The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending December 22, 2023, closed at 3,117.20 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was up 1.37% (or 42.06 basis points). Nineteen RDWI members gained value last week from 0.19% (Johnson & Johnson) to 6.70% (Alphabet/Google). Six RDWI members lost value last week from -0.06% (IBM) to -2.74% (Volkswagen AG).
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RDW Index member Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), Princeton, New Jersey, announced last week that it is acquiring neuroscience drug developer Karuna Therapeutics, Boston, for $14 billion. BMS expects the deal to close in the first half of 2024. Karuna’s experimental drug, KarXT, is being considered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of schizophrenia. The drug is also being considered for conditions related to Alzheimer’s disease and bipolar disorders. If approved for those diseases, the drug could surpass $6 billion in annual sales. The $150 billion global market for central nervous system treatments is among the pharmaceutical industry’s fastest growing, increasing about 9% annually.
Researchers at Stanford University, Stanford, California, revealed last week that the searing heat from wildfires can transform metals found naturally in the soil into cancer-causing airborne particles. Most previous research focused on the impacts of gases and particles carried by wildfires. Less attention has been paid to the effects that wildfires could have on the naturally occurring metals within soil and plants. The fires can transform chromium 3 into hexavalent chromium, or chromium 6 which is known as a carcinogen causing cancer, organ damage, and other health issues.
Automotive supplier Forvia, Paris, France, announced last week that it wants to cut its R&D costs in half by 2028 due to its generative AI efforts to keep up with the electrification challenges and Asian competition in the automotive sector. Forvia is the world’s seventh-largest car equipment supplier which was created from the French group Faurecia’s takeover of Germany’s Hella. Forvia currently employs 157,000 people globally including more than 15,000 engineers in 76 R&D centers. The company also plans to have five fully automated plants within two years, compared to only one currently in Spain.
RDW Index member Intel, Santa Clara, California, announced last week that it had set up its next-generation processor R&D lab at CtrlS Datacenters Ltd.’s Bengaluru, India, facility. This facility is the latest extension of Intel’s global advanced data center development labs. It is an at-scale facility for developing new microprocessor architectures. The lab will allow at-scale testing to build high-quality and reliable computing systems. Intel will open these labs to its ecosystem partners, including memory vendors and systems Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) to work together to build an ecosystem around Intel’s products.
It was revealed last week that RDW Index member Apple, Cupertino, California, is working to develop on-device AI technologies, including a groundbreaking method to create animatable avatars and a novel way to run large language models (LLMs) on an iPhone or iPad. Named LLM in a flash, Apple’s research on efficiently running LLMs on devices with limited memory enables complex AI applications to run smoothly on iPhones or iPads. This could also involve running a generative AI-powered Siri on-device that simultaneously assists with various tasks, generates text, and features an improved ability to process natural language. Apple is supposedly working on its own AI chatbot (Apple GPT) and is recognized for leveraging flash memory on smaller, less powerful devices.
RDW Index member, IBM, Armonk, New York, announced last week that it will buy Software AG, Darmstadt, Germany, for its webMethods and StreamSets software divisions for $2.3 billion. The two divisions are part of Software AG’s integration-platform-as-a-service business which brings together various applications and data. Software AG was acquired mostly by private equity firm Silver Lake, Menlo Park, California, in October 2023. Silver Lake said that it intended to delist Software AG as soon as possible.
Investment firm BlackRock, New York City, was revealed last week to have invested $550 million in a west-Texas carbon removal plant that is expected to be operational by 2025. Their direct-air capture process is one of several being used to pull carbon from the air and bury it underground. In 2023 the amount of carbon dioxide removed grew from less than one million tons/month to more than five million tons. This is still far away from the worst effects of global warming, but these technological investments are helping to lower operating costs and improve scale-up possibilities.
United Launch Alliance (ULA), Washington, D.C., has received buyout bids from Blue Origin, Kent, Washington, and Cerberus, New York City. Textron, Providence, Rhode Island, has also expressed an interest. ULA is currently owned equally by Boeing, Arlington, Virginia, and Lockheed Martin, Bethesda, Maryland. ULA has completed more than 155 missions since its founding in 2006 using Boeing’s Delta IV and Lockheed’s Atlas V vehicles. ULA was in the process of developing a new rocket, Vulcan Centaur, but after being behind its development schedule has indicated privately in the past several months a desire to sell the company. The Vulcan Centaur has a significant book of business in place for Amazon and military satellite missions following the expected success of its inaugural flight now scheduled for January 8, 2024.
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) that 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.
