The R&D World Index (RDWI) for the week ending April 26, 2024, closed at 3,483.73 for the 25 companies in the RDWI. The Index was down -0.08% (or -2.68 basis points).
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Twelve RDWI members gained value last week from 0.99% (Eli Lilly & Co.) to 12.72% (Alphabet/Google). Thirteen RDWI members lost value the previous week from -0.40% (Stellantis NV) to -8.34% (Bristol-Myers Squibb).
RDW Index member Google (Alphabet), Mountain View, California, announced last week that it is expanding its R&D hub for hardware in Taiwan, its largest R&D hub outside the U.S. The company says it has increased its workforce in Taiwan 20-fold over the past 10 years and it continues to grow, with ‘thousands of current employees from more than 30 countries. These researchers work on developing Pixel cellphones, tablets, smartwatches, wireless earbuds, Fitbit wearable devices, and Nest smart home devices. The company also works with component suppliers outside its Taiwan office for semiconductors, image sensors, camera modules optical lenses, and displays. The R&D hub also works on developing its system-on-a-chip Tensor devices for adding intelligence to the devices.
RDW Index member Pfizer, New York City, announced last week that it was closing its Boulder, Colorado, R&D operations by the end of the second quarter of 2024. The 4.5-acre Boulder site contains more than 150,000 ft2 of research space and was staffed by nearly 300 researchers. The company stated that it will retain a site presence in Boulder for employees not associated with its research operations.
Aerospace, defense, and information security firm BAE Systems, London, announced last week that it plans to construct a new 250,000 ft2 R&D building on a three-acre site in Barrow, U.K. The facility comes three years after BAE was awarded a $90 million contract by the U.K. Ministry of Defence to deliver the next generation of submarines. The new four-story complex will contain engineering and R&D spaces, as well as naval crew accommodations. The recently completed Submarines Academy for Skills and Knowledge and the site of the University of Cumbria’s proposed Barrow campus are situated nearby.
Micron Technology, Boise, Idaho, announced last week that it is receiving $6.1 billion from the federal government as part of the government’s $53 billion Chips Act to incentivize U.S. semiconductor development and manufacturing. This grant will fuel up to $125 billion in investments by Micron in New York and Idaho over the next 20 years, with about $50 billion of that coming by 2030. The company plans to build a mega fab chip-producing facility in Clay, New York, with this government grant partially financing the first two of four facilities expected to have massive chip-producing spaces. The remaining grant funds will support another fabrication facility in Boise, which will be dedicated to high-volume production. All three Micron plants will make dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) that is commonly used in personal computers and servers.
RDW Index member IBM, Armonk, New York, announced last week that it is nearing completion of its nearly $6 billion acquisition of cloud software provider, HashiCorp, San Francisco. HashiCorp software helps companies set up their infrastructure in the cloud. It partners with hundreds of tech companies including Cisco, Redhat, and Datadog. IBM is reconfiguring itself to focus on the hybrid cloud and AI businesses. This deal is a relatively small bite for IBM, which has a market capitalization of about $170 billion.
The U.S. government’s effort to protect the economy, public health, and vital industries was strengthened last week with the addition of more tech industry leaders to its Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board. Working with the Department of Homeland Security, the board will develop recommendations for industries on how to use AI while protecting their systems against potential disruptions that could be caused by AI technologies. New board members include the CEOs of OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Goole/Alphabet. They joined CEOs from IBM, Cisco, Amazon Web Services, and Advanced Micro Devices, among others.
RDW Index member Meta Platforms, Menlo Park, California, announced last week that it will have a capital investment (capex) of up to $40 billion in 2024, a 12% increase over its 2023 capex. This investment is now on par with Microsoft and Google/Alphabet, both much larger companies than Meta in terms of overall revenue. Much of this new investment will be focused on generative AI, which is good news for Nvidia, which is the key supplier of the chips and computing systems used to power generative AI systems.
Toyota, Tokyo, announced last week that it will make a $1.4 billion infrastructure investment at its plant in Princeton, Indiana, to support the company’s electrification efforts in the U.S. This investment will support the company’s new three-row battery electric SUV in that facility, with the inclusion of more than 300 new jobs added to the plant’s 7,500 existing workforce. It will also add a new battery pack assembly line using lithium-ion batteries by a $13.9 billion manufacturing plant located in North Carolina which is expected to begin production in 2025.
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.
