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Uber (NYSE:UBER) will give Aurora Innovation its equity in the self-driving vehicle group and will invest $400M in Aurora to receive a 26% of the resulting combined company.
Aurora will acquire the employees and the technology of the unit.
Uber had an 86.2% stake in the Advanced Technologies Group with the group’s investors holding the rest.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will take a board seat at Aurora.
After the transaction, Aurora, which counts Amazon among its backers, will have a $10B valuation.
“Our first product will be in trucking and freight, but we look forward to taking this great team that we have and accelerating that while continuing working on light vehicles and ride-haling, and we’ll ultimately see our vehicles deploying on the Uber network,” says Aurora CEO Chris Urmson.
Background: Uber’s self-driving vehicle unit previously lost a lengthy trade secret legal battle with Alphabet’s Waymo. An Uber autonomous vehicle with a safety driver behind the wheel struck and killed a pedestrian in 2018. Uber was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing but the NTSB partially blamed the company’s vehicle systems for the crash.
In a separate announcement, Uber says it will offer $1B principal amount of convertible senior notes due 2025 in a private placement. Initial purchasers will have the right to buy up to $150M of additional notes.
Uber shares are down 0.5% AH to $53.54.
Bloomberg sources say Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is working on several new in-house Mac chips that could significantly top the performance of Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) latest processors.
The new chips could start rolling out as early as spring 2021 and will appear in upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, iMac, and a new Mac Pro workstation.
Last month, Apple officially debut its M1 in-house silicon for the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini. The launch began the two-year breakup process with Intel chips, a transition that Apple expects to be complete in 2022.
Mac chips aren’t a huge revenue contributor for Intel, but Apple’s growing independence represents an industry shift that can ding Intel’s PC business.
The M1 and new chips are based on architecture from Arm, which Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) plans to purchase from SoftBank for $40B. The chips will likely be manufactured by Apple’s foundry partner TSMC (NYSE:TSM).
In Apple’s recent FQ4 report, pandemic-related demand drove Mac sales to an all-time high of $9.03B, well above the $7.93B consensus.
Intel shares are down 2.1% pre-market to $51.TSM shares are up 1% to $104.79.
Airbnb (ABNB) boosts its IPO price range to $56-60 from $44-50, which would give the home-rental company a valuation as high as $42B, source WSJ.
At the higher end of the range, Airbnb would raise about $3.1B in the offering.
DoorDash (DASH), the food-delivery company that is expected to debut Wednesday, also plans to price its shares in a range of $90-95 a share — already raised from between $75-85.
The two startups, which are aiming to raise a combined $6.2B at the top-end of their price ranges, will propel the month’s IPO volume to all-time high, surpassing the $8.3B mark set in December of both 2001 and 2003, according to Bloomberg.
Airbnb’s IPO will also be profitable for many of its employees. The company has offered billions of dollars worth of stock compensation to staff.
Also on deck to go public this month are Max Levchin’s Affirm Holdings, online video-game company Roblox and ContextLogic, the parent of discount online retailer Wish.
So far this year, $156B has been raised in IPO on U.S. exchanges.
While 5G networks are still in their infancy, with 100 wireless carriers worldwide deploying the service in limited areas, the preparation for 6G development is getting started in several regions around the world.
Nokia (NYSE:NOK) is leading a group of companies and universities in a EU funded wireless project called Hexa-X to help jump start a new generation of the mobile technology. Also included: Wireless gearmaking-peer Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), mobile carriers Orange (NYSE:ORAN) and Telefonica (NYSE:TEF), technology names like Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Siemens (OTCPK:SIEGY), and the University of Oulu and Pisa.
In addition to the program in Europe, there’s Next G Alliance and O-RAN Alliance in the U.S., as well as funding for a 6G development group in China.
“The main goal will be to develop the vision, the road map and the timeline,” said Nokia’s Devaki Chandramoul, who is the head of North American Standardization and one of the engineers leading the Hexa-X group. “Then put together a timeline for the technology direction. And the third point is to facilitate the interaction with U.S. government agencies to fund the research and also provide the input for the technology development.”
While 5G is known to have data transmission speeds at least 10x greater than 4G – rolled out in 2009 – 6G is expected to use super high-frequency terahertz airwaves and deliver advanced connectivity. Human body and brain linking? Real-time holographic imaging? Other ideas?
Looking to add some artificial intelligence software to its arsenal, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) is buying cloud communications firm IMImobile for $730M, which helps companies manage customer relationships.
The 595 pence per share transaction, net of cash and including debt, is expected to close in the first quarter.
“A great customer relationship is built on consistently enjoyable interactions where every touchpoint on every channel is an opportunity for businesses to deliver rich, engaging and intuitive experiences,” said Jeetu Patel, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Security and Applications business. “We look forward to working with IMImobile to help create a comprehensive CXaaS solution for the market—one that gives businesses a platform to provide delightful experiences across the entire customer lifecycle journey.”
Bigger picture: Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins is seeking to reorganize the company, whose hardware is the backbone of the internet, as a networking software and services provider. It comes amid an industrywide shift that has seen more of the functions traditionally provided by in-house hardware migrate to outsourcing offered by remote data centers.
