FT : China steps up drive to break Boeing and Airbus grip on plane market

China steps up drive to break Boeing and Airbus grip on plane market
State-owned Comac opens offices abroad and pushes for overseas certification as it increases output of C919 jets

China is stepping up its push to break the grip of Boeing and Airbus on the aircraft market, as the state-run maker of the country’s first homegrown passenger jet seeks certifications for it to fly beyond the country’s shores.

Comac’s heavily subsidised C919, which made its maiden commercial flight in 2023, is already flown on domestic routes by China’s three big state-owned carriers: Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines. From this month, China Eastern will fly the C919 between Hong Kong and Shanghai, its first regular commercial route outside China’s mainland.

Yang Yang, the company’s deputy general manager of marketing and sales, told the Financial Times the company was aiming for the single-aisle plane to be flying in south-east Asia by 2026 and to gain European certification as early as this year.

“We hope to operate more of the jets domestically in China and to thoroughly identify any issues before . . . bringing them to south-east Asia,” he said.

The C919 is a pivotal project in President Xi Jinping’s drive for China to move up the technology value chain, with the ultimate aim of challenging the western duopoly of Boeing and Airbus.

Boeing’s financial woes and delivery delays, as well as wider supply chain problems in the industry that have left it and Airbus facing engine and component shortages, have weighed on the global aviation sector and offered hope for newcomers.

The world will need 42,430 new aircraft over the next two decades, roughly 80 per cent of which will be single-aisle aircraft, according to an Airbus forecast in 2024. Aviation consultancy IBA predicts that Comac can raise its output of C919s — 16 of which have been delivered to Chinese airlines as of December — from one to 11 a month by 2040, by which time it can deliver almost 2,000 units of the aircraft.


However, Jonathan McDonald, IBA’s manager for classic and cargo aircraft, said that while Comac would eventually penetrate export markets, “for the foreseeable future Airbus and Boeing will be the main suppliers of narrow-bodies to most airlines”.

Global certification and maintenance support remain significant hurdles to Comac’s ambition for the C919 to operate overseas. 

In a move to boost its international presence, Comac opened new overseas outposts in Singapore and Hong Kong in October.

The new offices were necessary to help drive new aircraft orders from customers, according to Mayur Patel, head of Asia for OAG Aviation.

But Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, said building “elaborate product support facilities in export markets is very hard and expensive work, and a necessary precondition for competing with Airbus and Boeing”.

While several carriers in Asia have expressed interest in the C919, some executives say privately that they remain hesitant.

“Maintenance support is the main issue,” said a person close to Indonesia’s TransNusa, which has already received three of Comac’s smaller ARJ21 aircraft and is considering flying the C919.

The path for Comac to gain overseas certification, particularly from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, is also challenging, according to analysts.

“IBA does not expect the C919 to be certified in Europe in the immediate future,” McDonald said. “Europe has very strict certification parameters.”

Meanwhile, certification from the US Federal Aviation Authority is likely to be complicated by US-China tensions.

EU and US regulators are often the “gold standard” for other global authorities, according to David Yu, an aviation industry expert at NYU Shanghai.

In parallel with its push with the C919, Comac is also developing its first widebody aircraft, the C929. At one of China’s largest air shows in Zhuhai in November, the company announced that state-owned Air China had become the first airline to pledge to fly the jet, which is aimed at challenging the larger planes made by Airbus and Boeing such as the 787 Dreamliner.

Sash Tusa, a UK-based aerospace and defence analyst, said that while the C929 offered China another opportunity to prove its technological advancement in the aerospace sector, the country would still probably be reliant on overseas engines for commercial jets. IBA estimates that the C929 will not come into service before 2040.

For the C919, key components are still western-made. The jet’s engines are supplied by Franco-American venture CFM International while its auxiliary power units are made by US-based Honeywell.

“So far, [Comac is] building aircraft that are mostly western by value, but with Chinese structures,” said AeroDynamic Advisory’s Aboulafia. “That makes production ramps dependent on western willingness to continue providing systems, and, given a Trump presidency, there’s no guarantee of that at all.”

Comac would probably not be able to get any “fair share of the global market” within the next decade, Tusa said, but would provide an important “import substitution” for domestic Chinese airlines.

“Airbus builds in China. Boeing doesn’t,” he said. “So Comac comes in as the second supplier. Import substitution doesn’t make you a competitor. That makes you an act of state policy.”

FT : Telecoms groups forecast to reap $10bn windfall from recycled copper

Telecoms groups forecast to reap $10bn windfall from recycled copper
Industry is decommissioning legacy lines as demand for metal expected to grow

Telecoms groups around the world are forecast to collectively make more than $10bn from the sale of copper over the next 15 years as they remove older cables from their networks, in a boost for the sector as demand for the metal is expected to grow.

Operators are forecast to receive as much as $720mn from copper sales in 2025, according to TXO, which helps telecoms companies recycle and sell the metal. UK-based BT, Nordic operators Telia and Telenor, and Australia’s Telstra are among the companies to have already booked payments for the recycled metal, which is vital for the transition to clean energy.

The industry has been decommissioning legacy copper lines as full-fibre broadband and wireless technology are rolled out, with the groups set to benefit from rising copper prices, which are expected to reach about $12,000 a metric tonne by 2035, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights, up from the present $9,170 a tonne.

Rupert Wood, research director at Analysys Mason, said: “While some copper cables will not be economically recoverable, the potential net one-off financial gains globally still run into many tens of billions of dollars.” He added that the consulting firm expected most telecoms companies to have fully decommissioned copper by 2035.

Prices for the metal, which is used in electricity grids, wiring and electric cars, are volatile and surged to a record high of more than $11,100 in May.

Global demand is expected to rise by 70 per cent from 2021 levels by 2050, according to miner BHP, as the energy transition and power grid buildout create a shortage of the metal.

David Evans, group head of asset recovery services at TXO, said: “Operators engaging in copper recovery now are not only unlocking substantial financial returns but are also addressing a pressing global need for resource sustainability.”

He added that an anticipated surge in demand for the metal “comes at a time when the copper mining industry is unlikely to keep up, pointing to potential supply shortages and higher prices”.

In Australia, Telstra has made a combined total of A$211mn (US$132mn) over the past two financial years from the sale of extracted copper cabling.

BT reported a pre-payment of £105mn for the forward sale of copper in its 2024 financial year. It has also agreed a deal with recycler EMR to support the extraction and recycling of copper cable from its network until 2028. The group has a separate programme to recover old network equipment to reuse or recycle and resell.

Sweden-based Telia said it was expecting to make about €2mn to €3mn from copper sales in 2025, having already received €25mn so far after the company started to phase out its copper network.

Norwegian group Telenor plans to recover and sell approximately 250 tonnes of copper from cables in 2025, which would result in revenue of about €1mn under a revenue-sharing model with its demolition contractor.

The company intends to sell about €68mn worth of copper, primarily from aerial cables and cables in buildings, in the future.

US group AT&T said it was “ramping up our copper recycling efforts over the next few years and reselling it, which allows us to take that money and put it back into the network” and had recycled more than 32,000 metric tonnes since 2021.

For many operators, the revenue received has been immaterial. Companies have to contend with the expense and complexity of recovery as well as the ongoing threat of copper-cable theft.

Belgian group Proximus said the amounts it had made from the sale of copper were “not significant” due to “substantial” costs related to the extraction of cables, low copper content and the complex process to separate it from other materials present.

Dutch operator KPN said it had sold copper from decommissioned networks in small-scale pilots and was following developments in the market, but it was “not so easy” to extract underground copper networks and “quite an expensive operation”.

The copper recovery process was “not straightforward”, said Peter Barnes, a managing director within Macquarie’s commodities financing team. “The regulatory and operational complexity of these projects is significant. A lot of time is spent ensuring that a legacy network can be decommissioned and extracted in line with regulations, after which a bespoke recycling process is required to ultimately produce a saleable commodity.”

FT : Mining start-up backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos valued at $2.96bn

Mining start-up backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos valued at $2.96bn
KoBold Metals aims to lead race for critical minerals needed for energy transition

A mining and artificial intelligence start-up backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos has raised $537mn in its latest funding round, as it seeks to become a key player in the race for the critical minerals needed for the energy transition.

Berkeley-based KoBold Metals said its series C funding round valued the company at $2.96bn, and was co-led by existing investor T Rowe Price, which has been joined by Durable Capital Partners.

Existing investors including Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and US venture capital group Andreessen Horowitz also participated in the round, along with new backers including private capital group StepStone.

KoBold, which has raised $1bn to date, is among the western mining companies seeking to compete with Chinese rivals to produce metals such as copper, lithium and nickel.

The metals are used in everything from batteries for electric vehicles to the defence industry, and western governments have been increasingly seeking to diversify away from supply chains dominated by China.

As part of these efforts, the US is helping finance the revival of the Lobito railway line that will transport critical minerals across swaths of Africa and connect the Democratic Republic of Congo with Zambia and Angola.

KoBold, which uses AI to comb through historical and scientific data to identify untapped mineral deposits, said in February that it had discovered a huge deposit of copper in Zambia. The $2bn Mingomba site would produce at least 300,000 tonnes per year from the 2030s, KoBold said.

KoBold’s co-founder and chief executive Kurt House said about 40 per cent of the new capital would be spent on developing existing projects into mines, with the Zambian copper project taking “the lion’s share of that”.

The company — which uses OpenAI’s generative AI technology as well as more traditional AI — planned to “add at least three jurisdictions” including Finland and Botswana, House said, adding that he was excited about the prospects for lithium mining in Canada.

House said he was confident that there was broad political support in the US for improving access to critical minerals despite incoming president Donald Trump having indicated that he wants to roll back support for electric vehicles — a key market for metals including lithium.

There is “very broad bipartisan support for diversifying [the] supply of critical minerals” because this is a “national security priority”, he said. “We’ve had plenty of conversations with people who will be associated with the next administration who are very enthusiastic about KoBold’s mission.”

KoBold plans to hire “aggressively” and add data scientists who have a more traditional technology background to its teams, as well geoscientists to survey possible deposits and collect data, said House. The company was likely to go public within three to five years, he added.

“There’s a real demand from [mining] majors to partner with [KoBold] so clearly they’re doing something right,” said David George, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “I don’t think there’s an obvious modern competitor in the space.”

KoBold has an exploration partnership with mining major BHP in Western Australia and is also working with Rio Tinto.

Carmichael Roberts, managing partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, said KoBold’s AI-driven approach to mineral exploration would create “a more secure, affordable, and clean energy future for all”.

WSJ : Why the Dollar’s Epic Rally Could Have a Little Further to Run

Why the Dollar’s Epic Rally Could Have a Little Further to Run
Key drivers in 2025 are likely to be Trump’s policies and their impact on inflation and the Fed’s stance on rates

The U.S. dollar is entering the new year on a high—and most signs point to more strength ahead.

The currency is a key beneficiary of U.S. exceptionalism. The American economy is growing faster than most, with Europe stuck in a manufacturing rut and China struggling to contain the fallout from its property meltdown.

The Federal Reserve’s newfound hesitance to cut interest rates adds to the appeal of holding dollars, while the artificial-intelligence euphoria that has lifted U.S. stocks continues to draw in foreign investors. Many investors expect Donald Trump’s return to the White House to supercharge the U.S.’s appeal.

The dollar is wrapping up its best quarter since 2016 versus a basket of currencies tracked by The Wall Street Journal. It is on course to end the year with gains against every major peer, having risen especially sharply against volatile emerging-market counterparts. As of Monday, the greenback is up about 20% this year against the Mexican peso and nearly 30% against the Brazilian real.

Key drivers next year are likely to be Trump’s policies, analysts say, and the impact those have on inflation and the Federal Reserve’s stance on interest rates.

“Where are people investing nowadays? Number one is the U.S.,” said Dominic Schnider, head of global foreign exchange at UBS’s wealth-management division.

Yet Schnider, like many currency forecasters, doubts the dollar rally can last. He says investors are overly fixated on the expected growth boost from Trump’s pledges to cut taxes and red tape.

They are ignoring many risks, he said, such as potential blowback on the U.S. economy if Trump follows through on threats to impose new tariffs on foreign goods. U.S. government finances are also shakier than in Trump’s first term, with the federal-budget deficit above 6% of gross domestic product, compared with 3.1% in 2016.

“What Trump promises seems great for investment and returns. But can we finance it?” said Schnider. “That’s where the disappointment happens.”

Schnider expects the dollar to lose steam in the first quarter and to end 2025 down 5% from current levels against the euro and 8% off against the Japanese yen.


Momentum can lead the greenback to diverge from estimates of “fair” value for long periods. The dollar surged in the 1990s. After peaking shortly following the 9/11 attacks and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, it fell for much of the 2000s, before bottoming out in 2008 at the start of the global financial crisis.

Still, the dollar’s elevated level makes further gains more difficult.

“Investors must consider how much ‘U.S. exceptionalism’ is already reflected in market prices,” said Hugh Gimber, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. “The dollar is much stronger today than it was ahead of President Trump’s first term at this stage in 2016.”

Tariffs and Fed caution over rate cuts should boost the dollar in the first months of the year, said Athanasios Vamvakidis, head of G-10 foreign-exchange strategy at Bank of America. But he later expects it to fall, whether Trump can fully implement his agenda or not.

If Trump can push through his full slate of tariffs, tax cuts and immigration changes, inflation is likely to rise more than markets anticipate, Vamvakidis says. That could initially boost the dollar by forcing the Fed to pause rate cuts, or even raise rates again. But this would ultimately slow the economy and weigh on the dollar.

Alternatively, if Trump’s policies ultimately get watered down, so would their potential growth boost, and U.S. outperformance would fade, he says. Here, investors are looking to Trump’s first term for a history lesson.

The dollar rallied after Trump’s 2016 election, peaked just before his inauguration, and then fell 7.5% in 2017, his first year as president. That marked the worst year for the WSJ Dollar Index since 2007.

“The market has tried to price, in a month, the next four years, and Trump has not even started yet,” said Vamvakidis. “The lesson from his first term was that it was not a straight line. In some areas, Trump started aggressive, but there were more pragmatic solutions.”

Another risk is that the storm clouds hanging over foreign economies—the flip side of U.S. exceptionalism—begin to clear.

The euro has tumbled as Europe teeters on the brink of recession and political volatility weighs on its two biggest economies. Even small improvements in the outlook could lift the euro, said Steve Englander, head of G-10 foreign-exchange research at Standard Chartered.

“When was the last time anybody said anything good about Europe? Europe looks weak, but that’s well-known,” he said. “For the euro to go up, all you need is for people to be moderately positively surprised by anything.”

FT : Russian gas set to stop flowing through Ukraine

Xi Jinping signals growth is ‘top priority’ in speech acknowledging China’s strains
President uses new year address to stress support for country’s vulnerable people and reiterate Taiwan stance

Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed support for the country’s vulnerable elderly and youth in a new year address that acknowledged the strains on some of the 1.4bn-strong population.

Xi’s speech comes after his economic planners have for much of the past four years struggled to restore consumer confidence or address rising youth unemployment and slow wage growth.

In the televised speech on Tuesday evening the 71-year-old leader, speaking in front of a large motif of the Great Wall, said that issues of employment, income growth, elderly care, childcare, education and healthcare “are always on my mind”. 

Xi said that a July meeting of the Chinese Communist party leadership had sounded a “clarion call for further comprehensive deepening of reform”.

“Enabling people to live happy lives is the top priority,” he said. “Every household hopes that children can receive good education, the elderly can have good care services, and young people can have more development opportunities.”

China’s economy, which is the world’s second biggest behind the US, recorded growth of 4.8 per cent in the first nine months of the year, trailing Beijing’s official target of about 5 per cent.

Weak sentiment and deflationary pressures follow a series of blows, from the pandemic and a years-long property market slump, to Xi’s reassertion of Communist party control over large swaths of China’s business landscape. 

Xi on Tuesday also repeated a thinly veiled warning over international support for Taiwan. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has not ruled out using force if Taipei refuses unification indefinitely.

“Compatriots on both sides of the Strait are one family. No one can sever our blood ties and kinship, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification,” Xi said.

Xi has increasingly steered state support for high-tech manufacturing and industry, lifting investment in electric vehicles, batteries, semiconductors and artificial intelligence, while pursuing China-made production of critical technologies. 

On Tuesday he highlighted China’s progress in technological self-reliance and breakthroughs in areas including computer chips, AI and space exploration. 

A series of policy-easing measures announced by Beijing since September, including some property and stock market support, has been viewed as a sign that the Xi administration is shifting focus to stoking domestic demand. 

Reflecting those changes, the World Bank last week revised its forecast for China’s GDP growth next year upwards by 0.4 percentage points to 4.5 per cent.

However, China has this year been rocked by a series of mass killings and stabbings that some experts have blamed on rising social strains. Fan Weiqiu, a 62-year-old man, was last week sentenced to death after being found guilty of driving his car into a crowd in Zhuhai, southern China, in November, leaving at least 35 people dead, the country’s worst mass killing in a decade.

Ahead of a series of national holidays Beijing has started to urge local governments to expand the delivery of seasonal cash handouts to people facing economic hardship, including unemployed youth. 

Kelvin Lam, an economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said while the handouts would not have a significant impact on the broader economy they might shore up social stability and consumption in poorer rural areas. 

China’s economic outlook has been further weakened by strained relations with the US.

Under President Joe Biden the US has restricted China’s access to computer chips, clamped down on Chinese investment into the US and ramped up sanctions on Chinese companies for trading with Russia in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier on Tuesday Xi told Russian leader Vladimir Putin that “strategic co-ordination” between China and Russia continued to reach higher levels under their leadership, according to a new year message reported by Xinhua, the state news agency.

FT : Russian gas set to stop flowing through Ukraine

Russian gas set to stop flowing through Ukraine
Transit deal due to expire with no follow-up agreement on flows to central Europe

Russian gas flows through Ukraine are set to stop on Wednesday when a transit deal between the two countries expires in the wake of Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

The pipeline was one of the last two routes still carrying Russian gas to Europe nearly three years into the full-scale war. EU countries will lose about 5 per cent of gas imports in the middle of winter.

While traders had long expected flows to stop, the end of the pipeline route through Ukraine will affect Europe’s gas balance at a time when demand for heating is high. Slovakia is the country most affected.

“While one would assume that losing those volumes [is] priced in, a strong upward price response initially isn’t out of the question,” said Aldo Spanjer, senior commodities strategist at BNP Paribas.

The deal to allow Russian gas to pass through Ukraine was agreed at the end of 2019, signed a day before the previous 10-year contract between the national gas companies was set to expire. At the time, the European Commission strongly promoted the deal.

After Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, the commission encouraged member states to seek alternative supplies as the bloc moved to wean itself off Russian fossil fuel imports. The Moscow-friendly governments of Hungary and Slovakia have resisted that shift and have sought to extend the deal beyond January 1.

The Ukrainian government had telegraphed months in advance that it was unwilling to negotiate an extension to the deal, as it wanted to deprive the Kremlin of its income from gas exports. Ending the flows would result in a $6.5bn loss for Russia, unless it could redirect them, according to the Brussels-based think-tank, Bruegel.

But it would also be a financial blow to Ukraine, which earned about $1bn a year in gas transit fees, though only about a fifth of that was gross profits. Analysts have suggested that Ukraine’s vast gas pipeline infrastructure could face increasing Russian attack, if there was no Russian gas flowing through it.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico visited Moscow on December 22 to discuss the gas transit contract. He blasted Ukraine’s intransigence on the deal, asking whether the country had “the right to damage the economic national interests of an [EU] member state”.

Fico said on Facebook shortly before the deal’s expiry that “other gas transit options than Russian gas were presented to Ukrainian partners, but these were also rejected by the Ukrainian president”. The Slovak prime minister has also threatened to cut off back-up electricity supplies from Slovakia to Ukraine as retaliation.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has likewise sought to find a workaround to allow Russian gas imports via Ukraine. His government has also turned to the last remaining pipeline shipping Russian gas via Turkey and to neighbouring Romania to complement supplies.

Austria, which still imported Russian gas throughout 2024, has shifted to alternative sources such as liquid natural gas imports. Its energy company OMV in mid-December terminated its long-term contract with Russia’s Gazprom because of a legal dispute.

The cut-off of gas will also have a significant impact on neighbouring Moldova, which in mid-December introduced a state of emergency in the energy sector because of the uncertainty around Russian gas transit.

The halt to Russian gas flows through Ukraine is likely to increase European demand for pricier LNG, for which Asia is also competing.

EU officials have been adamant that the bloc can live without Russian pipeline supplies, even if it means accepting more expensive shipped gas from elsewhere.

The European Commission said on Tuesday it did not expect disruption. “European gas infrastructure is flexible enough to provide gas of non-Russian origin to central and eastern Europe via alternative routes,” it said. “It has been reinforced with significant new LNG import capacities since 2022.”

The Turkey pipeline still transporting Russian gas to Europe contributes about 5 per cent of the EU’s imports. The US recently imposed sanctions on Gazprombank, the main conduit for Russian energy payments.

But to mitigate the impact of sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin in early December dropped a requirement for foreign buyers of Russian gas to pay through the bank. Countries such as Turkey and Hungary also said they have received US exemptions from sanctions.

“The sanctions had previously added an extra layer of uncertainty over the fate of Europe’s remaining Russian gas supply as we enter the new year, helping to keep gas prices volatile,” said Natasha Fielding, head of European gas pricing at Argus Media, a pricing agency. The US waiver meant that “buyers of Russian gas delivered through the Turkish Stream pipeline could breathe a sigh of relief”, she said.

Traders are not ruling out an increase in Russian gas flows into Europe in the future. European companies that are reeling from high gas and energy prices, forcing them to cut back production, would return to buying Russian gas, which was inherently cheaper than LNG, one senior trader said.

“At some stage there will be a peace agreement . . . People will want to end the war, therefore they have to sign a peace agreement. One of the things Russia will get is its ability to resupply” Europe with gas, the trader said.

While European governments may impose restrictions to prevent the continent from once again becoming over-reliant on Russian gas, the trader said, “you would expect to see some Russian gas back in Europe, because fundamentally, geography has not changed”.

TechCrunch : Blue Origin looks to take on SpaceXt shareholder of Rainbow Robotic

Blue Origin looks to take on SpaceX dominance with New Glenn launch days away

Nearly a quarter century after its founding, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is gearing up to launch an orbital rocket for the first time — and finally enter the competitive launch industry that is currently dominated by SpaceX.
Company executives have maintained that they are planning to launch the towering rocket, called New Glenn, before the year is out. However, an air traffic advisory posted last week suggests that Blue Origin may conduct the launch no earlier than January 6.

Regardless, there is little left for the company to do in terms of pre-launch tests or paperwork: Blue Origin received its launch license for New Glenn from federal regulators last week, which authorizes launches for five years. That same day, the company successfully conducted a launch dress rehearsal called a hot fire test. All that’s left on the checklist, Blue Origin CEO David Limp confirmed, is connecting the fairing, which carries the rocket’s payload.
When the rocket does finally launch, seven of the Blue Origin-made BE-4 engines will fire up to generate over 3.8 million pounds of thrust and propel the rocket away from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The 320-foot-tall rocket will carry demonstrator technology for Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft, an orbital transfer vehicle that’s designed to provide transportation, logistics, and satellite servicing.
New Glenn and Blue Ring are just two of several products Blue Origin has been developing to compete in multiple areas of the space industry. The company is ultimately looking to go up against several competitors — not just up against SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which currently launches the lion’s share of national security and commercial satellite payloads — that are developing lunar landers, private space stations, and more.
Up until this point, Blue Origin has mostly been known for its New Shepard suborbital rocket, which carries space tourists and some cargo up to suborbital space and back in brief flights.
If all goes to plan, New Glenn’s booster will return to Earth and land vertically on a floating barge, to be refurbished and reused up to 25 times. NASA also tapped Blue Origin to launch twin spacecraft to Mars — those satellites were supposed to fly on this inaugural mission, but after the launch was delayed from October, the space agency decided to remanifest them on a later New Glenn launch. Blue Origin also has signed launch deals with the Space Force, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and other commercial companies.

TechCrunch : Samsung pays $181M to become largest shareholder of Rainbow Robotic

Samsung pays $181M to become largest shareholder of Rainbow Robotics

Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday that it has become the largest shareholder of South Korea-based robotics maker Rainbow Robotics, increasing its stake from 14.7% to 35% for KRW 267 billion (about $181 billion).

The electronics giant, which paid KRW 86.8 billion for the 14.7% stake in 2023, said it is acquiring the stake to bolster its robotics department and speed up development of humanoid robots. Rainbow Robotics will be integrated as a Samsung subsidiary, and the deal is expected to be completed in February 2025.

The company also said it would establish a Future Robotics Office directly reporting to the chief executive officer. The deal also enables Rainbow Robotics to expand to overseas markets by leveraging Samsung’s reach.

Rainbow, founded in 2011 by researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) Center, has developed dual-arm mobile manipulators and autonomous mobile robots for applications in manufacturing and logistics. It has 86 employees.

The founding member of Rainbow, Dr. Jun-ho Oh, the former largest shareholder of the robotics company before the deal and an honorary professor at KAIST, will stay on board to lead a new effort called the Future Robotics Office at Samsung, and serve as an advisor.

Samsung is only the latest to enter the race to develop humanoid robots that can do more autonomously. Microsoft and OpenAI are planning to use their tech for a humanoid robot, and Tesla earlier this year showed off its own take on robots, Optimus. Nvidia, too, has plans to release a new line of compact computers for humanoid robots, called Jetson Thor, next year.

In 2022, Samsung said that robotics, along with AI, 5G, and automotive electronics, would be a key part of its future initiatives, suggesting that potential acquisitions in these fields may be on the horizon.