The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending April 5, 2024, closed at 3,678.82 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was down -0.07% (or -2.73 basis points).
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Five RDWI members gained value last week from 0.16% (Alphabet/Google) to 8.60% (Meta Platforms). Nineteen RDWI members lost value last week from -0.44% (AstraZeneca PLC) to 12.36% (Intel). One company was unchanged for the week at 13.28 (Ford Motor).
South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Seoul, announced last week that it has selected six foreign partner institutions where it will establish global technology research cooperation centers. The partners include Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge), Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut), Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana), Fraunhofer Institute (Munich, Germany), Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta). Research activities at these centers will focus on semiconductors, biotechnology, robotics, and AI. South Korea plans to invest $505 million in these centers over five years, launching 45 projects to secure cutting-edge core technologies.
BMW Group, Munich, Germany, announced last week that it will create software and IT development hubs in collaboration with Tata Technologies, Pune, India, in Bengaluru, Pune, and Chennai, India. The Chennai hub will focus primarily on business IT solutions. The new operations will initially have 100 professionals sourced from Tata, eventually growing to at least 1,000 software engineers.
RDW Index member Sanofi SA, Paris, announced last week that it is in the process of an extensive business review being conducted by its leaders in R&D and commercial enterprises. The company looks to create a simplified overall pipeline reprioritization R&D structure that will entail some R&D workforce cuts. Details will be announced over the next several weeks, but Sanofi is still expected to increase its R&D spending with its axing of 2025 guidance in favor of reinvestment. The company still expects to spend about $700 million more on R&D in 2024 than in 2023.
European aerospace manufacturer Airbus, Toulouse, France, announced last week that it could consider an initial public offering (IPO) of its Aalto HAPS high-altitude drone developer after it launches commercial operations in the coming years. Aalto makes solar-powered fixed-wing drones that operate above 60,000 ft. The drones can be fitted with payloads that provide 5G connections and services such as wildfire prevention and border control through earth observation. Aalto is looking for other investors besides Airbus to scale up its business and launch commercial operations. Aalto looks to submit an IPO in early 2026.
Electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla, Palo Alto, California, announced last week that it is raising compensation levels for its AI engineers attempting to ward off poaching from AI companies, including OpenAI, San Francisco. Tesla executives have said that OpenAI is aggressively recruiting its engineers with massive compensation offers. Silicon Valley tech companies are offering million-dollar-a-year compensation packages, accelerating stock vesting schedules, and looking to poach entire engineering teams to draw people with expertise and experience in generative AI technologies.
Varda Space Industries, El Segundo, California, has raised about $90 million in new venture capital to conduct several space-based missions in the coming years. The company is looking to develop microgravity manufacturing techniques to improve the formation of crystals used in the manufacture of drugs, which may lead to more potent and less costly medications. The company looks to produce these crystals in space-based factories controlled from the ground. Varda recovered a capsule in February that it had launched last year to make crystals of the HIV medicine ritonavir. The company has signed contracts with its first pharmaceutical customers to send medications on future space missions.
RDW Index member Stellantis, Amsterdam, Netherlands, announced last week that it is still “all-in” on EVs, even as competitors scale back their manufacturing plans and EV sales growth slows. The company is executing an aggressive strategy to capture a share of the EV market by introducing 48 new EV models globally by the end of 2024, including eight in the U.S. It plans this by introducing new models on a flexible vehicle platform which allows the company to switch between building gasoline-powered vehicles and EVs based on consumer demand.
OpenAI, San Francisco, announced last week the development of a technology that can recreate a human voice from a 15-second audio clip. The company said it would not release the technology publicly until it knows more about the potential risks for its misuse. The program Voice Engine can also recreate a person’s voice in foreign languages if the original recording is in English. Voice Engine was first created in 2022 and has powered voices for ChatGPT and other programs.
Australian shipbuilder Austal, Perth, Western Australia, reported last week that it is a takeover target of Hanwha Ocean, Geoje-si, South Korea. Hanwha supposedly made an offer of $650 million for Austal. However, any offer for Austal would require approval of Australia’s investment watchdog and the U.S. Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency since Austal builds vessels for the U.S. Navy. Austal did not believe the Australian and U.S. regulators would approve of the acquisition.
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.
