VinFast, Vietnam’s electric vehicle manufacturer, plans to initially invest $500 million to set up an integrated facility in India and break into the world’s third-largest automobile market. The memorandum of understanding with the state government of Tamil Nadu, unveiled on Saturday, earmarks an investment of up to $2 billion, the company said without giving a … Read more
ROME — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told her European Union partners Thursday that curbing migration flows from African countries has less to do with offers of charity than strong partnerships coupled with strategic investments in those nations. Meloni told reporters at a year-end news conference that last month’s deal on the EU’s Migration and … Read more
Mutual fund company Fidelity has marked down its investment in X holdings — the parent company of X (formerly Twitter) owned by Elon Musk — by 71.2% from the original valuation of shares, according to a new disclosure. Fidelity spent $19.2 million to acquire a stake in X back in October 2022. The fund manager … Read more
Meltwater, which first made its name around media monitoring and then got active in business intelligence using AI and big data analytics techniques, is picking up a new investor. Verdane, a Norwegian private equity firm that earlier this year closed a $1 billion+ fund to make investments in scaling tech companies, is taking an 11% … Read more
Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. You shouldn’t compare apples to oranges, but similarly, comparing iPhones to Androids is a fool’s errand as well. Now that Apple is finally phasing out the Lightning connector after 11 years in favor of the more universal standard USB-C (across … Read more
Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images The U.K.’s competition watchdog has opened an initial review into Microsoft’s mammoth investment into ChatGPT creator OpenAI, making it the first major regulator to flag potential competition concerns over the tech giant’s relationship with one of the most important artificial intelligence companies today. The Competition and Markets Authority … Read more
High-flying venture investors in India managing hundreds of millions of dollars are tempering expectations, making early-stage startup bets that in best-case scenarios they hope will return 3 to 5 times invested capital. Several leading India investors including Peak XV Partners, Elevation Capital, Lightspeed, Nexus and Accel have raised $500 million-plus in the past two years, … Read more
Hong Kong residential prices could fall by another 10% in 2024, according to DBS Hong Kong. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images Hong Kong’s property market has plunged nearly 20% since its peak, and it may be a good time for homeowners to buy — but investors might want to think twice, according to Peter … Read more
In this photo illustration, British billionaire Richard Branson is seen on a fragment of a Virgin Galactic Unity 22 Spaceflight Livestream Youtube video displayed on a smartphone with the Virgin Galactic logo in the background. Pavlo Gonchar | Lightrocket | Getty Images Virgin Galactic shares plunged more than 14% in premarket trade on Monday, after … Read more
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban government’s new ambassador to China arrived in Beijing on Friday — the first time Afghanistan’s rulers have officially sent an ambassador to another country since returning to power more than two years ago. No country recognizes the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, but some, including China, have embassies … Read more