The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending May 31, 2024, closed at 3,619.01 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was down -0.57% (or -20.78 basis points).
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Eleven RDWI members gained value last week from 0.17% (Cisco) to 2.59% (Novartis). Fourteen RDWI members lost value the previous week from -0.18% (Stellantis NV) to -5.64% (Volkswagen AG).
Genetec Inc., Montreal, announced last week that it has opened new R&D hubs in Vienna, Austria; Krakow, Poland; and Orleans, France. The global cybersecurity company has existing R&D centers in Quebec City; Sherbrooke, Quebec; Paris; and Bruges, Belgium. The company also has seven Experience Centers and 20 offices throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. Its cybersecurity solutions can be implemented on-premises, in the cloud, or hybrid deployments.
South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT, Seoul, announced last week that it will operate R&D centers in the U.S. and Europe to enhance global R&D collaborations. These strategic hubs aim to create a network between small overseas research centers in the regions and communicate with local authorities to find project partners. The ministry plans to select these strategic centers among existing facilities and start test operations after securing the necessary budget in 2025. The ministry will also create a comprehensive map outlining the technological levels of global leaders in 12 national strategic technologies designated by the South Korean government.
Nvidia, Santa Clara, California, announced last week that it is planning to build a second R&D center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, following the creation of its first R&D center in Taipei, Taiwan in 2021. The Taiwanese government and the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ “Big+ Project” subsidies will finance the new center. Nvidia also installed a supercomputer at its Nvidia building in Kaohsiung Software Park at the end of 2023 providing part of the computing power for new applications and the development of AI products and services. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Santa Clara, has also announced that it is building a second R&D center in Taiwan, the site of which has not yet been determined.
RDW Index member Merck & Co., Darmstadt, Germany, announced last week that it is collaborating with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Seoul, to speed up drug development in the life sciences. Through the partnership, Merck will provide products from its chemistry and biology portfolios for researchers in the lab. Merck and KAIST will establish an experience lab in Korea. Merck announced in March 2024, a $324 million investment in Korea to build a new bioprocessing production facility in Daejeon, South Korea.
The government of China announced last week that it will offer $844 million to six major battery and electric vehicle (EV) makers to facilitate all-solid-state battery (ASSB) development. The industry’s first project will concentrate on seven technical categories including polymer and sulfide-based solid-state batteries. BYD, SAIC Motor, Geely Auto Group, and several other automotive companies will share in this fund. China-based EV companies and battery manufacturers have developed the ASSB technology for several years.
Founder of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk announced last week that SpaceX will likely launch up to 44 Starship vehicles from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX’s current facility in Brownsville, Texas, will become primarily a research, development, production, and testing hub for the mega-rocket system. Most operational launches will be planned for the Florida site. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is already conducting environmental impact studies on the effects of the Starship launches.
ConocoPhillips, Houston, Texas, announced last week that it will acquire Marathon Oil, Findlay, Ohio, in an all-stock deal valued at $17.1 billion allowing ConocoPhillips to expand its presence in several key U.S. shale locations including in Texas and North Dakota. It also strengthens ConocoPhillips’ international presence with Marathon Oil’s offshore assets in Equatorial Guinea.
Elon Musk’s xAI said it had raised $6 billion in its latest fundraising round as it looks to invest more funds in R&D amid fierce competition in the booming AI arena. xAI has raised $24 billion over the past year, making it the second most valuable AI startup behind OpenAI. According to the company, the funding will take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate future technology R&D.
RDW Index member Intel, Santa Clara, California, announced last week that it plans to increase demand for consumer products that can handle AI computing tasks onsite. Intel thinks businesses will increasingly look beyond public data centers to meet its AI computing needs. The company wants to make AI capabilities commonplace in products ranging from personal computers to edge computing to software with some companies already moving away from public clouds to private environments.
RDW Index member Alphabet/Google, Mountain View, California, announced that it has refined the use of AI overviews in response to search queries, following some odd and erroneous results. This occurred several weeks after the company rolled out AI-powered responses to U.S. user inquiries. Google continues to embrace AI for its search engine to fend off competition in its core business.
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.
Great and interesting news
What is your definition of R&D $? I see you quoted $260B, but what does that consist of? Common use of the term R&D in the US and the IRS definition are different. R&D, as used by the US Dept of Treasury, is work that involves a process of experimentation and is only done to create or improve a business component. I am a former Treasury Agent who specialized in R&D and will be giving a nationwide presentation about R&D for the IEEE on June 26.
I invite you to attend the presentation. to see how R&D is defined by the IRS is defined.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for asking. This is interesting context. Do you have any advice on where to grab R&D. data then – given the distinctions? I have seen in the pharma space a fair amount of irregularity in how it is reported that makes it seem like apples to oranges a lot of times.