The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending April 7, 2023, closed at 2,622.95 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was up 2.50% (or 63.95 basis points). Sixteen of the 25 RDWI members gained value last week from 0.43% (Intel) to 7.24% (Eli Lilly & Co.). Nine of the 25 RDWI members lost value last week from -0.16% (Apple) to -5.70% (General Motors).

South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT, Seoul, announced last week that their private and public sectors will invest about $121 billion in battery, semiconductor, and display R&D over the next three years. $118 billion will be invested by the private sector and the remaining $3.4 billion will come from the government. Most of the investment will go to 100 key technologies in the three industries. Semiconductor areas include memristor-based devices, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-related chip designs, 6G communications, and autonomous driving. Display areas include super-immersive displays applicable to the metaverse, holograms, and shape-changeable foldable and wearable devices. Battery areas include improvements to lithium-ion devices, hydrogen fuel cells, and six isotope batteries.

The U.S. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a national strategy last week outlining the administration’s vision to maintain U.S. leadership in low earth orbit through R&D efforts. The strategy has five objectives that enable the U.S. to realize the economic, scientific, educational, and diplomatic benefits of these research objectives. The strategy calls for strengthening government partnerships and collaborations and promoting market opportunities, innovation, and sustainability. The OSTP also released a report on priorities over the next 30 years to advance precision medicine, health monitoring, multi-omics, cell therapies, AI-driven drug development, gene editing, microbial genome sequencing, and synthetic biology.

RDW Index member Stellantis NV, Amsterdam, and BMW AG, Munich, Germany, announced last week that they were teaming up and talking to Panasonic Holdings Corp., Osaka, Japan, concerning the building of electric vehicle battery plants in North America. Panasonic currently supplies batteries to Tesla, Austin, Texas. Stellantis said they will announce a third battery plant in the current fiscal quarter — the company already has a battery plant in Canada and another in Indiana. BMW said it plans to build six new EV battery plants in Europe, China, and the North American free-trade area.

RDW Index member Johnson & Johnson, New Brunswick, New Jersey, has proposed paying $8.9 billion to thousands of plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits against JNJ for cancer-causing talc manufactured and sold by JNJ. The company also said it had filed for bankruptcy protection for LTG Management which was established to deal with the litigation.

RDW Index member Google/Alphabet, Mountain View, California, announced last week that it plans to add conversational AI features to its flagship search engine. Google has traditionally used large language models (LLMs) to respond to natural language prompts with humanlike prose, but it has not used the technology to influence the way people use search tools. Their addition of the AI is in response to Microsoft’s deployment of ChatGPT systems in its Bing search engine.

ExxonMobil, Spring, Texas, announced last week that it has abandoned its multibillion-dollar venture to find oil in the deep Atlantic waters off Brazil. This action follows a series of disappointing wells leaving it with nothing to show for more than five years of drilling. The company also failed to follow up on Brazil’s latest offshore auction in December 2022. ExxonMobil also announced last week that it is in preliminary talks with Pioneer Natural Resources Co., Irving, Texas, about a possible acquisition of the U.S. fracking giant. Discussions have been informal, but analysts note that Exxon is flush with cash.

Despite a history of corporate divestitures in geothermal research due to weak economics, more geothermal startups have been launched over the past 18 months than in the past decade combined, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University, College Station, and others. Few emerging geothermal technologies have reached the commercialization stage, but the industry is at the cutting edge of breakthroughs, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, Colorado.

The online travel agency, Expedia, Seattle, announced last week that it has a new ChatGPT AI feature in its software application. The new feature (currently in beta testing) will allow users to plan trips by conversing with a chatbot powered by AI technology. Travelers can ask for destinations, flights, or hotels and book directly from some of the recommendations.

A recent analysis of European Union (EU) sustainability rules reveals that there are more than 10,000 global companies outside of the EU that will have to make and independently verify several new sustainability disclosures over the next several years, according to estimates by financial data firm Refinitiv, New York City.

 

R&D World’s R&D Index is a weekly stock market summary of the top international companies involved in R&D. The top 25 industrial R&D spenders in 2020 were selected based on the latest listings from Schonfeld & Associates’ June 2020 R&D Ratios & Budgets. These 25 companies include pharmaceutical (10 companies), automotive (6 companies), and ICT (9 companies) which invested a cumulative total of nearly 260 billion dollars in R&D in 2019, or approximately 10% of all the R&D spending in the world by government, industries, and academia combined, according to R&D World’s 2021 Global R&D Funding Forecast. The stock prices used in the R&D World Index are tabulated from NASDAQ, NYSE, and OTC common stock prices for the companies selected at the close of stock trading business on the Friday preceding the online publication of the R&D World Index.