Horizon Robotics Lists on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

Horizon Robotics, a leading intelligent driving chip company, rang the bell to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on October 24th. The stock price quickly rose at the opening, surging by more than 37% at one point, but then the gains narrowed, and by the end of the day, it closed down by 19.92%. On October 25th, the closing price of Horizon Robotics was 3.99 Hong Kong dollars per share, exactly its issue price. The total funds raised from this listing amounted to 5.407 billion Hong Kong dollars.

Horizon Robotics is a top intelligent driving chip manufacturer in China. According to its prospectus, calculated by the total installed base of solutions in 2023 and the first half of 2024, the company ranks fourth among all global advanced driver assistance and high-level autonomous driving solution providers in China, with market shares of 9.3% and 15.4%, respectively. However, Horizon Robotics has high R&D expenditures and has not yet achieved profitability. It will need to expand its customer base and increase shipments in the future.

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Qualcomm and Arm Exchange Legal Threats

The dispute between Qualcomm and the chip IP (intellectual property) company Arm has intensified. On October 23rd, it was reported that Arm plans to cancel the license that allows long-term partner Qualcomm to use Arm's intellectual property to design chips. According to relevant documents, Arm notified Qualcomm of the cancellation of the architectural license agreement 60 days in advance. Qualcomm responded by stating that it is confident that the rights covered in the agreement with Arm will be confirmed by the court, and that Arm's anti-competitive behavior will not be tolerated. Arm, on the other hand, stated that it is fully prepared for the trial in December and firmly believes that the court will make a decision in favor of Arm.

The market is currently looking forward to a recovery in the AI-driven smartphone and AI PC industries, but the dispute between Qualcomm and Arm may cast a shadow over the industry's recovery. The conflict between the two companies originated from Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia, another Arm licensee, in 2021, without negotiating a new license with Arm. In 2022, Arm sued Qualcomm for breach of contract and trademark infringement. Qualcomm is one of Arm's largest customers, and many of Qualcomm's products use the ARM architecture; the two companies are deeply intertwined. If their relationship completely breaks down, the financial impact on both sides would not be small.

NVIDIA's Market Value Briefly Surpasses Apple's

On Friday, local time, NVIDIA's market value ($3.53 trillion) briefly surpassed Apple's ($3.52 trillion), making it the world's most valuable company. This reflects the market's strong demand for NVIDIA's specialized artificial intelligence chips, driving the stock price to a new record high. In June of this year, NVIDIA also briefly became the world's most valuable company before being surpassed by Microsoft and Apple.

NVIDIA's market value has been "closely following" Apple recently, showing a trend of overtaking. Recently, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang revealed that NVIDIA's latest Blackwell chip had design flaws and a low yield, but the company recovered from this setback with the assistance of TSMC. For NVIDIA's performance and market value to continue to perform well, it will still depend on the successful shipment of the Blackwell chip.

Cook Responds to When Apple Intelligence Will Launch in ChinaRegarding the timeline for Apple Intelligence's entry into the Chinese market, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently stated that Apple is actively pushing forward, noting that there is a very specific regulatory process involved, which Apple needs to complete before it can bring the service to Chinese consumers as soon as possible. Previously, Barclays analysts indicated that the Chinese version of Apple Intelligence may not be launched until 2025, which could dampen early enthusiasm for the iPhone 16.

Apple is under sales pressure in the Chinese market. In the second quarter of this year, Apple's iPhone market share in China declined. The lack of a timetable for the launch of Apple Intelligence in the Chinese market also makes it difficult for AI features to become a driving force for the growth of iPhones in the Chinese market.

Jensen Huang stated that NVIDIA's computing power in India will increase nearly 20-fold.

On October 24th local time, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang attended an artificial intelligence summit in India. Huang announced that NVIDIA's computing power in India will increase nearly 20 times compared to a year ago, and the company will continue to invest in computing infrastructure in the market. Huang believes that India, which was once a software exporter, will become an AI exporter in the future.

For the highly potential Indian market, NVIDIA is expanding its cooperation with Indian companies. NVIDIA has partnered with Reliance Industries, owned by Asia's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, the second-largest conglomerate in India, to jointly build artificial intelligence infrastructure in India and launch a lightweight AI model, Nemotron-4-Mini-Hindi-4B, that uses Hindi for the local market.

Artificial Intelligence company Character.AI is sued.

Reports indicate that a teenager in the United States committed suicide due to an obsession with an AI chatbot. His mother, Megan Garcia, has filed a civil lawsuit against Character.AI, accusing the company of negligence leading to wrongful death and fraudulent behavior. Megan Garcia's lawyer claims that AI technology is deceptive and addictive, and both Character.AI and its founders must be held accountable. Character.AI responded, saying, "We are heartbroken over the tragic loss of one of our users and extend our deepest condolences to their family." The company also stated that its safety team has implemented numerous new safety measures over the past six months.

Whether Character.AI is at fault in this incident remains to be determined by the courts. AI companies undoubtedly bear responsibility for the safety of AI, and parents also bear responsibility in guiding minors to use new technologies correctly. While AI chatbots accompany humans, humans must also be vigilant and avoid developing overly strong emotional attachments to artificial intelligence.

Anthropic releases Claude 3.5 major update, AI can use computers like humans.

On October 22nd local time, the well-known AI startup Anthropic released updates to the Claude 3.5 model family: the new model Claude 3.5 Haiku was launched, and the existing model Claude 3.5 Sonnet received an upgrade. The highly anticipated feature is Anthropic's introduction of a revolutionary "computer use" function for public testing, allowing AI to operate computers like humans. Specifically, Claude can move the cursor, click buttons, and use a virtual keyboard to input text by viewing screenshots, truly simulating the way humans interact with computers."This is a brand new capability for AI models," wrote Alex Albert, Head of Developer Relations at Anthropic, on the X platform. "Instead of developing custom tools for individual tasks, we are teaching Claude basic computer skills, allowing it to naturally use the same software and tools that people use daily." In the future, developers can use this to free up some tedious repetitive process tasks, and even perform open-ended tasks, such as research.

Currently, this technology is not yet mature enough. The official mentioned that this feature is still in the experimental stage, operating computers at a slower speed, and often making mistakes. Some simple operations - such as scrolling, dragging, and zooming - seem like things humans can do with a wave of their hand, but they are still a significant challenge for Claude. The reason for releasing this feature early is to obtain feedback from developers, and it is expected that this feature will gradually improve over time.

Dow Jones and the New York Post sued AI startup Perplexity for infringement

On October 21st, local time, Dow Jones Group, a subsidiary of News Corp, and the New York Post sued the artificial intelligence startup Perplexity, accusing it of large-scale copyright infringement. The lawsuit requires Perplexity to stop using these news articles to answer user questions and also hopes that the court will order the destruction of any databases containing these copyrighted works. Perplexity AI is accused of aggregating a large amount of copyrighted content without permission or payment, in order to provide answers to users through a mechanism called "retrieval-augmented generation" (RAG).

Founded in 2022, Perplexity AI is a "free AI Q&A engine" aimed at challenging Google through a combination of chatbot and search engine functions. Last year, the company reached 10 million monthly active users, and its latest financing round was valued at about $1 billion. In addition to Dow Jones Group and the New York Post, in June of this year, Perplexity was accused of plagiarizing content from CNBC and Forbes without payment or attribution. Last week, the New York Times also issued a "cease and desist" notice to Perplexity, demanding that it stop using the newspaper's content for generative AI purposes.

Rumors of OPPO's acquisition of AI startup Wave Intelligence

Recently, there have been market rumors that Hangzhou-based AI startup Wave Intelligence will be acquired by mobile phone manufacturer OPPO, and the acquisition negotiations have recently been completed. The founder and CEO of Wave Intelligence, Jiang Yuchen, and the company's core members will join OPPO, but the company has not yet completed the employee agreement transfer and is still in the negotiation stage.

In response to the above acquisition news, OPPO officials said in response to a reporter from Yicai that there is currently no more information available. Wave Intelligence replied to Yicai, saying it is not convenient to respond and there is no news to share for the time being. Not long ago, Jiang Yuchen updated his personal signature on his social media account to "now at OPPO," which attracted attention in the industry, but the signature has been deleted.

Looking at the layout in the field of large models, OPPO is seeking the integration of AI with the application system level, which has a certain overlap with the business direction of Wave Intelligence. Wave Intelligence was established in 2023 and has developed the Chinese content creation large model Weaver and its user writing assistant product, the Frog Writing. According to official news previously, within one year of its launch, Frog Writing had more than 300,000 registered users and generated nearly 20 billion characters of text. In January 2024, Wave Intelligence completed a pre-A round of financing worth tens of millions of yuan, led by BlueRun Ventures, with West Lake Science and Technology Venture Capital and Ant Financial Chairman Jing Xiandong among the investors.

IDC: Global AI spending will double by 2028, reaching $632 billionOn October 24th, International Data Corporation (IDC) released the latest Global Artificial Intelligence and Generative Artificial Intelligence Spending Guide, projecting that global spending on Artificial Intelligence (AI) will double by 2028, reaching $632 billion. The primary driver of this growth is the increasing integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence technology (Gen AI) into more products, which is both anticipated and presents new investment opportunities for businesses.

According to IDC's forecast, the global AI market will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29% from 2024 to 2028. This implies a significant increase in corporate investment in AI technology, applications, and related services. Investment in Generative AI stands out particularly, with a CAGR of 59.2% over the five-year period.

Although current spending on Generative AI is still lower than other types of AI applications, such as machine learning and natural language processing, investment in this field will grow rapidly over time. IDC estimates that by 2028, spending on it will reach $20 billion, accounting for 32% of the total expenditure.