Vehicle sales in 2020 and 2021 showed widespread adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Typical BEVs currently use lithium-ion batteries, which are unstable and require expensive rare minerals, notably cobalt. Because it is crucial to refining these minerals, China controls several key chemicals even though it does not contain deposits of the ores from which these chemicals originate. Other countries, including Portugal, Sweden, Germany, France, and the USA, are seeking to localize their supply chains to resist China's market dominance.
Indonesia is imposing stricter rules on Internet and social media platforms, Reuters has reported. The new rules will require companies to remove "unlawful" content within four hours after being "urgently" requested, otherwise the companies could face fines or criminal charges. Executives from online companies said the new measures are hard to comply with and could raise operation costs.
A typical day of Wifundity autonomous mobile robots (AMR) starts at dusk, when office workers have gone home to their families. In the dark office buildings, the UV disinfecting robots go down the aisles, beaming UV rays in all directions to kill germs and virus in the air. They can also enhance their disinfecting work on conference rooms and doorknobs where people frequently come in contacts daily. The AMRs return to their hubs to recharge as soon as they finish their work.
Last year, a total of 959 private startup companies around the world reached US$1 billion valuation and were recognized as unicorns, according to a report by CB Insights. The number of unicorns has risen by 69% from 2020. In the first half of 2021, ten unicorns were born in Canada.
In recent years, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have garnered a remarkable amount of attention from many industries, stretching from the arts to diamonds or even luxury goods.
SiFive, a fabless semiconductor company and provider of open-source RISC-V processor designs, announced on March 16 that it has raised US$175 million in a Series F financing round, valuing the company at over US$2.5 billion. SiFive is now officially the first unicorn startup (with valuation more than US$1 billion) in the RISC-V space.
SiFive, the founder and leader of RISC-V computing, has announced it has raised US$175 million in a Series F financing round, valuing the company at over US$2.5 billion.
Taiwan has witnessed two golden years following COVID-19 outbreak, but it must deliberate how to sustain the momentum in the next decade, said Chien Lee-feng, former managing director of Google Taiwan.
The news regarding many people using Airbnb platforms to send money to support the people in Ukraine inspired Taiwan-based cycling app startup Velodash to organize a Peace Ride on March 5, hoping to galvanize support for Ukraine.
According to Tuoi Tre News, Vietnam's trade has been strained by the Russia-Ukraine conflict with exports to Russia obstructed due to lack of transport and high risks. Vietnam also imports wheat, corn and fertilizer from Russia; prices of these items have increased and supply is running low. Vietnam's agricultural exports to Russia reached US$550 million in 2021 alone.
How can small and medium enterprises that lack data apply artificial intelligence (AI) to digital transformation and automate their operations? Memorence AI, a startup made it to the list of top 10 teams joining the final round of 2021 Qualcomm Taiwan Innovation Challenge and a silver medal winner of 2021 APICTA awards under the category of "industrial application – manufacturing and logistics," discovered an answer to that question.
African startups in 2021 collected a record quantity of funding that exceeded the total of two years earlier, showing investors' interest in the continent's tech market.
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) executives said at the "Supply Chain Carbon Reduction Trend" press conference held in Taipei on March 2, that Taiwanese companies should take on the sustainability challenge to effectively cut carbon emission, using it as their competitive advantage to access the US$4.5 trillion sustainability business opportunity.
By the end of 2021, there were as many as 958 unicorn enterprises in the world, of which 487 were American companies maintaining a significant portion of 50.8%. But the number of Chinese unicorn enterprises has dropped to 18.6% from 24% when I started calculating the number of unicorns four years ago. Owing to uncertainty in the future, coupled with the fall of many Chinese unicorns, few are talking about unicorns in China now. On the contrary, Taiwan has begun to examine why we cannot keep the unicorns that we've nurtured.
