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☆ China's Nio to expand battery swap services to gain an edge on EV infrastructure
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-05 | by ( Evelyn Cheng | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Pictured here is a Nio battery swapping station in Haikou, Hainan province, China, on May 9, 2023. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesBEIJING — Chinese electric car company Nio has been expanding its battery swap partnerships in a bid to gain an edge on the infrastructure side of the EV ecosystem. Nio also announced agreements earlier this year to work with two local battery companies on battery swap services. While having a large network of battery charging stations helps address those concerns, battery swapping is a faster method as it takes only a few minutes. CLSA's Luo said businesses also prefer to invest in normal charging stations than swap stations because they make a higher return.

Persons: Nio, —, JAC —, Ding Luo, Shen Fei, Shen, it's, Le, William Li, Shay Natarajan, Luo, Ford Organizations: Bloomberg, Getty, Chery, CNBC, Battery, Nissan, Sino Auto, Mobility Impact Partners, General Motors Locations: Haikou, Hainan province, China, BEIJING, U.S, San Francisco, Kyoto, Japan, Madrid, Spain, Europe, North America

The French competition authority (FCA) said on Wednesday it conducted the dawn raid a day earlier on a company in the "graphics cards sector", it said. French newspaper Challenges and the Wall Street Journal identified the company as Nvidia (NVDA.O). While GPU prices start from over $1,000, the ones favoured by AI companies can cost well over $10,000. Nvidia has a presence in both sectors, and if any startup is planning to create an AI company, they would need to depend on Nvidia for the chips. Various French authorities have looked at Big Tech companies previously, including issuing a fine to Google in 2021 for infringing EU competition law.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Charlotte Colin, Dubuisson, Colin, Supantha Mukherjee, Dominique Vidalon, Emelia Sithole Organizations: NVIDIA, REUTERS, Rights, Nvidia, Big Tech, Wall Street Journal, Intel, AMD, Tesla, Oracle, Google, Microsoft, Thomson Locations: Rights STOCKHOLM, FRANCE, France, Stockholm, Paris

☆ Chinese EV maker Nio releases a smartphone it expects at least half of its users to buy
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-21 | by ( Evelyn Cheng | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio launches a smartphone at an event in Shanghai on Sept. 21, 2023. He told CNBC that among Nio users from which the company makes a profit, more than half are iPhone users, while the other half uses flagship Android phones from Huawei and other brands. Nio is the first high-end Chinese electric car brand to release its own smartphone, which Li said the company developed in about a year. Huawei also sells its in-car software to other electric car companies such as Avatr and BAIC's Arcfox. He pointed out that the Nio phone app has 600,000 active users a day, about 1.5-times the number of car users.

Persons: Evelyn Cheng, William Li, Li, Nio Organizations: CNBC SHANGHAI, CNBC, Huawei, Apple Locations: Shanghai, China, Europe, Germany

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsBENGALURU, Sept 8 (Reuters) - U.S. chip firm Nvidia and telecom-to-retail giant Reliance on Friday announced an AI partnership to create language models, generative apps and a cloud infrastructure platform for AI development in the South Asian nation. "Reliance will create AI applications and services for their 450 million Jio (telecom) customers and provide energy-efficient AI infrastructure to scientists, developers and startups across India," Nvidia said. Nvidia globally has a near-monopoly on the computing systems used to power services like ChatGPT, OpenAI's blockbuster generative AI chatbot. Reliance said the new AI infrastructure will speed up a range of India's key AI projects, including chatbots, drug discovery, and climate research. Separately, India's Tata Group too is set to announce an AI partnership with Nvidia later during Friday, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Mukesh Ambani, Grace Hopper Superchip, Reliance, Neil Shah, Munsif, Aditya Kalra, Sharon Singleton, Kim Coghill, David Evans Organizations: NVIDIA, REUTERS, Rights, Nvidia, Reliance, Counterpoint Research, Reuters, India's Tata Group, Thomson Locations: India, Bengaluru, Dhwani Pandya, Mumbai, New Delhi

The logo of Nvidia Corporation is seen during the annual Computex computer exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan May 30, 2017. Nvidia's stock price, though, has more than tripled this year and was set to hit an all-time high after Wednesday's results. The company has a near-monopoly on the computing systems used to power services like ChatGPT, OpenAI's blockbuster generative AI chatbot. Huang declined to comment on whether the AI boom will last past next year. The company said the biggest sales driver this quarter was its HGX system, which is an entire computer built around Nvidia's chip.

Persons: Tyrone Siu, Huang, Jensen Huang, quashing, Kinngai Chan, Chan, Dylan Patel, SemiAnalysis, Patel, We're, Stephen Nellis, Max Cherney, Chavi Mehta, Sonali Paul Organizations: Nvidia Corporation, REUTERS, Nvidia, Reuters, Microsoft, Summit, Thomson Locations: Taipei, Taiwan, OpenAI, San Francisco

☆ Why the electric vehicle boom could put a major strain on the U.S. power grid
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-01 | by ( Katie Brigham | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Over half of all new cars sold in the U.S. by 2030 are expected to be electric vehicles. That could put a major strain on our nation's electric grid, an aging system built for a world that runs on fossil fuels. Major grid infrastructure needsCharging electric vehicles is quite electricity intensive. Larger electric vehicles such as the Ford F-150 Lightning would generally use more electricity than a central AC unit in a large home. The utility is tied to a four-year funding cycle for grid infrastructure upgrades, and its last funding request was in 2021.

Persons: That's, we've, Rob Gramlich, Gramlich, Lydia Krefta, Krefta, David Paul Morris, Aram Shumavon, Shumavon, we're, Sen, Joe Manchin, Joe Biden, Tesla Organizations: Rapid Energy, Princeton University, Grid, California Public Utilities Commission, EV, Tesla, Ford, Workers, Power Services, Pacific Gas & Electric, Bloomberg, Getty, Nissan Leaf, Ford Motor Company Locations: U.S, California, Northern, Central California, Healdsburg , California

☆ GE stops servicing gas power turbines in Russia - Kommersant
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

June 20 (Reuters) - General Electric (GE.N) has stopped servicing gas turbines at thermal power plants in Russia, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Tuesday, citing sources in power generating companies. General Electric suspended its operations in Russia after Moscow invaded Ukraine, with the exception of providing essential medical equipment and supporting existing power services in the region. Kommersant reported that General Electric "without explanation" stopped servicing gas turbines at Russian thermal power plants on Monday. Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Kim CoghillOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Lidia Kelly, Kim Coghill Organizations: General, Kommersant, General Electric, Thomson Locations: Russia, Moscow, Ukraine, Melbourne

☆ Exclusive: Amazon's cloud unit is considering AMD's new AI chips
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Stephen Nellis | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The remarks came during an AMD event where the chip company outlined its strategy for the AI market, which is dominated by rival Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O). While AWS has not made any public commitments to use AMD's new MI300 chips in its cloud services, Dave Brown, vice president of elastic compute cloud at Amazon, said AWS is considering them. Nvidia does sell its chips piecemeal but is also asking cloud providers if they are willing to offer an entire system designed by Nvidia in a product called DGX Cloud. Brown said AWS had declined to work with Nvidia on the DGX Cloud offering. AWS started selling Nvidia's H100 chip in March, but as part of systems of its own design.

Persons: Nvidia's, Lisa Su, Su, Dave Brown, We're, Brown, Stephen Nellis, Kim Coghill Organizations: FRANCISCO, Web Services, Devices Inc, Reuters, Nvidia Corp, AMD, AWS, Nvidia, Oracle Corp, Thomson Locations: San Francisco

☆ JPMorgan decides against prospective investment in open banking startup Yapily, sources say
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

JPMorgan has cooled on a deal to back London fintech startup Yapily, Insider understands. Discussions over a $25 million injection into the startup were at an advanced stage, sources say. JPMorgan has opted out of pursuing a strategic investment into London fintech Yapily, Insider understands. Yapily, which is backed by Square and Wise investor Sapphire Ventures, operates in the burgeoning open banking sector. The US financial giant had considered a deal that would have seen the bank inject around $25 million into the startup, one London-based source said.

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