Amazon puts GM’s electric vans to the test
Mexico City — Amazon.com has been testing General Motors’ BrightDrop electric vans as part of its plan to bring 100,000 electric delivery vehicles on the road by the end of the decade, the e-commerce giant said on Friday.
A little more than a dozen vans are being tested, placing them among a fleet that includes electric vehicles built by Rivian, the company said. GM had sold 12,2024 model BrightDrop vans to Amazon in 2023.
Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly said the company regularly tests various vehicle options. The BrightDrop testing does not change its work with Rivian.
Amazon is Rivian’s largest investor with a 16% stake and has more than 25,000 of its vehicles in its fleet. Reuters
US adds two Chinese firms to restricted trade list
Bengaluru — The US on Friday penalised two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker SMIC, including them among 32 entities that were added to the commerce department’s restricted trade list, according to a US government posting. Twenty-three of the 32 were in China.
GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corporation and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corporation, the Federal Register posting said.
The SMIC companies were already on the entity list and shipping US equipment to them requires licences, which likely would have been denied. Reuters
China plans to grow vehicle sales to 32.3-million
Shanghai — China is targeting 32.3-million in vehicle sales in 2025, a roughly 3% increase from the previous year, the country's industry ministry said.
The target was part of a plan to support stable growth in the auto sector that China’s ministry of industry & information technology, along with seven other government agencies, issued on Friday.
The target for sales of new energy vehicles was set at 15.5- million units, up about 20% from the previous year. Reuters
OpenAI forecasts 8% revenue share with Microsoft
Bengaluru — OpenAI has projected that by the end of the decade it will be sharing about 8% of its revenue with commercial partners, namely Microsoft, down from the present 20%, The Information reported on Friday.
The difference between those figures adds up to more than $50bn in additional revenue OpenAI would keep for itself, the report said.
The report was not clear if that was an accumulative or annual figure. OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
The two companies are also negotiating how much OpenAI will have to pay to rent servers from Microsoft, the report said, citing a person briefed on the discussions. Reuters
Musk’s xAI to cut staff at data annotation team
Bengaluru — Elon Musk’s xAI has laid off at least 500 workers from its data annotation team, which helps develop the company’s Grok chatbot, Business Insider reported on Friday.
The company notified employees by email on Friday night that it was planning to downsize its team of generalist AI tutors, the report said, citing multiple messages viewed by Business Insider.
Responding to a request for comment, xAI referred to a post on X in which the company said it was hiring for roles across domains and planned to increase its specialist AI tutor team by “10X.”
The data annotation team, xAI’s largest, teaches Grok to understand the world by contextualising and categorising raw data, Business Insider said.
Workers were told that they would be paid through either the end of their contract or November 30 but their access to company systems would be terminated on the day of the layoff notice, the report said. Reuters
BlackRock ‘to invest $700m in UK data centres’
Bengaluru — BlackRock plans to invest £500m in British data-centre infrastructure, one of a string of deals to be announced during US President Donald Trump’s UK state visit this week, Sky News reported on Saturday.
BlackRock and Downing Street did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on the report, which said BlackRock would invest through a new venture with Digital Gravity Partners.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink will join OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman as part of the business delegation accompanying Trump, Sky News reported this week.
Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang plan to pledge support for billions of dollars in British data-centre investments during the trip, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
The investments underscore rising demand for digital infrastructure, driven by AI and cloud computing. Reuters
Apple gets nod for hypertension notification feature
Bengaluru — The US food & drug administration has cleared Apple to roll out a hypertension detection feature on some of its smartwatches, the health regulator said in a statement late on Friday.
The company unveiled a blood pressure monitor in its latest Apple Watch at a September 9 event, where it also introduced a refreshed iPhone line-up, including a slimmer iPhone Air.
Apple said the new hypertension notification feature will be available on Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, Series 11 and the premium Ultra 2 and Ultra 3 models before the end of September.
The feature, expected to be rolled out in 150 countries and regions, including the US and EU, uses the optical heart sensor to analyse blood vessel responses to heartbeats. Reuters
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