Technology News Roundup

Published on: November 19, 2019
Author: Amy Liu

Alibaba expecting HK$176/share in sale – Bloomberg

  • It’s still early yet but Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) is reportedly guiding investors to expect its Hong Kong listing to come at HK$176/share, Bloomberg reports.
  • The company was set to close the books on the share sale early today after strong early demand.
  • It’s expected to raise about $13B.
  • Shares closed up 0.4% on the NYSE today, to $185.25.

NTSB cites Uber, driver in fatal crash

  • The NTSB votes 3-0 that the probable cause of Uber’s (NYSE:UBER) fatal self-driving vehicle crash was the failure of the driver to monitor the road “because she was visually distracted throughout the trip by her personal cell phone.”
  • The NTSB says contributing factors included Uber’s inadequate safety procedures and oversight of the driver.
  • The board also cited the pedestrian killed in the accident for crossing outside of a crosswalk and Arizona’s Department of Transportation for its insufficient oversight of self-driving vehicle testing in the state.
  • The NTSB wants the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require autonomous vehicle companies to submit safety self-assessment reports to the agency, which is currently only done by a small number of companies.

SoftBank launches robotic vacuum in U.S.

  • SoftBank (OTCPK:SFTBF,OTCPK:SFTBY) launches the Whiz, which went on sale today for U.S. companies for $499/month.
  • The autonomous vacuum is a joint project with ICE Robotics and has previously launched in Japan and select markets in Asia.
  • The Whiz was involved in North American pilots earlier this year, including airports, hotels, and office buildings.
  • Whiz can record up to 600 cleaning routines and can clean up to 15,000 square feet for three hours on a single charge.
  • SoftBank’s new vacuum is a competitor of sorts for iRobot’s (NASDAQ:IRBT) Roomba products.

AMD launches 7nm GPU for workstations; shares +4%

  • AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) shares are up 4.2% after the company launches its 7nm Radeon Pro W5700 graphics card, which is aimed at 3D designers, architects, and engineers.
  • The Radeon Pro W5700 is powered by AMD’s RDNA architecture and offers 1.25x the instructions per clock compared to the previous generation.
  • Pricing and availability: The W5700 retails for $799 and is available starting today from select retailers.
  • The company will release several 7nm products over the next six months across all AMD markets. Cowen expects the products to “drive above-consensus growth, share gains, margin expansion and AMD share appreciation.”

Facebook, Microsoft team on remote development

  • Facebook (FB +1.1%) says it’s partnering with Microsoft (MSFT +0.2%) on remote development to enable building solutions at scale.
  • Part of the team-up includes making Visual Studio Code the default development environment at Facebook, it says. The solution is already used extensively at Facebook in beta.
  • But most development at Facebook is done on individually reserved development servers in the company’s data centers. The two companies will work together to improve and share usage of remote development extensions.

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