 and Y sales in April.

Xiaomi’s base model SU7 is about $4,000 cheaper than the base model of Tesla’s Model 3 in China.

The post Xiaomi 8th Largest EV Player in China with Successful SU7 Launch appeared first on Industry Leaders Magazine.

Ilya Sutskever added that it was an “honor and a privilege” to work with the OpenAI colleagues.

OpenAI co-founder departs

OpenAI co-founder departs months after the company went through a leadership crisis involving co-founder and CEO Sam Altman.

In November, OpenAI’s board said in a statement that Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board.” The issue quickly came to look more complex. The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reported that Sutskever trained his focus on ensuring that artificial intelligence would not harm humans, while others, including Altman, were instead more eager to push ahead with delivering new technology.

Sutskever’s replacement

The OpenAI CEO also announced that Jakub Pachocki would replace Sutskever as the firm’s new chief scientist.

“Jakub is also easily one of the greatest minds of our generation; I am thrilled he is taking the baton here. He has run many of our most important projects, and I am very confident he will lead us to make rapid and safe progress towards our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits everyone,” he said.

Leadership crisis at OpenAI

When Sam Altman was asked to leave, all OpenAI employees signed an open letter saying they would leave in response to the board’s action. Days later, Altman was back at the company, and board members Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and Sutskever, who had voted to oust Altman, were out. Adam D’Angelo, who had also voted to push out Altman, stayed on the board.

Sam Altman on Ilya Sutskever’s announcement

When Altman was asked about Sutskever’s status on a Zoom call with reporters at the time, he said there were no updates to share. “I love Ilya. … I hope we work together for the rest of our careers, my career, whatever,” Altman said. “Nothing to announce today.”

On Tuesday, Altman shared his thoughts on Sutskever’s departure.

“This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend,” Altman wrote on X. “His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less important.” Altman said research director Jakub Pachocki, who has been at OpenAI since 2017, will replace Sutskever as chief scientist.

New board members

OpenAI has announced new board members, including former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Microsoft obtained a nonvoting board observer position.

In March, OpenAI announced its new board and the wrap-up of an internal investigation by U.S. law firm WilmerHale into the events leading up to Altman’s ouster. Altman rejoined OpenAI’s board, and three new board members were announced: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former EVP and global general counsel of Sony and president of Sony Entertainment; and Fidji Simo, CEO and chair of Instacart.

The three new members will “work closely with current board members Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers and Bret Taylor as well as Greg, Sam, and OpenAI’s senior management,” according to a company release in March, referencing OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman.

OpenAI’s new AI model

The OpenAI co-founder departs news comes a day after OpenAI launched a new AI model and desktop version of ChatGPT, along with an updated user interface, the company’s latest effort to expand use of its popular chatbot.

The update brings the GPT-4 model to everyone, including OpenAI’s free users, technology chief Mira Murati said Monday in a livestreamed event. She added that the new model, GPT-4o, is “much faster,” with improved capabilities in text, video and audio.

OpenAI said it eventually plans to allow users to video chat with ChatGPT. “This is the first time that we are really making a huge step forward when it comes to the ease of use,” Murati said.

In 2015, Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, another OpenAI co-founder, wanted Sutskever, then a research scientist at Google, to become the budding startup’s top scientist, according to the lawsuit Musk filed against OpenAI in March.

“Dr. Sutskever went back and forth on whether to leave Google and join the project, but it was ultimately a call from Mr. Musk on the day OpenAI, Inc. was publicly announced that convinced Dr. Sutskever to commit to joining the project as OpenAI, Inc.’s Chief Scientist,” the legal filing said.

All about Ilya Sutskever?

Ilya Sutskever, a Russian-born Israeli-Canadian computer scientist, who is a co-founder of OpenAI. He studied at the Open University of Israel between 2000 and 2002, following which he moved to Canada with his family and attended the University of Toronto.

In 2012, Sutskever built AlexNet in collaboration with Hinton and Alex Krizhevsky. He is also one of the many co-authors of the AlphaGo paper.

Sutskever’s also briefly did a postdoctoral stint with Andrew Ng at Stanford University, followed by a return to the University of Toronto to join DNNResearch, a venture stemming from Hinton’s research group.

The post OpenAI Co-Founder Ilya Sutskever Departs Amid Leadership Changes appeared first on Industry Leaders Magazine.

While John Ternus could be next CEO of Apple, the company will also need to find new leaders for its top divisions. Apple Inc.’s executive leadership team is a tight-knit ensemble that has barely seen a shake-up or change for more than a decade. And many of the people in the group, known internally as the ET, are about the same age within a few years of CEO, Tim Cook.

Apple CEO succession plan

Apple faces a broader succession challenge than just finding a replacement for CEO Cook. Many of its top leaders could step down around the same time. Apple will also need to identify new leaders for its critic divisions, including engineering, marketing, services, finance, amongst other department.

As reported earlier Apple hardware engineering chief John Ternus has emerged as a likely long-term successor to Coo

Beyond the CEO, the lieutenants in charge of engineering, marketing, services, finance and other functions are arguably just as critical to Apple’s success if not more.

Apple leadership transition

The key players who could potentially be the next leaders of Apple in all departments including operations, finance, general counseling, AI, engineering, marketing, retail, services etc.

Changes in operations

Operations has probably the most potential successors in the company. Jeff Williams has been COO since 2015 and his likely replacement is his top deputy, Senior Vice President Sabih Khan. Khan is in Apple’s executive team giving him an inside track. If Khan is promoted, Priya Balasubramaniam is a near-lock to be Apple’s next senior vice president of operations.

Finance department

Finance has been in the reign of Luca Maestri since 2014. Maestri joined Apple in 2013 as corporate controller. There’s been no equivalent outside hire in the CFO’s office yet. Maestri has been grooming finance Vice President Kevan Parekh to eventually take over. While not a well-known name, Parekh is an instrumental executive at Apple who often reports directly to Cook on important financial and sales matters. In a sign of his increased importance, he recently assumed the responsibilities and office of Saori Casey, the senior Apple finance executive who is now the CFO of Sonos Inc.

General Counsel

Kate Adams joined Apple in 2017, and she’s already one of the company’s longest-serving general counsels in its history. It’s also the rare high-ranking role at Apple that is usually filled from outside the company. But Adams has deputies, including Kyle Andeer and BJ Watrous that could probably hold the position.

Software and hardware engineering

Craig Federighi has been Apple’s top software executive since 2012. It doesn’t appear that Federighi is going anywhere soon, but most people at Apple believe his eventual successor is probably Sebastien Marineau. That executive currently oversees a number of iOS functions, including widgets, the home screen and privacy. Though there are many who believe Jon Andrews, who runs some of Apple’s underlying software technologies, could be better for the position.

The hardware engineering team will need a new leader if Ternus does indeed replace Cook as CEO. The executive has several key lieutenants, including Kate Bergeron, Deniz Teoman and Eugene Kim. Of Ternus’ current direct reports, most people believe Kim and Bergeron are the likeliest options. But many believe Mike Rockwell, a respected engineer who just launched the Vision Pro could be a better fit.

Hardware technologies organization

Johny Srouji, who runs his hardware technologies organization with authority and commands more respect than many executives is the best. But when he does step away most people within his organization believe that Sri Santhanam is due to eventually take over. Santhanam is responsible for the main chips that go into all of Apple’s devices, including the iPhone and Mac.

Marketing for Apple

Greg Joswiak has been running this group since 2020. Bob Borchers, his deputy oversees marketing for all of Apple’s products. If Joswiak were to depart in the foreseeable future, Borchers would step up. He helped run iPhone marketing before leaving Apple, returning in 2019 and, according to all accounts, he has all the powers needed by Apple’s chief marketing head.

Retail chain head

Deirdre O’Brien has run Apple’s retail operations since 2019 and that job has become her only responsibility. Ron Johnson was the pioneer of Apple’s retail chain, and his departure in 2011 was a blow. Apple doesn’t have any obvious successors to O’Brien, which means it might go for an outsider yet again when she leaves. O’Brien has been at Apple for more than three decades, even longer than Cook. A deputy like Vanessa Trigub could probably at least run the group on an interim basis.

Entertainment and services

Entertainment and service has been the realm of Eddy Cue, who oversees humungous properties. It includes the TV+ streaming platform, Music, Maps, the Apple Card, iCloud, Fitness+, applications like Final Cut Pro, search ads and Apple Pay. Along with engineering, interface design and marketing organizations. There’s no single person at Apple who could or should replace the uniquely suited Cue as the senior vice president in charge of all of those areas. Apple could look to split Cue’s role into entertainment and services with Oliver Schusser gaining oversight over the first part, and Jeff Robbin adding applications, iCloud and Maps to his current job handling engineering.

App Store and Apple Events

When Philip Schiller departs, there is no obvious successor in place to take over that group and nobody within Apple has his cross-functional ability, stature or knowledge of the operation. One person called him virtually irreplaceable. Though with the regulators trying to break up the App Store, he seems content to stay and fight.

Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives

Lisa Jackson, who has held this role for over a decade, isn’t someone who can be easily replaced. As a former government official and ex-Environment Protection Agency head, Jackson is well-qualified to run the combined environment, policy and social initiative division. People with that resume are hard to find, so it’s likely Apple will break up Jackson’s role and split it across at least a couple of people. When Jackson retires, look for Sarah Chandler, vice president of environment and supply chain innovation, to lead the ecological efforts. As for government affairs, look for a senior hire out of Washington, such as a former presidential cabinet member.

Designer departures at Apple

When Jony Ive left Apple in 2019, people expected to see some attrition from its design ranks but not the loss of the entire team. Essentially all of Apple’s main industrial designers have now departed. The latest departure is Duncan Kerr, who joined Apple in 1999 and was one of its most senior remaining designers. Apple does have some new designers on the team, but they are not too thrilled about reporting to Apple’s operations chief versus a designer.

There could be more departures in the near future, especially from the software design group under Alan Dye. More broadly, the future of the industrial design team isn’t clear.

One has to wonder if the current organizational structure will work in the long term. Perhaps Apple needs to recruit a new design leader someone who can truly chart a post-Ive era. If it can’t, perhaps the company should look for an outside design firm to help out.

The post Apple’s CEO Succession Plan and Leadership Transition Challenges appeared first on Industry Leaders Magazine.

The lawsuit alleges Google has taken a monopoly on the ad stack “by buying companies up and down the chain, concurrently representing both ad buyers and sellers, while also running the exchange that connects those parties.”

Rumble sues Google

Rumble’s antitrust lawsuit accuses Google of maintaining its monopoly by reaching an agreement with Meta’s Facebook to prevent Facebook from offering alternatives to Google’s ad tech ecosystem.

The lawsuit argues that Google owes Rumble upwards of $1 billion in damages for lost ad revenue as a client, and for illegally leveraging its dominance in ad technology to hamper Rumble’s ability to compete as an ad tech competitor.

Google on Rumble lawsuit

Google denied Rumble’s claims calling them “simply wrong” and said that Rumble utilizes “dozens” of competing ad services in addition to Google’s ad manager.

“We’ll show the court how our advertising products benefit publishers and help them fund their content online,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters, insisting that publishers keep a vast majority of the revenue when they choose Google tools.

Rumble filed the suit late on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Second lawsuit by Rumble

This is the second time Rumble has filed a lawsuit against Google. The earlier suit filed in 2021 accused the company of favoring itself and its video-sharing platform, YouTube, in its search results.

Rumble feels uniquely positioned to take the lead in its legal battles with Google because it believes it’s been harmed by Google’s monopoly abuse both as a customer of its ad tech solutions and as a competitor.

However, the firm which is headquartered in Canada but trades publicly in the U.S. has not been called to testify against Google in the U.S. government’s current lawsuit against the tech giant. The trial for Rumble’s search ad lawsuit is scheduled for next April in Oakland, California.

Google’s advertising business is responsible for about three-quarters of its revenue.

Rumble’s revenue

Rumble’s ad marketplace revenues are still small, but the company sees its ad tech and cloud product offerings as a growing part of its business.

Rumble’s full-year revenue for 2023 was $81 million. The vast majority of that revenue came from Rumble selling ads against the user-generated content on its platform.

Other lawsuits against Google

Rumble’s new lawsuit is the latest litigation waged against Google for ad tech dominance.

The U.S. Justice Department also filed an advertising lawsuit against Google last year accusing the company of abusing its dominance of the digital advertising business and argued that it should be forced to sell its ad manager suite. The EU fined Google $1.7 billion for illegally stifling online ad competition in 2019. Dozens of other publishers in the U.S. and globally have also sued Google for the same reason.

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Arm AI chips release

SoftBank is in discussion with contract manufacturers including Taiwan’s TSMC to produce the AI chips, the report added. UK-based Arm will set up an AI chip division and aim to build a prototype by spring 2025. Mass production will be handled by contract manufacturers and is expected to start in the autumn of 2025 as per report.

SoftBank Group’s Arm Holdings plans to develop artificial-intelligence (AI) chips, seeking to launch the first products in 2025.

Softbank’s Arm AI chips

Arm will pay for initial development costs, which may total hundreds of billions of yen, with SoftBank also contributing, the report said.

Once a mass-production system is established, the AI chip business could be spun off and placed under SoftBank, the newspaper said, adding that SoftBank is already negotiating with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC) and others over manufacturing, looking to secure production capacity.

Arm’s technology

Arm which designs the fundamental architecture upon which the chips are built. After building the chip it sells licenses for its designs to companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia, while charging royalty fees on each sale they make. The company claims 99% of premium smartphones are powered by Arm technology.

The company will bear the initial development costs of the AI chips, which could reach “hundreds of billions of yen,” according to the report. After a mass-production system has been set up, Arm’s AI chip business could be “spun off and placed under SoftBank.”

Arm’s valuation

Arm shares have risen nearly 45% so far this year, and its market capitalization stands at over $113 billion, according to LSEG data. The company was acquired by SoftBank in 2016 for $32 billion, and was listed on the Nasdaq last year.

Reduce dependency Nvidia

The British chip designer, which licenses its chip designs and earns funds through royalties, has been expanding into the data-center market, where operators are looking to build their own chips to power new AI models and reduce their reliance on dominant supplier Nvidia.

SoftBank’s Arm

SoftBank founded and helmed by Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, is betting big on AI and reportedly plans to invest $960 million by next year to boost its computing facilities for generative AI. In June, Son said SoftBank wants to “be [in] the leading position for the AI revolution.”

SoftBank is looking to build AI data centers, powered by homegrown chips, across the U.S., Europe, Asia and the Middle East as soon as 2026, Nikkei said.

SoftBank is expected to slip back into the red when it reports earnings on Monday. Investors are eagerly awaiting clues about new growth investments as the company has ample liquidity and can monetize its huge holding in Arm, whose share price roughly doubled in February on excitement over AI.

 Arm’s shares

Bets that Arm will benefit from a surge in AI computing have doubled its share price since its IPO last September. Giving it a market value of more than $100 billion. Arm shares closed trading last week at $108.84, after gaining 5.1% during Friday’s session.

The post SoftBank’s Arm Aims AI Dominance with Planned Chips Launch appeared first on Industry Leaders Magazine.

The online fashion retailer plans to update China’s securities regulator on the change of the initial public offering (IPO) venue and file with the London Stock Exchange (LSE) as soon as this month, added the source.

Shein London IPO plan

Shein, which according to one of the sources was valued at $66 billion in a fundraising last year, started engaging with the London-based teams of its financial and legal advisors to look into the listing on the LSE early this year, said the sources.

The China-founded fashion company Shein has also approached London-based fund managers for introductory meetings ahead of the planned float, said another source with direct knowledge of the matter.

There were no comments from Shein and the LSE and they declined to do so. 

Shein listing hurdles

Shein confidentially filed for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in November, and approached the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to seek Beijing’s nod in the same month, sources have said.

The plan for a U.S. IPO is still officially on the table, but Shein has been struggling to clear regulatory hurdles both in the U.S. and China, amid lambasts from U.S. lawmakers on alleged labor malpractices and lawsuits from competitors.

The CSRC earlier this year informed Shein that the regulator would not recommend a U.S. IPO due to the company’s supply chain issues, said a separate source.

Shein U.S. listing

While Shein is now gearing up for a London IPO, it still prefers New York as its listing venue and plans to keep its SEC application alive in case there is a change in the stance of U.S. regulators, said the second source.

It may also pursue a secondary U.S. listing in New York following its London IPO when it deems the U.S. political climate to be more favorable, the second source added.

SEC blocked listing

Republican Senator Marco Rubio in February asked the SEC to block Shein’s bid to list publicly in New York unless the e-tailer makes additional disclosures about its business operations and “the serious risks of doing business” in China.

The company has faced tougher-than-expected scrutiny from U.S. regulators in an election year. In a sign of the fraught nature of the application process, the SEC has yet to advance Shein’s IPO filing, said the two sources.

The SEC did not respond to a request for comment.

Shein’s plan for China

Shein’s plan to update the Chinese regulator on the London IPO would make it subject to Beijing’s approval under the new listing rules for Chinese firms going public offshore, said the first source and a separate source.

The IPO, if it materializes, could be one of the largest globally this year, sources have said.

Turnaround for London

For London, it could mark a turnaround after companies such as U.K. chip designer Arm chose to list in New York to chase deeper pools of liquidity. So far this year, there have been just four U.K. IPOs out of more than 30 in Europe.

Sky News reported in December, citing sources, that Shein’s chairman Donald Tang met executives from the bourse and other stakeholders in the U.K. economy during a visit to London that month.

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