NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investment firm VanEck and financial technology company SolidX Management LLC will sell shares in their bitcoin trust to “qualified institutional buyers,” the companies said on Tuesday, in a move aimed at further attracting institutional m... More »
BENGALURU (Reuters) – Expansion in India’s manufacturing sector hit its slowest in 15 months in August as demand and output grew at their weakest pace in a year and cost pressures increased, a private sector survey showed on Monday. The survey comes after offi... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The initial reception for a re-launched version of a classic video game points to potential stock price growth of Activision Blizzard Inc, with new titles from key franchises also bolstering the company’s outlook, according to Barron’s. Th... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s Google will spend up to $200 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission investigation into YouTube’s alleged violation of a children’s privacy law, a person briefed on the matter told Reuters. Politico reported the settl... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China will exempt Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) electric vehicles from its purchase tax, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Friday, a concession made amidst trade tensions with the United States. Tesla sees China as o... More »
(Reuters) – SpaceX test-launched an early prototype of the company’s Mars rocket on Tuesday, unnerving residents near the Texas site and clearing another key hurdle in billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s interplanetary ambitions. After the launch, Musk congra... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a humanoid robot docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, TASS news agency reported, citing a live broadcast. The FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) robot is on a... More »
BIARRITZ, France (Reuters) – France and the United States reached a deal to end a standoff over a French tax on big internet companies, though U.S. President Donald Trump declined to say whether his threat of a retaliatory wine tax was off the table as a resul... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – China’s Huawei has begun talks with Russia about installing Russian operating system (OS) Aurora on 360,000 of its tablets to conduct Russia’s population census next year, two sources told Reuters. Huawei has been seeking alternative operati... More »
(This August 21 story corrects to make clear Kiva a nonprofit organisation, not charity, paragraph 1.) By Cooper Inveen (Reuters) – Kiva, a San Francisco-based tech nonprofit organization, is using blockchain to create an online ID database in Sierra Leone all... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s cartel office said on Monday it would appeal a regional court decision to suspend restrictions it had placed on Facebook’s data collection practices to the country’s highest court. A court in Duesseldorf had earlier suspended a Feb... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a humanoid robot failed to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, citing a live broadcast. The FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research)... More »
HOUSTON (Reuters) – A crew of veteran U.S. astronauts and aviators are training in Houston for a manned mission to the International Space Station aboard Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft, which could also be used to take tourists into space on future missions... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – With banks’ bond trading desks increasingly going electronic, another of the last bastions of old-school banking – the business of helping companies and countries raise capital – may be about to succumb to the tide of technology. A clutch of... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian humanoid robot was making its way on Thursday to the International Space Station after blasting off on a two-week mission to support the crew and test his skills. Known as FEDOR, which stands for Final Experimental Demonstration Ob... More »
(Reuters) – Direct observations from a NASA space telescope have for the first time revealed the atmospheric void of a rocky, Earth-sized world beyond our own solar system orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy, according to a study released on Mo... More »
(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said on Monday it will use chipmaker Nvidia Corp’s (NVDA.O) real-time ray tracing technology to provide the software company’s Minecraft video game players more realistic graphics on personal computers. Real-time ray tracing... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Uber (UBER.N) appointed a new boss for Britain and Ireland on Monday just over a month before its licence expires in London, one of its most important global markets where the regulator has previously stripped it of its right to operate. Tra... More »
BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Segway-Ninebot Group, a Beijing-based electric scooter maker, on Friday unveiled a scooter that can return itself to charging stations without a driver, a potential boon for the burgeoning scooter-sharing industry. Ninebot said Ub... More »
(Reuters) – Airbnb Inc recorded $9.4 billion in total booking value in the first quarter, up 31% from the year-ago quarter, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday, a key number that could help pull in investors as the home-sharing company plans its f... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – Millions of years after the ancestors of humans evolved to lose their tails, a research team at Japan’s Keio University have built a robotic one they say could help unsteady elderly people keep their balance. Dubbed Arque, the grey one-meter ... More »
VIENNA (Reuters) – Austrian sensor specialist AMS (AMS.S) triggered a bidding war for Osram (OSRn.DE) on Sunday, saying it was ready to pay $3.8 billion for the German lighting group’s shares, 10% more than finance investors Bain Capital and Carlyle (CG.O) hav... More »
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – At a conference where hackers can try their hand at picking locks and discover cyber vulnerabilities in a makeshift hospital, they can also endeavor to break into the control units of cars and take over driving functions. Those efforts at... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese startup LinkSpace on Saturday completed its third test of a reusable rocket in five months, stepping up the pace in China’s race to develop a technology key to cheap space launches in an expected global boom in satellite deployment.... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House officials and big social media companies met on Friday to talk about how to curb extremism online after two mass shootings last weekend that killed 31 people in Texas and Ohio. After the shootings, U.S. President Donald Trump... More »
(Reuters) – Shares of Uber Inc fell 10% in early trading on Friday after the ride-hailing service missed most Wall Street targets in its quarterly earnings report, in sharp contrast to upbeat numbers from U.S. rival Lyft Inc a day earlier. None of the Wall Str... More »
(Reuters) – United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp, blasted off into space on Thursday morning, one of the final satellites for the U.S. Air Force’s new secure communications network. The satellite was launched at 6:... More »
SANGATTE, France/SAINT MARGARET’S BAY, Britain (Reuters) – French inventor Franky Zapata on Sunday succeeded in crossing the English Channel on a jet-powered hoverboard he designed, zooming over the Strait of Dover in just over 20 minutes. After a previous bid... More »
ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expanding its facilities in Florida to make room for the space company’s forthcoming super heavy-lift launch vehicle dubbed Starship, according to a draft of the plans seen by Reuters on Friday. Starship, a 384-f... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese government space agency is expected to launch its first rocket meant for commercial use in August, putting pressure on other domestic rocket firms to develop their own launch vehicles ahead of an expected commercial satellite boom... More »
(Reuters) – A small crowd-funded satellite promoted by TV host and science educator Bill Nye has been propelled into a higher orbit using only the force of sunlight blowing against its sail in space, a novel propulsion developers say could “democratize” spacef... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing-based startup iSpace is planning up to eight commercial rocket launches next year, after last week becoming China’s first privately funded firm to put a satellite into orbit, its executives told Reuters. iSpace’s success has turned ... More »
JOHANNESBURG/VRYHEID, South Africa (Reuters) – Cattle have long been considered a measure of wealth across Africa – but it is not just farmers cashing in. A pioneering app in South Africa lets investors, eager to benefit from rising global beef demand, buy sha... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain warned the European Union on Monday it needed to change its ‘stubborn’ position on Brexit if a no-deal exit was to be avoided. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said he wanted a deal but the EU had to change its position. “We want a goo... More »
LONDON/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Amsterdam-based online food delivery firm Takeaway.com (TKWY.AS) has agreed to buy Just Eat (JE.L) in an all-share deal valuing the combined group, which will be one of the sector’s largest, at about 8.2 billion pounds ($10.1 billi... More »
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab on Monday said it will invest $2 billion into Indonesia over five years using capital received from Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp, which wants to increase its exposure to the region’s most populous marke... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – When Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met entrepreneur Viktor Prokopenya in March 2017, their discussion was scheduled to last for an hour but went on for three times that long. The meeting, Prokopenya said, ended with Lukashenko as... More »
WASHINGTON/PARIS (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to tax French wines on Friday in retaliation for France’s recent proposal to levy a tax aimed at big U.S. technology companies. Trump had told French President Emmanuel Macron last week that h... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Saturday that France would proceed with taxing revenues of big technology firms and urged the United States not to bring trade tariffs into the debate on how to fairly raise levies on digital services. ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration would not grant Apple Inc any relief for tariffs on parts made in China for its Mac Pro computer and later added he thought the firm would build a plant in Texas. “Apple will ... More »
SANGATTE, France (Reuters) – A French inventor failed in his attempt to cross the English Channel on a jet-powered hoverboard on Thursday when he was knocked into the water as he landed on a boat-mounted refueling platform, his technical team said. Franky Zapa... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – A rocket developed by iSpace put satellites into orbit after a launch from a state facility in northwestern China on Thursday, marking the first successful orbital launch by a privately funded Chinese firm. iSpace’s Hyperbola-1 rocket blast... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – India plans to buy rocket engines from Russia for its national space program, RIA news agency cited Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov as saying during a visit to New Delhi on Monday. India launched a rocket into space on Monday in a... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – Capping a week of celebrations over the historic Apollo 11 mission, Vice President Mike Pence joined astronaut Buzz Aldrin on Saturday at the launch pad in Florida that sent the moonwalker and his two crew mates to space for hu... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan is considering taking a dispute with South Korea over its compensation for wartime forced laborers to the International Court of Justice as the deadline for seeking third-country arbitration passes on Thursday, public broadcaster NHK re... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Bitcoin slumped more than 10% over the weekend to a two-week low as fears of a crackdown of cryptocurrencies grew on mounting scrutiny of Facebook’s planned Libra digital coin. Bitcoin fell 11.1% from Friday to $9,855 early on Monday, its lo... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. may approve licenses for companies to re-start new sales to Huawei in as little as two weeks, according to a senior U.S. official, in a sign President Donald Trump’s recent effort to ease restrictions on the Chinese company coul... More »
(Reuters) – A proposal to prevent big technology companies from functioning as financial institutions or issuing digital currencies has been circulated for discussion by the Democratic majority that leads the House Financial Services Committee, according to a ... More »
(Reuters) – An investigation is under way after a European Vega rocket failed after take-off, destroying a military observation satellite as it was about to be placed in orbit for the United Arab Emirates, European space authorities said on Thursday. The Itali... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China and the rest of the world must co-exist, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan said on Monday, in an indirect jab at the United States with which Beijing is currently trying to resolve a bitter trade war. “China’s development can’t shut ... More »
(Reuters) – Cruise, a U.S. self-driving vehicle company majority-owned by General Motors Co, told Reuters on Friday that a U.S. national security panel approved a $2.25 billion investment in the firm by Japan’s SoftBank Corp. SoftBank has come under increasing... More »
(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos’ divorce from his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie Bezos, was finalized by a Seattle-area judge on Friday, paving the way for her to receive $38.3 billion worth of Amazon stock, Bloomberg reported. In April, Am... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – On the run from U.S. tax authorities, tech guru John McAfee puffs a cigar aboard his towering white yacht in a Havana harbor and says he can help Cuba evade the U.S. government too – by launching a cryptocurrency that defeats a U.S. trade em... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google’s bet on balloons to deliver cell service soon faces a crucial test amid doubts about the viability of the technology by some potential customers. Loon says its balloons will reach Kenya in the coming weeks for its first commer... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) through Google and other subsidiaries has invested heavily over the last decade to make high-speed internet accessible to billions more people. Instead of costly rollouts of cell towers or fiber cables, it has c... More »
ZURICH (Reuters) – Central banks grappling with fast-changing financial technology and companies like Facebook (FB.O) moving into finance will aim to work together more closely through an innovation hub approved on Sunday by the Bank for International Settleme... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her former second-in-command at the Silicon Valley blood-testing startup were ordered on Friday to stand trial next year on fraud charges stemming from their claims about the company’s technology, c... More »
HONG KONG (Reuters) – In a first of its kind initiative, HSBC Holdings Plc is backing the launch of a technology startup that aims to connect small-and-medium-sized manufacturers with component suppliers in different parts of the world as part of its trade ban... More »
(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump is looking to require next-generation 5G cellular equipment used in the United States to be designed and manufactured outside China, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. As ... More »
MUMBAI (Reuters) – From companies building palm-sized satellites to those aiming to propel satellites into space using cleaner fuels, a new wave of space technology startups are mushrooming in India, catching the attention of investors keen to join the space r... More »
(Reuters) – Autonomous vehicle technology company Velodyne Lidar has hired bankers for an initial public offering, Business Insider reported on Saturday, citing sources familiar with the process. The San Jose, California-based company is working with Bank of A... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – In August 2018, Spanish authorities uncovered a plot by anti-Brexit campaigners to assassinate leading Brexiteer and now favorite to be Britain’s next prime minister, Boris Johnson. Or did they? That story and others like it were created by ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – After years of using the internet, satellites, algos and other innovations to mine ‘Big Data’ for that edge over rivals, the world’s biggest investment firm is trialing a gizmo that puts the focus back on humans — its own portfolio managers.... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – Most investors in SoftBank Group Corp’s $100 billion Vision Fund want to join the group’s forthcoming second fund, and discussions with those investors will begin soon, SoftBank founder and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said on Wednesday. The... More »
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Tuesday unveiled its most significant business reshuffle since co-founder Jack Ma announced his pending retirement, as the e-commerce firm looks to bolster its investment focus in the face of sl... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – Energy major Total said its new supercomputer – which has propelled it to a world ranking as the most powerful computer in the sector – will enable its geologists to find oil faster, cheaper and with a better success rate. The Pangea III comp... More »
HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd has taken a harder-than-expected hit from a U.S. ban, the company’s founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei said, and slashed revenue expectations for the year. Ren’s downbeat assessment that the ban will hit reven... More »
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Zebra Medical Vision, an Israel medical imaging analytics company, said on Monday it received its third clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its alert for intracranial hemorrhage, based on head CT scans. The latest clea... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – The Canadian government’s contracting arm is backing a proposed new satellite system that will use big data analytics to provide commercially available data about the Earth and its orbit amid growing concerns about the risks posed by space de... More »
(Reuters) – Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk tweeted here late on Sunday that he had “just deleted” his Twitter account, while also changing his Twitter display name to “Daddy DotCom”. Sunday, June 16 was Father’s Day in the United States and the Tesla Inc... More »
(Reuters) – Daniel Loeb’s activist hedge fund Third Point LLC called on Sony Corp on Thursday to spin off its semiconductor business and sell off stakes in Sony Financial and other units, in order to position itself as a leading global entertainment company. T... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s banking watchdog on Friday said it had imposed stricter licensing conditions on AMP Ltd’s pension fund units following concerns regarding its compliance with superannuation laws, sending its shares down more than 4%. The move com... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – No matter who you are or what you do, let me take a wild guess: You feel a little burned out right now. Was I right? If so, you are one of the two-thirds of Americans who report feeling burned out on the job, according to a recent Gallup p... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Ocado is plowing 17 million pounds ($22 million) into the emerging “vertical farming” industry, further diversifying the online grocer and technology group’s business. Vertical farming involves producing food indoors, with crops gr... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Self-driving car software startup Aurora said on Sunday it would partner with Fiat Chrysler to build autonomous platforms for commercial vehicles, the latest collaboration with an automaker for the fast-growing Silicon Valley company.... More »
(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp on Sunday unveiled its next-generation Xbox console, known as “Project Scarlett,” which is set to hit store shelves during the 2020 holiday season. The device will be four times more powerful than the Xbox One X console and be powere... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House Office of Management and Budget has asked the U.S. Congress for more time to phase in a ban on federal contracts with companies that do business with Chinese telecom giant Huawei, part of a defense law passed last year. T... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – London-based technology companies attracted a record 2.56 billion pounds ($3.26 billion) in venture capital in the first six months of 2019, more than twice as much as those in Berlin, the Mayor of London’s investment agency said on Monday. ... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China summoned global technology companies for talks last week following last month’s U.S. ban on selling technology to China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday. The blacklisting of Huaw... More »
(Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Sunday that President Donald Trump might ease U.S. restrictions on Huawei if there was progress in the trade row with China – but absent a deal, Washington would maintain tariffs to cut its deficit. “I... More »
(Reuters) – AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia may price its streaming service between $16 and $17 per month, instead of a multi-tiered plan, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The package may include HBO, sister channel ... More »
HOUSTON (Reuters) – The first U.S. astronauts chosen to fly aboard a SpaceX capsule built for NASA shrugged off a spate of design and test mishaps, saying such setbacks were “part of the process” and the new technology was far more advanced than the space shut... More »
OXFORD, England (Reuters) – Wearing a white blouse and her dark hair hanging loose, Ai-Da looks like any artist at work as she studies her subject and puts pencil to paper. But the beeping from her bionic arm gives her away – Ai-Da is a robot. Described as “th... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) will roll out commercial 5G licenses “in the near future”, Xinhua said. It did not provide further details. Beijing had granted licenses at the end of 2018 to China’s three sta... More »
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Huawei Technologies Co Ltd plans to sell its undersea telecom cable business, showed a buyer’s filing on Monday, in its first major asset sale since the United States ratcheted up accusations of the Chinese firm being a vehicle for espion... More »
(Reuters) – Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecommunications equipment supplier fighting a U.S. sales ban, kicks off a trade secrets lawsuit in the United States on Monday against a former employee who has sought to turn the case into a referendum on Huawei... More »
(Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Sunday it had resolved the network congestion in the eastern United States that affected services in Google Cloud, G Suite and YouTube. Google said it would conduct an investigation of the outage and make appropriate i... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) said on Monday curbs on employees of Huawei Technologies and its subsidiaries have been lifted, and they would be allowed to participate in a peer review process for its research... More »
(Reuters) – Facebook Inc is in talks with the U.S. derivatives regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), over the social media company’s plans for a digital currency, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The regulator is in the early stage... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Twenty-first-century Londoners will be transported back to the late 19th century of H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” to join a fight for survival after a Martian invasion in an interactive experience featuring theater and virtual reality ... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Developers of a multi-rotor hover craft billed as the first flying vehicle to be powered by hydrogen fuel cells unveiled a full-scale model on Wednesday in Southern California, in a show-and-tell that raised some eyebrows but never left... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s government said on Monday that high-tech industries will be added to a list of businesses for which foreign ownership of Japanese firms is restricted. The new rule, effective Aug. 1, comes amid heightening pressure from the United Sta... More »
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Food technologies-focused Finistere Ventures and three Israeli firms said on Monday they formed a partnership that would invest up to $100 million in agrifood startups in Israel. Finistere will be joined by Tnuva, Israel’s largest food co... More »
(Reuters) – Huawei Technologies’ founder and Chief Executive Ren Zhengfei told Bloomberg bloom.bg/2HT7DUY that retaliation by Beijing against Apple Inc was unlikely and that he would oppose any such move from China against the iPhone maker. When asked about ca... More »
HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Huawei, hit by crippling U.S. sanctions, could see shipments decline by as much as a quarter this year and faces the possibility that its smartphones will disappear from international markets, analysts said. Smartphone sh... More »
(Reuters) – U.S. real estate title insurance company First American Financial Corp said on Friday it had learned of a design defect in one of its production applications that had made possible unauthorized access to customer data. The statement was sent in res... More »
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A tax withholding plan in Mexico for drivers at ride-hailing firms envisaged as voluntary when it was unveiled earlier this week could become obligatory in 2020, Spanish company Cabify said on Friday. Mexico’s government on Monday outli... More »
(Reuters) – Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX has raised more than $1 billion in financing in the last six months as it aims to roll out an ambitious high-speed internet service by using a constellation of satellites to beam signals from space. The c... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – SpaceX, the private rocket company of high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, launched the first batch of 60 small satellites into low-Earth orbit on Thursday for Musk’s new Starlink internet service. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the s... More »
SINGAPORE/MANILA (Reuters) – Mobile phone retailers in some Asian countries are refusing to accept Huawei devices for trade-ins, as more consumers look to offload their device on worries Google suspending business with the Chinese firm will disrupt services. G... More »
