Applied Intuition valued at $15 billion for autonomous vehicle tech
Applied Intuition raised $600 million in a funding round and tender offer that valued the automotive software supplier at $15 billion, more than doubling its valuation from last year in a sign of strong investment appetite for autonomous vehicle technology.
The round was co-led by BlackRock-managed funds and accounts alongside venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. New investors included Franklin Templeton and Qatar Investment Authority, the company said on Tuesday.
In the previous round in March last year, the company was valued at $6 billion and included funding from Porsche, in what was the first time the startup raised money from an automaker.
The funds will help Applied Intuition double down on investments in autonomous technology at a time when companies across the sector attempt to ramp up their push for self-driving cars.
"We're scaling up our investments in bringing intelligence into every moving machine," said Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition.
The rollout of self-driving technology is also likely to benefit from more relaxed regulations under the Trump administration, which intends to exempt certain vehicles from select safety standards and simplify the norms for reporting safety incidents.
Founded in 2017, Applied Intuition provides software solutions to help build autonomous systems for vehicles such as cars and trucks alongside its work for the U.S. government focusing on defense applications.
The Mountain View, California-based company, whose customers include Toyota and Volkswagen, also partnered with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI last week, aiming to leverage AI to personalize driving experience.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
3 hours ago
- CNA
Dollar steady as investors monitor Israel-Iran conflict ahead of Fed
The U.S. dollar held on to gains against major currencies early on Wednesday, buoyed by demand for safety as conflict between Israel and Iran kept investors on edge ahead of a Federal Reserve decision on interest rates later in the day. Israel has pounded Iran over the past six days to halt its nuclear activity and has asserted the need for a change of government in the Islamic republic. The U.S. military is also bolstering its presence in the region, Reuters reported, sparking speculation of U.S. intervention which investors fear could spread into a region replete with energy resources, supply chains and infrastructure. Against this backdrop, the dollar has found support as a safe bid, firming roughly 1 per cent against the Japanese yen, Swiss franc and euro since Thursday, helping it shave declines from earlier in the year. The greenback had lost more than 8 per cent earlier in the year due to eroding confidence in the U.S. economy amid trade policies. "The dollar is still a safe haven because of its depth and liquidity so, yes the structural forces are diluting the dollar safe-haven activities, but they're not eroding them completely," said currency strategist Rodrigo Catril at National Australia Bank. "But in a scenario of big risk aversion, the dollar will still gain support but maybe not to the same it has managed in the past." The dollar firmed as much as 0.1 per cent against the yen on Wednesday to touch a one-week top. It was last at 145.21 yen. In early Asia trade, the Swiss franc was flat at 0.816 a dollar and the euro was up 0.1 per cent at $1.149. A broader index tracking the greenback against six other currencies was little changed after a 0.6 per cent jump in the previous trading session. A jump in crude oil prices to about $75 a barrel has also weighed on the euro and yen given the European Union and Japan are primarily net crude importers as opposed to the U.S. which is a net exporter. Investors' next point of focus is the Fed which is set to decide whether to change its interest rates. Recent data showed the U.S. economy was slowing amid President Donald Trump's erratic policymaking style, and higher crude prices due to conflict in the Middle East is also complicating the Fed's task. Traders expect the central bank to leave borrowing costs unchanged and will be keen to hear the Fed's outlook for interest rates this year and the overall health of the economy. "In the very near term a cautious message will probably be reemphasised, but what will be interesting is how they interpret and navigate the new forecast, which we think will show a lower growth path alongside potentially stickier inflation," Catril said. The Bank of Japan on Tuesday was first among major central banks to announce a rate decision in the latest round of policy meetings worldwide. It left rates unchanged and said it will decelerate its bond tapering plan to calm a recent selloff in bond markets. Central bank verdicts are also due from Britain, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden later in the week. Signs that trade uncertainty was damaging countries across the globe were evident as Japan reported a decline in exports in May for the first time in eight months. An area of frustration for investors was a Group of Seven meeting in Canada yielding little on the tariff front, ahead of Trump's early July deadline for additional levies.
CNA
6 hours ago
- CNA
Trump extends TikTok deadline for third time
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will this week give TikTok a fresh 90-day extension to find a non-Chinese buyer, the White House said on Tuesday (Jun 17), the third time he has put off a threatened ban on the popular app. A federal law requiring TikTok's sale or ban on national security grounds was due to take effect the day before Trump's January inauguration. "President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running. As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. "This extension will last 90 days, which the administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure." Trump, whose 2024 election campaign relied heavily on social media, has previously said he is fond of the video-sharing app. DIGITAL COLD WAR? Trump said at the time that a group of purchasers was ready to pay TikTok owner ByteDance "a lot of money" for the video-clip-sharing sensation's US operations. Trump has repeatedly downplayed risks that TikTok is in danger, saying he remains confident of finding a buyer for the app's US business. The president is "just not motivated to do anything about TikTok," said independent analyst Rob Enderle. "Unless they get on his bad side, TikTok is probably going to be in pretty good shape." Trump had long supported a ban or divestment, but reversed his position and vowed to defend the platform after coming to believe it helped him win young voters' support in the November election. Motivated by national security fears and belief in Washington that TikTok is controlled by the Chinese government, the ban took effect on Jan 19, one day before Trump's inauguration, with ByteDance having made no attempt to find a suitor. TikTok "has become a symbol of the US-China tech rivalry; a flashpoint in the new Cold War for digital control," said Shweta Singh, an assistant professor of information systems at Warwick Business School in Britain. The Republican president announced an initial 75-day delay of the ban upon taking office. A second extension pushed the deadline to Jun 19. TARIFF TURMOIL Trump said in April that China would have agreed to a deal on the sale of TikTok if it were not for a dispute over his tariffs on Beijing. ByteDance has confirmed talks with the US government, saying key matters needed to be resolved and that any deal would be "subject to approval under Chinese law". Possible solutions reportedly include seeing existing US investors in ByteDance roll over their stakes into a new independent global TikTok company. Additional US investors, including Oracle and private equity firm Blackstone, would be brought on to reduce ByteDance's share in the new TikTok. Much of TikTok's US activity is already housed on Oracle servers, and the company's chairman, Larry Ellison, is a longtime Trump ally. Uncertainty remains, particularly over what would happen to TikTok's valuable algorithm. "TikTok without its algorithm is like Harry Potter without his wand – it's simply not as powerful," said Forrester Principal Analyst Kelsey Chickering. Meanwhile, it appears TikTok is continuing with business as usual.
CNA
7 hours ago
- CNA
Commentary: The myth of the suppressed Chinese consumer
NEW YORK: The great half-truth about China is that its economy consumes too little and invests too much. Over-investment is a real problem, but underconsumption is not. So the mounting calls on the country to 'rebalance' by encouraging more consumer spending are misguided. In the standard telling, China set out to become a manufacturing power in the 1980s and has since suppressed spending by consumers, so it could pour their savings into building ports and factories. But the suppressed consumer is a myth. So far this century, in real terms, private consumer spending in China has grown more than 8 per cent a year, faster than in any other economy – by far. Over the past few years, consumer spending growth has slowed in most countries, due to ageing populations and falling real incomes, and it has fallen in China as well to 5 per cent a year. But that is still higher than in any other major economy except Turkey, where consumption was boosted by a credit boom and refugee inflows. The myth rests in good part on the consumption share of China's gross domestic product, which is just 40 per cent – well below the global norm. But the reason for this anomaly is not that consumption has grown slowly, it is that the other big component of GDP, investment – in infrastructure, real estate, export industries – has grown even faster, averaging 10 per cent a year in this century. That pace, too, is the fastest for any major economy by a significant margin. Corrected for this long-term pattern of over-investment, the consumption share of China's GDP would be around 55 per cent, closer to normal. Consumer spending has also grown much faster in China than in established and newer Asian manufacturing powers, from Japan and South Korea to Indonesia and Malaysia. And when the original miracle economies were reaching the level of development in China today, they too saw sharp slowdowns in consumer spending growth. Yet, somehow, calls to free the Chinese consumer persist alongside mounting evidence of the steady growth in their spending. It's difficult to spot symptoms of repression among the Chinese shoppers in luxury stores from Shanghai to Paris. Drill down into consumer spending, and growth looks to be weakening mainly for services, not goods. But this, too, is partly illusory. If one factors in services provided by China's government at little or no charge, including healthcare and education, consumption rises significantly as a share of GDP. CONSUMPTION VS INVESTMENT Investment, on the other hand, is clearly excessive at 40 per cent of GDP and roughly equal to consumption. In a typical economy, investment is lower than consumption as a share of GDP but more important to the economic cycle. Consumers can't stop spending on necessities in a downturn but businesses can stop investing, at least for a while. This binge has been extreme. Only 10 countries have ever seen investment peak above 40 per cent of GDP, briefly. At that level, so much capital flows to unnecessary projects that the binge tends to reverse quickly, slowing growth. China, uniquely, has managed by debt engineering to keep investment above that for two decades now. Relentless over-investment is fuelling tension with trading partners, since China ends up exporting a lot of its excess production and breeding dysfunction at home. Over time, such binges tend to divert capital into less productive targets such as real estate – which helps explain China's debt-soaked property market today. The outsiders urging China to focus instead on the consumer can cite genuine 'structural' obstacles to their spending. Internal migration controls block many rural Chinese from moving to higher paying urban jobs. Meagre pensions compel many workers to save for retirement rather than spend. The weakening real estate market and other negative 'wealth effects' further discourage spending. China's leaders seem to be heeding some of this advice. An 'action plan' announced in March promised to 'vigorously boost consumption', but so far the action has been light on structural reform and heavy on subsidies for purchases of goods such as home appliances – which have only a passing effect. Consumers rushing to buy rice cookers now won't be buying them in coming years. China's consumer spending has been growing at a world-beating pace and doesn't have much room to accelerate, particularly not when many households are deep in debt. That debt has tripled in the past 15 years to over 60 per cent of GDP, among the highest in emerging markets and close to that in the heavily consumer-driven US economy. The country can't solve the real problems caused by over-investment – from geopolitical tensions to dysfunction at home – by attacking the phantom problem of underconsumption. The crux of the imbalance is that the state has been pushing too much investment for too long in the name of hitting its inflated growth target, now set at 5 per cent. The answer is not to shift the focus of state meddling to boosting consumption. It is to accept that China is weighed down by a shrinking population, declining productivity and a huge debt load. It has a real potential growth rate closer to 2.5 per cent than 5 per cent. And as growth slows to a more realistic pace, consumption will naturally expand as a share of the economy.
