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Conjuring designs from thin air in a virtual world

Virtual Reality (VR) technology promised to make it possible for designers to ‘see’ new cars, factories and houses before they had been even built. With new high-quality headsets and software, that vision is closer to coming true.

Most designs used to start with an idea, a pen and some paper.

Now, imagine conjuring 3D shapes out of thin air and sharing your life-like designs in real time with people half way around the world.

The whole process of designing a new product becomes faster, cheaper and more effective. VR is finally beginning to fulfil its potential for business.

“You can walk around your sketches so you can see how your lines work in a 3D environment, and move freely in a room,” explains Jan Pflueger, augmented and virtual reality co-ordinator for German car firm Audi.

In the past, the technology – hardware, software, connectivity – simply wasn’t up to the job.

“Designers didn’t like using headsets because the image resolution was too low,” says Mr Pflueger.

Not only were the images poor quality, the headsets were heavy and uncomfortable to wear.

But now that processing speeds have increased and optics tech has improved, we’re reaching the stage where VR is coming close to the limits of what the human eye can perceive.

For example, Audi is working with Finnish start-up Varjo, which has recently starting selling a high-end (€5,995; £5,170) headset boasting “human eye resolution” using a technique called “foveated rendering”.

It uses eye-tracking technology to tell which part of the image you’re focusing on, then concentrates its processing power on that section to render it in high definition.

So you perceive the highest quality without having to process the entire image in high definition for every frame, which would require huge computing resources.

“In the beginning, designers hadn’t been able to view their designs properly, but now they can walk around cars or other objects in life size,” explains Niko Eiden, Varjo chief executive.

And because the image quality is so good, car designers can experiment with different materials for seats, dashboards and so on without having to make expensive physical models, says Mr Pflueger.

“This speeds up the design process because they can make decisions about how designs should be modified at a very early stage,” he adds.

 

Read More – www.bbc.co.uk

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How damaging is the Huawei row for the US and China?

The US is ramping up a conflict with China, putting their economies and their diplomatic relationship at risk.

It has moved to restrict Huawei’s ability to trade with US firms, shortly after reigniting the trade war with tariff hikes.

The latest blows to the Chinese telecoms giant mark a grave escalation in the US-China power struggle.

As the trade war broadens into a “technology cold war”, the prospect of a deal looks increasingly distant.

“The US action against Huawei is a watershed moment and a very significant escalation of tensions,” says Michael Hirson, Asia director at the Eurasia Group.

“A trade deal is not doomed but looks very unlikely, especially in the near term.”

The crackdown on Huawei has become a central part of relations between Washington and Beijing, which has primarily played out as a trade war over the past year.

While the US has justified its actions against Huawei based on the alleged risk it poses to national security, US President Donald Trump has also linked it to the trade row.

Only recently, Mr Trump said Huawei could be part of a trade deal between the world’s two largest economies.

Such comments risk reinforcing a view that the action against Huawei is about more than just security risks.

Some see it as an attempt by the US to contain a powerful Chinese firm, and by extension China’s growing importance in the world.

“The prospect of a US action hobbling one of China’s most prominent tech companies, and key to its global ambitions in 5G, is already evoking a surge of nationalist sentiment in China,” says Mr Hirson.

 

Read More – www.bbc.co.uk

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5G: Finally, it’s here in the UK – but so what?

After years of hype – and sometimes confusion – the UK finally has a 5G network.

BT’s EE subsidiary is the first to launch a service – and if you’re feeling wealthy enough and live in the right place, you can sign up.

The lowest-priced deal is £54 a month plus a one-off £170 fee for a compatible handset.

But bear in mind that buys you only 10GB of data a month, which you will be likely to chew through fairly quickly if you take advantage of the next-generation technology to download lots of media.

For many people, it may make sense to wait – and not just to take advantage of rival offers from Vodafone, which starts its own 5G service in about five weeks.

The two operators are launching in select cities only.

And even there, the connectivity will be patchy, sometimes offering only outdoor connectivity, sometimes none at all – so customers will probably default to a slower 4G signal much of the time.

Chip-maker Qualcomm has promised the first 5G phones will offer “all-day battery life” – but second- and third-generation modems will inevitably be more energy-efficient and thus allow handset-makers to offer either longer life between charges or thinner phones.

What’s more, many of the innovations that promise to make 5G truly disruptive have yet to arrive. But more on that in a bit.

How fast will it go?

The communications watchdog Ofcom suggests that in time 5G could offer speeds of 20Gbps.

That is fast enough to download an ultra-high definition 4K movie in less time than it takes to read its description.

But for now, you should temper your expectations.

To start with, the fibre lines EE is using to link each 5G site to its network have a total capacity of only 10Gbps, which must be shared around.

The network has suggested that, on average, users will achieve about 150-200Mbps downloads at launch, with lucky individuals hitting about 1Gbps at quiet times.

So, wait times for such big files will still be measured in minutes rather than seconds.

Even so, this would still be an improvement on the 29.6Mbps that OpenSignal said that EE typically provided via its 4G network.

Of course, there’s another way to measure speed and that is in terms of latency – the lag between sending a command and getting a response.

In time, 5G is supposed to provide latencies of one millisecond or less, compared with the 20-70 milliseconds on offer today.

That will make playing videos games powered by a cloud-based service a more responsive experience and will pave the way for new use cases – such as remote-controlled vehicles, surgical robots, and live-streamed virtual reality.

To start with, however, things won’t be close to that level.

EE says to expect latency of about 20 milliseconds at launch, falling to 10 milliseconds within the next decade.

Is it just about faster phones?

No – though that’s undoubtedly the short-term hook to attract subscribers.

One of the biggest long-term benefits of 5G will be the ability for mobile networks to provide more connections at once.

In theory, 5G will be able to simultaneously support more than a million devices per sq km (0.4 sq miles), a big jump over the 60,000-odd devices that 4G technology maxes out at.

But to make this possible, antennas will be needed all over the place – from lamp-posts to bus shelters, in addition to more of the rooftop masts we’re already used to.

These in turn will support hundreds of thousands of data-capturing sensors that will allow the authorities and businesses to gain deeper insights about behaviour and provide “smarter” services.

Futurists envisage benefits such as a customer’s smart-home automatically ordering the ingredients for meals that have been nutritionally tailored to their activities, while retailers make use of related data to ensure they have the right amount of stock to hand, thus minimising lost sales and goods going to waste.

 

Read More – www.bbc.co.uk

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SpaceX lifts off with $1B after Starlink launch

The space race is still alive and well—at least when it comes to VC funding and global satellite internet.

SpaceX, the rocket company founded by celebrity billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has raised an additional $704.74 million across two previously declared rounds, according to filings reviewed by PitchBook on Friday. Both rounds have now raised a combined total of $1.02 billion since January. With the new funding, SpaceX now holds an estimated $31.5 billion valuation, with previous investors such as Sherpa Capital, Alphabet and Founders Fund adding to their stakes in the company. SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The funding announcement comes a day after the Los Angeles-area company launched 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, en route to an eventual goal of the 800 satellites needed to reliably provide significant high-speed internet coverage worldwide. The Starlink project, initiated in 2015, is expected to be fully operational in 2020, with the possibility for up to 12,000 satellites entering orbit, per regulatory filings SpaceX submitted to the Federal Communications Commission. Its competitors include global satellite internet aspirations from OneWeb, which is backed by Virgin Group and Qualcomm Ventures, and from Samsung, among others.

Elon Musk has previously declared his goal is to use revenue from Starlink’s projected operations to fund Starship, an initiative to build advanced rockets and spaceships to bring human civilization to Mars. Currently, Starship’s vehicles are being constructed in Boca Chica, Texas, and Cape Canaveral, Florida, with Musk regarding the locations as “competing” to see which site is more efficient.

Legal challenges abound

While the promise of exploring space and colonizing Mars someday may sound dreamy, the journey isn’t always glamorous, and SpaceX has had its share of difficulties.

The new funding also comes on the heels of the company’s lawsuit against the US Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, filed in mid-May and unveiled on Wednesday by CNBC. In the lawsuit, SpaceX claims the center “wrongly awarded” $2.26 billion last fall in development contracts “to a portfolio of three unproven rockets” built by its competitors, while rejecting SpaceX’s bid.

Namely, Blue Origin received $500 million, United Launch Alliance scored $967 million, and Northrop Grumman banked $792 million. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets were kicked to the curb, with the Air Force concluding that certain elements of the company’s Starship vehicle broadly labels its entire fleet as “high risk.”

Since the filing was largely redacted to protect proprietary and competitively advantageous information, it is not clear what the specific factors that were deemed “high risk.” Without greater details, it is difficult to speculate regarding the merit of the complaint.

However, the lawsuit may simply be an indication of the unwillingness of SpaceX and Elon Musk to concede defeat. As part of a broader ethics investigation into Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, an April 25 report revealed that Shanahan and Musk met privately on December 6 to discuss SpaceX’s failure. During the meeting, Musk expressed his opinion that SpaceX had submitted a lousy contract proposal that “missed the mark.”

In addition to Musk’s stated opinion on the proposal quality, Bloomberg reports SpaceX has won nine federal contracts since 2015, including a recent $297 million launch contract from February. All such contracts were in direct competition with ULA, among others, arguably contradicting perceptions of institutional favoritism working against SpaceX.

While the $1.02 billion in funding SpaceX has garnered this year may be coincidental, it could reasonably be an unenthusiastic replacement for what would have been a grant from the Air Force, considering the timing and a similar amount to what the Air Force was dishing out.

Regardless, such a refusal to concede defeat is far from unusual in the world of Elon Musk, where themes of stubbornness and denial abound. There was his infamous “funding secured” tweet and subsequent unwillingness to adhere to SEC monitoring, as well as his long-standing but never-fulfilled repetition of Tesla’s ever-imminent resolution of cashflow and production issues.

In perhaps the most dramatic example, Musk has steadfastly refused to settle the defamation lawsuit filed against him after he called Vernon Unsworth, one of the divers who helped rescue a Thai soccer team from a cave in 2018, a “pedo guy” on Twitter after Unsworth disparaged Musk’s offer of a submarine to aid in the rescue as a PR stunt. The suit reportedly seeks damages for some $75,000, equivalent to less than 0.00005% of Musk’s net worth, but in a familiar denial, Musk maintains his innocence and regards his comments as an “imaginative insult” protected by the First Amendment.

As SpaceX’s lawsuit seeks to recover its missed Air Force grant by challenging the reasons the company’s bid was not chosen, it remains debatable whether the Air Force truly did cheat SpaceX—or Musk & Co. are simply unhappy to admit that they lost.

 

Read More – www.pitchbook.com

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Sports Illustrated becomes latest legacy magazine gobbled up by PE

It’s become a familiar story for the media industry.  A legacy publication struggles because of declining print advertising revenue.  Digital advertising revenue fails to offset the losses.  A private investor emerges to try to save the business.

The latest example came with a twist Tuesday when Authentic Brands Group agreed to buy the intellectual property of Sports Illustrated from media conglomerate Meredith for $110 million. As part of the unique partnership agreement, Meredith will continue to operate SI’s editorial arm for at least the next two years under the same schedule, while maintaining editorial independence under the direction of publisher Danny Lee and editor-in-chief Chris Stone. The iconic sports publication’s future after that is unclear.

In the meantime, ABG will try to drive revenue by using SI’s brands, which include the company’s namesake, Sports Illustrated Kids, Sportsperson of the Year, SI TV and the company’s iconic swimsuit edition. The company also purchased the rights to more than 2 million images from SI’s photography archives, which it reportedly hopes to monetize.

“We are now perfectly positioned, with the support and resources of ABG, to thrive in many other spaces: events and conferences, licensing, gambling and gaming, IP development, especially in video and TV, to name a few, all while continuing to benefit from Meredith’s industry-leading track record in operating media companies,” Stone said in a press release.

Launched in 2010 with a $250 million investment from Leonard Green & Partners, Knight’s Bridge Capital and founder Jamie Salter, ABG specializes in managing retail, entertainment and sports brands. And its list of clientele is fairly diverse, with the brands of Shaquille O’Neal, Muhammad Ali and Marilyn Monroe among its holdings.

But it remains to be seen if ABG can recharge SI, which has struggled along with the rest of the magazine industry to adapt to the digital landscape. Once heralded for employing a range of legendary sports writers such as Frank Deford and Rick Reilly, the company has seen its market share dwindle from a range of digital online competitors, including the The Ringer, Barstool Sports and The Athletic, which was valued at around $200 million in its latest funding round.

Meredith acquired SI in early 2018 as part of its roughly $1.8 billion deal for Time Inc., with Koch Equity Development contributing $650 million to the purchase. In the ensuing 18 months, the business has unloaded the company’s assets in pursuit of paying down $1 billion worth of debt. It sold Time magazine to Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and wife Lynne Benioff for around $190 million and Fortune magazine to Thai entrepreneur Chatchaval Jiaravanon for $150 million. It’s also shopping FanSided, an SI-affiliated blog network that focuses on sports and pop culture, for a reported $30 million, along with ad platform business Viant.

On a broader scale, the shifting media landscape hasn’t kept investors from dabbling in the US publishing industry, though deal count dropped about 5% in 2018, per Pitchbook data. And 2019 is off to a fairly benign start, with just six completed PE-backed acquisitions to date.  The most notable came in January when Penske Media, a New York-based digital media company backed by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, bought the remaining 49% stake it didn’t already own in Rolling Stone magazine.

 

Read More – www.pitchbook.com

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Sensible Fiat Chrysler-Renault merger could be undone by politics

Frosty relations between France’s Macron and Italy’s Salvini could scupper talks over £29bn merger.

That there is an economic case for the proposed €32.6bn (£29bn) merger between Fiat Chrysler and Renault goes without saying. A link between the two companies to form the world’s third-biggest carmaker after Volkswagen and Toyota has always made a lot of sense. If the deal is scuppered, it won’t be due to a lack of business logic; it will be because politics gets in the way.

There are two big arguments in favour of the deal. The first is there is a global glut of automotive capacity that is already forcing companies to cut production, close plants and lay off workers.

The second is the age of the internal combustion engine is drawing to a close. Technological change has meant progress being made towards autonomous, self-driving cars, while the need to combat the climate emergency has forced car companies to think about a new generation of electric-powered vehicles.

These changes – the biggest in the industry for 125 years – leave companies in a bind: they either have to come up with the massive investment required to deliver the cars of the future against new rivals such as Google’s Waymo, or become museum pieces. The tie-up between the Italian-American Fiat Chrysler and the French-Japanese alliance of Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi is primarily about generating economies of scale in order to save €5bn a year that would be available for R&D and product development.

This is a hefty sum to make from efficiency savings and there has to be a suspicion that the merged company would also look to take costs out of the business by getting rid of excess capacity. The French government, which has a 15% stake in Renault, is certainly alive to this possibility, which is why Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister, is seeking explicit guarantees there will be no job losses.

That’s one potential political complication. Another is that Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and the leader of the far-right League, has expressed a desire to take a stake in the new company. This would be no problem were relations good between Paris and Rome, but they are not. There is absolutely no love lost between Salvini and the French president, Emmanuel Macron. That, coupled with the fact car companies tend to be national virility symbols, suggests the negotiations will not be trouble free.

 

Read More – www.theguardian.com

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Tiger Global’s unicorn stable grows with Ivalua deal

A startup developing software that helps other companies save money has become the latest company backed by Tiger Global to attain a $1 billion valuation.

That startup is Ivalua, a Bay Area business that says it’s raised $60 million in growth equity backing at a valuation of more than $1 billion. Tiger Global and the growth arm of Ardian both participated in the funding, while KKR is an existing Ivalua backer. The company makes spend-management software, which its clients use to streamline financial processes and increase cash flow.

It’s the newest highly valued addition to the portfolio of Tiger Global, a New York-based hedge fund that invests in startups in a major way, typically targeting late-stage deals. Last October, the firm closed its latest VC vehicle on $3.75 billion, per the Financial Times, and in the months since, it’s been busy putting all that new capital to work.

 

Read More – https://pitchbook.com

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Pret a Manger in talks to gobble up Eat to fuel expansion

Pret a Manger is in talks to buy its rival sandwich chain Eat as part of plans to expand its specialist vegetarian operation.

The London-based coffee shop firm is understood to be in line to buy the majority of Eat’s 94 stores to step up expansion of Veggie Pret.

The majority of Eat’s outlets are in London but it also has sites in key towns and cities around the UK, including Birmingham and Manchester, as well as airport stores in Bristol, Edinburgh and Heathrow.

Pret has four vegetarian outlets, three in London and one in Manchester. It is keen to expand the operation due to rising demand for plant-based meals, according to the London Evening Standard, which first reported the deal.

Pret said: “We never comment on rumour or speculation.”

Peter Backman, an independent restaurant consultant, said the deal suggested Pret believed it could tempt different customers with Veggie Pret enabling it to expand even in London where it already has a lot of outlets. He said buying Eat stores would give it room to experiment while reducing competition.

Pret is keen to capitalise on the growing vegan and vegetarian market which has prompted the likes of Waitrose to introduce specialist aisles and big chains such as Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury’s to push vegan ranges.

According to Waitrose, a third of UK consumers say they have deliberately reduced the amount of meat they eat or removed it from their diet entirely. One in eight Britons are now vegetarian or vegan, and a further 21% say they are flexitarian – where a largely vegetable-based diet is supplemented occasionally with meat.

The possible Eat deal also flags potential consolidation in the takeaway food market where growth is slowing and competition fierce as supermarkets and coffee shops vie with the likes of Pret, Itsu, Wasabi and Leon.

The proposed deal comes after Eat was put up for sale by its private equity owners Horizon Capital in February. It made a £17.3m loss in the 12 months to June 2018 and a £18.9m loss the previous year.

Overall sales slipped more than 4% to £94.9m as cafes and restaurants faced heavy competition. A slowdown in spending has also led consumers to remain cautious amid Brexit uncertainty.

 

Read More – www.theguardian.com

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Sainsbury’s-Asda merger blocked by regulator

The proposed merger between Sainsbury’s and Asda has been blocked by the UK’s competition watchdog over fears it would raise prices for consumers.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also said it would raise prices at the supermarkets’ petrol stations and lead to longer checkout queues.

Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe said the regulator was “effectively taking £1bn out of customers’ pockets”.

But he said the supermarkets had agreed to end the deal.

Asda boss Roger Burnley said he was disappointed: “We were right to explore the potential merger with Sainsbury’s, which would have delivered great benefits for customers and supported the long term, sustainable success of our business.”

 

Read more – www.bbc.co.uk

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Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank abandon merger talks

Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have abandoned merger talks, saying the deal would have been too risky.

Both banks said the deal would not have generated “sufficient benefits” to offset the costs of the deal.

The German banks only entered formal merger talks last month.

The German government had been supporting the tie-up, with reports saying Finance Minister Olaf Sholz wanted a national champion in the banking industry.

The government still owns a 15.5% stake in Commerzbank, acquired after the bank was bailed out following the financial crisis.

The deal was seen as a way of reviving the fortunes of both banks.

Deutsche Bank shares fell 1.5% to €7.48 each, while Commerzbank shares dropped 2.5% to €7.60.

Combined, the banks would have controlled one fifth of Germany’s High Street banking business with €1.8 trillion ($2tn; £1.6tn) of assets, such as loans and investments.

 

Read More – www.bbc.co.uk