Arvind’s Newsletter

1.UNECSO names Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport as one of the ‘World’s most beautiful airports'

Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport managed to stand out in a recent announcement from UNESCO's Prix Versailles 2023. It has been recognized as the 'World's most beautiful airport' and was awarded the coveted 'World Special Prize for an Interior 2023.'

The world judges panel for the Prix Versailles 2023, chaired by renowned fashion designer Elie Saab, revealed the latest architectural projects to win a world title, among which Bengaluru airport is the only Indian airport to receive this esteemed recognition.

This global acknowledgment highlights the airport's commitment to exceptional design and architecture on a global scale.

2.Intel will invest $25 billion expanding its chip-making factory in Israel after being granted $3.2 billion in incentives by the Israeli government. 

Intel is trying to make up ground on its chief competitors, Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., and also to diversify its supply chain outside East Asia, which dominates the market. Its Kiryat Gat site already employs 11,700 people in Israel. The investment is a major boost for Israel’s government in Its ongoing assault on Gaza has led to calls for a boycott, and Washington, while remaining supportive, is applying pressure on Israel to increase restraint. Intel’s investment, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the “largest ever” by a foreign company in the country, represents a large vote of confidence.

3.Indonesia's first high-speed railway handles 1m passenger trips.

The Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway (HSR), the first HSR in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, has handled over 1 million passenger trips since its official operation on Oct 17, 2023..

With the yearend approaching, Halim Station in Jakarta has become increasingly crowded with passengers taking the high-speed train, locally known as "Whoosh", for their vacation or family reunions in Bandung, West Java.

The rapidly rising passenger flows have prompted PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia-China (KCIC), a joint venture consortium between Indonesian and Chinese firms that constructs and runs the HSR, to increase the train services to 48 trips per day from the previous 14.

With a design speed of 350 km per hour, the HSR connects Jakarta's Halim station to Tegalluar station in the fourth largest city Bandung, shortening the journey from over three hours to about 40 minutes.

Indonesia had initially considered tapping Japan's shinkansen bullet-train technology, but changed course at the last minute and picked a Chinese company instead. Construction of the project, under Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative, took seven years to complete.

4.China’s BYD is poised to overtake Tesla as the world’s biggest electric-vehicle seller. 

It’s another sign of China’s growing clout in the automotive industry: Chinese automakers have long dominated the huge Chinese market, but the country now rivals Japan as the world’s biggest car exporter, having overtaken Germany, South Korea, and the U.S. in recent years. And of the 3.6 million cars it exported in 2023, 1.3 million were electric. BYD began by making “no-frills econoboxes” Bloomberg reported, but as its sales have grown, so has its confidence: Its most expensive mode, the Yangwang U8 SUV, retails at $150,000.

5.Big Tech outspends venture capital firms in AI investment frenzy, reports George Hammond in Financial Times

Big tech companies have vastly outspent venture capital groups with investments in generative AI start ups this year, as established giants use their financial muscle to dominate the much-hyped sector.

Microsoft, Google and Amazon last year struck a series of blockbuster deals, amounting to two-thirds of the $27bn raised by fledgling AI companies in 2023, according to new data from private market researchers PitchBook.

The huge outlay, which exploded after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, highlights how the biggest Silicon Valley groups are crowding out traditional tech investors for the biggest deals in the industry.

The rise of generative AI — systems capable of producing humanlike video, text, image and audio in seconds — have also attracted top Silicon Valley investors. But VCs have been outmatched, having been forced to slow down their spending as they adjust to higher interest rates and falling valuations for their portfolio companies.

“Over the past year, we’ve seen the market quickly consolidate around a handful of foundation models, with large tech players coming in and pouring billions of dollars into companies like OpenAI, Cohere, Anthropic and Mistral,” said Nina Achadjian, a partner at US venture firm Index Ventures referring to some of the top AI start ups. 

“For traditional VCs, you had to be in early and you had to have conviction — which meant being in the know on the latest AI research and knowing which teams were spinning out of Google DeepMind, Meta and others,” she added. 

A string of deals, such as Microsoft’s $10bn investment in OpenAI as well as billions of dollars raised by San Francisco-based Anthropic from both Google and Amazon, helped push overall spending on AI groups to nearly three times as much as the previous record of $11bn set two years ago.

Venture investing in tech hit record levels in 2021, as investors took advantage of ultra-low interest rates to raise and deploy vast sums across a range of industries, particularly those most disrupted by Covid-19. Microsoft has also committed $1.3bn to Inflection, another generative AI start-up, as it looks to steal a march on rivals such as Google and Amazon.

Building and training generative AI tools is an intensive process, requiring immense computing power and cash. As a result, start-ups have preferred to partner with Big Tech companies which can provide cloud infrastructure and access to the most powerful chips as well as dollars. 

That has rapidly pushed up the valuations of private start-ups in the space, making it harder for VCs to bet on the companies at the forefront of the technology. An employee stock sale at OpenAI is seeking to value the company at $86bn, almost treble the valuation it received earlier this year.

VCs are not absent from the market, however. Thrive Capital, Josh Kushner’s New York-based firm, is the lead investor in OpenAI’s employee stock sale, having already backed the company earlier this year. Thrive has continued to invest throughout a downturn in venture spending in 2023.

Paris-based Mistral raised around $500mn from investors including venture firms Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst, and chipmaker Nvidia since it was founded in May this year. 

Some VCs are seeking to invest in companies building applications that are being built over so-called “foundation models” developed by OpenAI and Anthropic, in much the same way apps began being developed on mobile devices in the years after smartphones were introduced. 

6.China’s main spy agency is deploying artificial intelligence and advanced technology to compete with the CIA, reports the New York Times.

The ambitious Ministry of State Security is deploying A.I. and other advanced technology to go toe-to-toe with the United States, even as the two nations try to pilfer each other’s trade secrets.

In recent years, it has built itself up through wider recruitment, including of American citizens. The agency has also sharpened itself through better training, a bigger budget and the use of advanced technologies to try to fulfill the goal of Xi Jinping, China’s leader, for the nation to rival the United States as the world’s pre-eminent economic and military power.

The Chinese agency, known as the M.S.S., once rife with agents whose main source of information was gossip at embassy dinner parties, is now going toe-to-toe with the Central Intelligence Agency in collection and subterfuge around the world.

Today the Chinese agents in Beijing have what they asked for: an A.I. system that tracks American spies and others, said U.S. officials and a person with knowledge of the transaction, who shared the information on the condition that The Times not disclose the names of the contracting firms involved. At the same time, as spending on China at the C.I.A. has doubled since the start of the Biden administration, the United States has sharply stepped up its spying on Chinese companies and their technological advances.

This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former American officials, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, and a review of internal Chinese corporate documents and public M.S.S. documents. Read on