Valley

The US chip industry is being forged in Silicon Valley. Curiously, the hammer is held by South Korea

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The United States has embarked on a journey of technological sovereignty. It has some of the largest and most cutting-edge technology companiesbut they depend on foreign companies. That’s why, Appield Materials has put 5 billion dollars on the table seeking US technological hegemony. And, in this ambitious project, it is not an American who has slipped in as founding partner of the EPIC Center. It’s Samsung. EPIC. It’s a “modest” name for a $5 billion facility that will be in the heart of Silicon Valley. The name comes from Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization and is the spearhead of American investment in research and development of advanced semiconductor equipment. Its objective is to accelerate the development of equipment and processes to create advanced memory chips, shortening traditional cycles when developing cutting-edge chips. The installation is imposingwith more than 16,700 m² of clean room and is expected to come into operation this spring. Samsung. And, in that ambitious objective, is the South Korean company. The alliance is to address one of the semiconductor industry’s most important challenges: the long time required to bring new chip technologies to market. from research to production. The EPIC Center is not a competition for the European ASMLbut something complementary to shorten those processes that can take between 10 and 15 years. And Samsung will be there as one of the founding partners. Samsung Electronics CEO Young Hyun Jun commented that the collaboration will allow “advance in cutting-edge semiconductor equipment technologies.” The EPIC Center Expansion. Samsung is one of the most important foundries in the world and, in the era of artificial intelligence, it is consolidating itself as a pillar by being the first that will supply NVIDIA of the new HBM4 memories. Its presence at the EPIC Center seems like a key strategic move, but it is not the only advance that the company has recently made on American soil. In that pursuit of creating high-bandwidth memory and advanced systems, Samsung has a facility in TaylorTexas, to advance the production of 2 nanometer chips. Foreign industrial fabric. One of Donald Trump’s goals was to recover the American industrial fabric with American companies and American labor. That’s why he ‘rescued’ Intel a few months ago with the aim that the company was his great foundry. And it is having its fruits: Intel has risen from the ashes with new advanced processors and is positioning itself to supply both NVIDIA and Apple. However, what is also arriving is foreign muscle like Samsung and something more serious: TSMC. The Taiwanese giant is the company on which the entire semiconductor and device industry pivots, and it is increasingly becoming making more land in the United States to manufacture in the country and continue with a diversification project which includes Europe. That is to say, the United States is reindustrializing and is taking steps to have an authoritative voice in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, but much of that muscle belongs to the same old foreign companies… that will simply now also produce in the United States. HBM4. Meanwhile, Samsung continues to do its thing. Not only are they at full production HBM4 memoriesbut also investigating the possible replacement for that technology: DRAM memories in which Intel and SoftBank are also taking steps. And in addition to their own Exynos for their mobiles, there are sources who claim that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, is developing its own chip for artificial intelligence and is in talks with Samsung for it to be manufactured. Images | Applied Materials (edited) In Xataka | China’s future in the chip industry is in the hands of a single, almost unknown company: SiCarrier

Mexico knows that the future lies in technological sovereignty and has already chosen its “Silicon Valley: Jalisco and Sonora

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Mexico has undertaken the adventure of technological sovereignty. With her arrival to the presidency, Claudia Sheinbaum set the modest goal of “continuing to make Mexico the best country in the world.” To this end, he presented the ‘Mexico Plan‘, a roadmap to attract investment and develop industries such as biotechnology, electric cars or that of semiconductors. And the foundations for that ambitious chip manufacturing plan are already being built with a single idea in mind. Technological sovereignty. Kutsari. Silicon is extracted from sand and this is precisely what ‘kutsari’ means in Purépecha. It is also the name of Kutsari Project that seeks to stop importing a large part of the semiconductors that Mexico needs for the products it already manufactures. Puebla, Jalisco and Sonora are the three locations chosen to develop a plan that only pursues one objective: to stop being a country that assembles chips to become one that designs, manufactures and sells them. Jalisco moves. Since the project was announced, steps have been taken to get it started, and as we read in MillenniumJalisco has not wasted time. One of the poles of Kutsari will be the Cinvestav -Center for Research and Advanced Studies-. The reason is that it is the only institution in the country that has an agreement with Intel to generate integrated circuits in 16 nanometer lithography. Jalisco was already a semiconductor manufacturing point at the end of the last century and the Intel Design Center is located in the same area. That is why Jalisco has already been nicknamed the ‘Silicon Valley of Latin America’, a ‘hub’ in which different technology companies are settling, especially those dedicated to semiconductors, and which is bringing foreign investment. According to Pablo Lemusgovernor of Jalisco, if Mexico’s economy grew by 0.5%, due to that investment Jalisco’s grew by 4%. Sonora winks at the US. Another of the axes in this objective of technological sovereignty is Sonora. Recently, it signed an agreement to locate the Semiconductor Research and Development Center at the University of Sonora. Apart from being another thinking mind in the semiconductor strategy, Sonora has an advantage: the Mexico-US Trade Corridor, which seeks greater investment and regional connectivity. In the end, Sonora and Jalisco are taking steps in the same direction: investment, consolidation of already established infrastructures, construction of new buildings and strengthening agreements to attract talent. Goal: 2028. As they say, things in the palace move slowly, and currently both states are in a phase that we could classify as pre-production. They are preparing the ground in parallel, making advances in design, but also in talent and the ecosystem to create the chip production chain. Let’s remember the importance of having all this tied up (and the closer, the better), since it is one of the secrets behind the leadership of the Taiwanese TSMC. Once everything is ready, the manufacturing phase will begin, and in this sense, we also have to talk about the state of Puebla. In the municipality of Cholula will locate one of Mexico’s semiconductor production plants, one that will take advantage of all that knowledge developed by Jalisco and Sonora and that, it is expected, will begin producing chips by 2028 with an eye toward commercialization by 2029. Competence. It seems like a long time, but it is really a very short period to shape an industry as complex as semiconductors. But, obviously, you have to start somewhere and the latest advances in the Kutsari project show that Mexico remains determined to achieve a certain sovereignty in the chip segment. Now, we will see how far Mexico’s aspirations go and if its production is sufficient to satisfy the global market or it has to “settle” for the domestic market. The reason is that the component crisis of 2020 and the current RAM crisis It is teaching us something: you cannot depend on one country or a handful of companies. And there, Vietnam, India and China are strengthening for break technological hegemony which is currently in the hands of a few. This implies greater competition, but if Mexico’s plans go well, it also represents an opportunity that should not be missed. Image | ASML (edited) In Xataka | There is a global race to gain hegemony of critical minerals. And Mexico has just taken a key step

There is a Spaniard at the top of Silicon Valley. His name is Enrique Lores and he has just become CEO of PayPal

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The Spanish manager Enrique Lores has become the new CEO of PayPal. The company has announced it in his digital press room indicating that he will take office on March 1. This is a unique appointment that consolidates Lores’ career and places him in that select group of CEOs of large technology companies. And that is precisely its mission: to make PayPal really great again. At PayPal they knew him well. In the announcement, PayPal officials highlight that Lores had already been on the board of directors for five years, which makes it clear that the appointment is not entirely a surprise. The Spanish manager replaces Alex Chriss in the position, and for the adaptation stage the company’s current CFO, Jamie Miller, will act as interim CEO. The reason. From PayPal they explain that the signing comes from an evaluation of the business and how the company is in relation to its competition. “While some progress has been made in several areas over the past two years, the pace of change and execution has not lived up to the Board’s expectations. The Board is confident that the appointment of Lores, an executive with more than three decades of experience in technology and commerce, will provide the leadership necessary to lead PayPal into its next stage.” A life at HP. Lores had been CEO of HP Inc. for more than six years, where he led a series of strategic projects. During his tenure the firm has gone beyond PC and printers to expand its services and subscriptions business, in addition to starting the commitment to integration of AI in various business areas in the signature. He was also the main leader of the split between HP and HPE. Lores has spent much of his professional life at HP, where he achieved a leading role as vice president of the imaging and printing division for EMEA in 2001. Since then he has not stopped rising positions, but his time at HP ends now. There he will be replaced as CEO by Bruce Broussard, a member of the board since 2021. Remembering the ‘PayPal mafia’. The story of the founding and early years of PayPal is fascinating and an example of disruption. Among its founders are Elon Musk and Peter Thielbut in that team there were people who have ended up being the germ of a good part of the “internet 2.0”. He famous ‘PayPal Mafia’ phenomenon tells how after the purchase by eBay several members of the original team left the company to create their own projects. And among those projects are YouTube, LinkedIn or Yelp. PayPal continued to grow, without a doubt, but for today’s Internet what happened to it before the eBay purchase was more relevant than what happened after. difficult times. After separating from eBay in July 2015, PayPal carried out some strategic operations such as (the controversy) Honey in 2020. The pandemic caused e-commerce to skyrocket, which benefited it, and in October 2020 the company took a historic turn by allowing the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies. The end of confinement and the rise in rates caused a stagnation and then a fall in its assets, and competition from Apple Pay or Shopify eroded its market share in the traditional payment button market. An increasingly fragmented market. Apple and Google have managed to impose their payment solutions thanks to their competitive advantage, but PayPal has also been overtaken by Strupe, which won over developers with a cleaner and more flexible API. In Spain, for example, the use of Bizum has cannibalized that of PayPal (the same with Mercado Pago in Latin America) for payments between individuals, and PayPal’s commission structure is complex and does not help to earn money and recover the relevance of the past. Quite a challenge for Enrique Lores. Thus, the Spanish manager faces a truly formidable challenge. PayPal is still a big tech company, but its current market capitalization (39,830 million dollars), even though it is greater than that of HP (17,750) is very far from the true “Big Tech”. In fact it is the company number 620 by market capitalization according to CompaniesMarketCap. It will be interesting to see what measures Lores takes to boost the business of one of Silicon Valley’s legendary companies. In Xataka | The highest paid Spanish manager in the world does not work in a large technology company: he sells “sugar water”

While Silicon Valley dreams of servers in orbit, Russia prepares a nuclear reactor on lunar soil

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Until recently, the space race was about seeing who could get there first. Today, the question is different: who will be able to turn on the light on the Moon? While companies like Google or Nvidia imagine satellites loaded with computers for their Artificial Intelligence, Russia has hit the table with a much more earthly (or lunar) plan: installing a small nuclear power plant on the surface of our satellite. A reactor by 2036. The Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, has signed a state contract with the aerospace company NPO Lavochkin to develop a lunar nuclear power plant. According to Reutersthe deadline marked in the contract is 2036. However, the political times are much more aggressive: Yury Borisov, head of Roscosmos, has placed the real operational window between 2033 and 2035. Although official statements sometimes avoid the word “nuclear” directly, project participants dispel any doubts, the Kurchatov Institute (a leader in nuclear research in Russia) and Rosatom (the state atomic flagship company) are in charge. As the Interfax media points outthe objective is to power the infrastructure of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a joint project with China that seeks to move from “round trip” missions to a permanent human presence. But why what nuclear? A colony on the Moon faces nights that last 14 Earth days. During that time, the frigid temperatures and lack of light make the solar panels useless to keep astronauts alive or power life support systems. Mikhail Kovalchuk, head of the Kurchatov Institute, he explained in an interview with the Russian agency TASS that Russia must “run forward.” According to this medium, the country seeks to consolidate its leadership through the “Atomic Project 2.0”, which includes new generation reactors and closed cycle systems. It’s not just about science; Russia admits that partners like China and India have learned a lot from them and are now direct competitors. Eyes in the sky: preparing the ground. For the Russian reactor to reach the Moon, Moscow is already preparing the logistics. According to another TASS statementRussia plans to launch 52 satellites from the Vostochny cosmodrome. Among them, the Aist-2T stands out, capable of creating 3D models of the lunar terrain and monitoring emergency situations. It is the necessary infrastructure so that the “lunar atom” does not suffer the same fate as the failed Luna-25 probe in 2023. The Moscow-Beijing axis: a long-range alliance. This deployment is not a solitary effort. As Interfax detailsRussia and China formalized their ambition in May 2024 with a memorandum of cooperation for the joint construction of this nuclear plant. They are not starting from scratch: both countries presented a roadmap in 2021 that includes five joint missions to deploy modules in lunar orbit and surface. While Russia brings its historical advantage in space nuclear facilities, China provides the scientific capacity and resources for the ILRS Station to be permanently inhabited from 2030. The board of the new Cold War. Washington has not stood idly by in the face of the Russian-Chinese alliance. NASA has received a clear directive from the current administration, in which they state that They need a reactor on the Moon by 2030. “We are in a race with China,” said Sean Duffy, Secretary of Transportation and who has led this directive. The background of this urgency is not only prestige, but the control of strategic resources. The Moon is the great deposit of Helium-3, an extremely rare isotope that is emerging as the “fuel of the future” for nuclear fusion. The White House’s fear is that if the alliance between Russia and China comes sooner, they will be able to declare “exclusion zones,” blocking access to this isotope and other essential metals for the technology industry. Faced with this threat, the US has increased the power of its nuclear project from the original 40 kW to a minimum power of 100 kW. Infrastructure over prestige. The space race of the 21st century has ceased to be a question of prestige and has become a question of infrastructure. While Big Tech tries to solve its energy limits with promises of servers in orbitRussia and China have opted for the pragmatism of the reactor on solid, but lunar, soil. Image| freepik Xataka | The race to bring data centers to space promises a lot. Physics says otherwise

Silicon Valley doesn’t know what to do with so many unemployed engineers. Spain does not know where to get what it needs

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The global technology sector has been facing a kind of roller coaster very conditioned by AIin which while in some corners of the planet there is a commitment to destroying employment in this sector, in other countries it is created at a frenetic pace and even a scenario of staff shortage skilled. Since mid-2022, Silicon Valley has not stopped destroy technological jobs. On the other hand, in Spain the trend is just the opposite, and this sector has not stopped growing at a notable rate, being the exception among advanced economies. Global downward trends. A recent analysis by economist Brendon Bernard for the employment platform Indeed in Canada confirms that job offers in technology have slowed down in countries like the US and Canada. This change occurs after a crisis caused mainly by the pandemic and the collapse of the metaverse, which caused rounds of massive layoffs in large technology companies and drastic cuts between 2022 and mid-2023. The appearance of ChatGPT and the AI ​​fever managed to stop the downward trend in the sector’s offers, but the initial boost that AI seemed to give has stalled and technological employment in the world has not recovered its 2022 levels. Spain follows its own path. As and how they stand out in The Economistamong all this downward trend in technological employment in advanced economies, one stands out that marks a totally opposite path: Spain. Bernard’s study highlights that, while large advanced economies such as the United States (-34%), the United Kingdom (-41%), France (-38%) and Germany (-29%) reduce the number of technological job offers compared to their pre-pandemic levels, countries such as Singapore, Spain and Australia draw a graph in the opposite direction, creating new job offers at a double-digit rate. Technological employment in Spain. In Spain, technological employment is growing rapidly. According to data According to the Cotec Foundation for Innovation, 494,000 new positions have been created in technological activities since 2013, of which approximately half (about 240,000) have been generated after 2020. The weight of technological employment over total employment is especially high in communities such as Madrid (10.5%), Navarra (10%) and Catalonia (9%). On the other hand, regions such as the Balearic Islands (2.7%) or the Canary Islands (2.2%) have a lower concentration of technological job offers. Lots of supply, but much more demand. In fact, the rebound in the Spanish technology sector faces a serious challenge: staff shortages. According to the report HR Trends 2024‘ prepared by Randstad, more than 30% of companies reported difficulties in finding qualified talent in digital areas, which causes certain positions to take months to fill. This generates tensions in the technological labor market and increases competition by the professionals available. The Cotec Foundation report indicates that the growth in technological employment is based largely on programming, consulting and computing, which account for nearly 80% of the employment generated since 2020. To give a concrete example, Randstad data indicates that, during the third quarter of 2024, employment among programmers in Spain registered an increase of 16.4%. Demand reaches universities. According to the report’The Future of Talent in Artificial Intelligence and Data in Spain‘ prepared by INDESIA, in 2023 5,000 job offers in AI and data science were left unfilled per lack of trained candidates. The education system can only train about 6,000 new professionals annually in these areas, while demand is increasing. Núria Ávalos, general director of INDESIA, explained to The Country that “many grades are now emerging, but until these people are in a position to take on positions such as a data architect there are a few years left”, which exacerbates the gap between supply and demand. In response, companies and universities are exploring joint training models, where companies themselves become training centers to urgently cover this need for qualified talent. What AI gives you, AI takes away. Despite the good figures for technological employment in Spain, it is inevitable to observe the United States labor market as a canary in the mine that reveals where the trends in the futureand has already begun to give the first signs. While it is true that the arrival of AI stopped the decline in employment, as AI gains skills in programming and basic tasks, it is also promoting job automationwhich reduces the number of necessary technological employees, especially among those who just begin their working career. We are seeing a clear example in the latest layoffs from large technology companies, where not only are “accessory” positions for an approach whose objective is the development of AI, but engineers who until now are being fired they were developing that AI. In Xataka | Big Tech doesn’t stop firing its engineers. At the same time, they have stepped on the accelerator in hiring Image | Unsplash (Fatemeh Rezvani)

Hangzhou is the city of DeepSeek, Alibaba and Unitree without any of the typical Silicon Valley ingredients. His secret is another

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Hangzhou, a city of 12 million inhabitants 180 km south of Shanghai, is home to a striking number of powerful technology companies: Seven reference technologies (the six ‘little dragons’ plus the giant Alibaba) in a city that does not have any of the elements considered essential in Silicon Valley: Abundant venture capital. Leading universities. Links between university and industry. And a robust industrial structure. How could you then Hangzhou emerge well? The facts. Venture capital is plummeting in China. Funds in yuan have fallen from 88.42 billion dollars in 2022 to 5.38 billion in 2024. Funds in dollars, from 17.32 billion to 750 million. Hangzhou has not been a major recipient of investment until last year, when its province –Zheijang– stood out with 41 new corporate venture capital funds. But it was only after Unitree or Game Science had gained national attention. Missing. Hangzhou has only one elite university – Zhejiang – compared to 26 in Beijing, 11 in Jiangsu or 10 in Shanghai. The admission rate at Tsinghua and Beijing Universities for students from the capital (0.85%) is almost ten times that of students from Zhejiang (0.09%). None of the founders of “the six little dragons” or Alibaba created their company directly from university. Liang Wenfeng founded High-Flyer, the hedge fund after DeepSeekeight years after graduating. Jack Ma was rejected for 30 jobs after finishing his studies. Yes, but. The city has innovated by doing away with those ingredients. The explanation offered by Zilan Qian, a researcher at the Oxford China Policy Lab, points out ChinaTalk to “flexible governance”: a model where officials adopt “waiters” and “babysitters” mentality that facilitate rather than control. The context. Hangzhou does not have the political, financial or industrial importance of first-tier cities, which has given it greater local autonomy to shape its technology sector. Zhejiang province was a pioneer since the 1980s in promoting private enterprise during the early phases of Chinese economic reforms. Jack Ma He tried to establish Alibaba’s headquarters in Beijing or Shanghai, but failed due to the cost of rent and bureaucratic barriers. In 2015, Ma explained her decision: “Beijing favors state-owned enterprises, Shanghai favors foreign companies, and Alibaba was nothing in their eyes. If we return to Hangzhou, we become the local only child who receives all the attention and support.” Hangzhou is part of the sometimes called “chinese technology triangle“(sometimes also”golden triangle“) along with Shanghai and Shenzhen. More than a geometric reality, the functional metaphor describes the complementarity of three cities: Shenzhen provides industrial capacity and hardware. Shanghai concentrates finances and internationalization Hangzhou stands out in the internet, AI and an ecosystem favorable to private companies. Each vertex of the triangle has different strengths that, combined, generate an ecosystem where geographical proximity facilitates collaboration and flow of talent between the three poles. Between the lines. The model is described as “market-oriented” but maintains a level of centralized governance. The Hangzhou government sees quality of life as a strategy to attract businesses and talent, but positions itself as an enabler, not a controller. The absence of state-backed research institutes and a strong industrial base contributes to the government’s humble attitude. If Hangzhou were more strategic or more industrial, DeepSeek might not have had the creative space to emerge and provoke the earthquake that caused in January. The narrative of “self-made industry” and “entrepreneurial bureaucracy” admits conflicting readings. What some interpret as facilitation, others read as a euphemism for “dirigiste intervention by the State”, with a very defined plan of action and long-term objectives. “Flexible governance” can be both real local autonomy… and dirigisme disguised as pragmatism. At least it is no longer “a city south of Shanghai” but “Alibaba City” or “DeepSeek City”. In Xataka | China is selling us a future full of humanoid robots. We have (many) doubts Featured image | JinHui CHEN in Unsplash

There is an Italian technology giant that is enriched buying the corpses of Silicon Valley at the price of bargain and then relive them

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Vimeo He has just announced Its acquisition by the Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons, which will pay $ 1,380 million for it. A priori the operation seems totally normal, but it is not at all: it is the last of the acquisitions of a company that has become a unique “technological vulture”. One that, yes, seems to be managing to reimprorate the businesses you acquire. The numbers. Vimeo investors will receive $ 7.85 per share, which represents a price of 91% higher than the average value of the share in the last 60 days. The purchase process will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2025 and the payment of these amounts will be made completely in cash. They already tried. As they point out in Bloomberg, Bending Spoon has been raising an acquisition of Vimeo since March 2024. The Italian conglomerate, which he received A financing round That raised its valuation to 2.6 billion dollars, since then sought new acquisitions, and Vimeo was a clear objective. Evolution of the value of Vimeo’s actions in Nasdaq. Source: Google Finance YouTube was too youtube. Vimeo created in 2004, tried to stand out as a Premium video platform, but after several innovation and focus change milestones became a B2B service company for video. During pandemia He added 30 million new membersand that ended up in 2021 to go over. Profitability problems caused personnel cuts, and stock assessment ended up falling drastically. Vimeo has been living a difficult situation for the last years and without getting up. And that is just what blessing spoons has taken advantage of … because it is what it usually does. The Evernote case. What happened with Vimeo happened before with Evernote. The one that in the early last decade It was the notes and productivity app par excellence He ended up falling little by little for oblivion and losing ground in front of competitors such as Notion, Onenote or Obsidian. In November 2022 Evernote It was acquired by Bending Spoons And then what happened happened. After the purchase, layoffs and price uploads of the service. After the acquisition, Bending Spoons He fired most of the original team and transferred the headquarters to Europe. Then a strong price increase was implemented, and the personal plan rose 63% prices while the free version imposed more restrictive limits to use the platform. Source: Bloomberg But also, business resurrection and service. Although many left the platform, Evernote returned to profitability and revenues became 162 million dollars in 2022 to 700 million dollars in 2023. The rhythm of improvements and updates also He has revivedand the company seems to have lived a unique rebirth. Wetransfer, another exampleSimilar some also occurred with Wetransfer, which after being founded in 2009 was positioned as a simple transfer leader of large files. After a failed attempt to go over in 2022, Bending Spoons acquired Wetransfer In July 2024 and applied the same formula as with Evernote: dismissed 75% of the template to try to be more efficient. A few months ago the service suffered a great controversy for using user data To train their AI modelsalthough it ended Reculting. The service was relatively healthy before acquisition, and it seems that the operation is also being successful for the platform and, of course, for Bending Spoans. Diversifying successfully. In Bending Spoons they already applied that same strategy with previous acquisitions such as Filmic – of which He fired his entire template– Or Meetup —which too transferred its headquarters to Europe-. One of its most remarkable success is that of Reminia photo editing platform with AI that the Italian conglomerate acquired in 2021 and that it has managed to become a reference in this market, even surpassing in the most unloaded Apps lists from China to Douyin, its rival of Tiktok. In Xataka | An Italian winery installed solar panels on its vineyards and discovered something unexpected: they improve the quality of wine

With only two electric cars, Xiaomi is getting out of the “Valley of Death.” Others cost more than a decade

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The Xiaomi Su7 has surprised the entire industry And he has led the company to do such rare things as telling its customers in a hurry that buy cars from competition. The play hides a strategy, but it is a great example of how good it goes to the company with its second car and bets on luxury, The Yu7. While they hope to make the leap to Europe in 2027, he has achieved kneel. Lost 800 million In his first year he sold cars. Great news that already pointed to what was coming later: the Break Even When losing $ 500 per car sold is good news. Xiaomi has presented the Financial Results of the Second Fiscal Quarterwith great news for your car section. The Auto Division has commercialized 81,302 vehicles in the period and lost 41 million dollars. It is a loss of $ 507 for each car sold. It is very good news for the speed at which the company is approaching profitability. The photo. In the last quarters, Xiaomi comes from losing, on average, 1,376, 905 and 507 dollars respectively, after coming from losses of 5,250 in the third quarter of 2024. That is, it now loses a tenth of what I lost until November. And it is not the only positive figure that the results bring along with sales growth: the gross margin has grown from 15.4% of the second quarter of 2024 to 26.4% of this year. This contributes to having launched the Su7 ultrawhose launch has helped the average sale price up 10% in one year. With him they wanted to eat Porsche in his field, And they got it. According to its financial results, Xiaomi is very close to starting to earn money with its car section. Why it is important. Tesla is the only pure manufacturers of electric cars that He has managed to get out of the “Death Valley” the initial period in which Startups They burn money to espuertas without hardly generating money. Brands such as Rivian, Lucid, or Ford (in their electric division) have accumulated losses exceeding 22,200, 11,000 and 10,500 million dollars respectively. That Xiaomi only loses 41 million dollars per quarter with such competitive prices speaks of the balance that has its commitment just over a year after having launched. How are they getting it. Not all companies have The support that Xiaomi has had In his car crossing. In this sense, according to Bill Russo, CEO and founder of Automobility, a determining factor of Xiaomi’s success has to do with its production agility, which has benefited widely from producing with Beijing Auto, a state company that already had a huge production scale before the arrival of Xiaomi. The company was able to access a production chain already components of high quality already available in the market thanks to investments made by the matrix and its founder for years in companies such as companies such as Momenta. Another of the keys, according to John Helveston, a professor specialized in the Chinese electric vehicles industry: it is an achievement to manufacture an electric in such a short time, but attention must be paid to evolution. “The car industry is hard and success is measured in years of resistance, not in the speed of the first launch,” he told us. Xiaomi has passed in a year of being present in 30 cities with 87 stores to be in 92 with 335 stores. Image: Xiaomi. Xiaomi had a long way carved. Yes, even being new in the electric car sector. On the one hand, although you can buy online cars, by its already extensive distribution network In China: 335 sales centers in 92 cities, and growing at a dizzying pace. It is no longer the company we met for selling extremely cheap technology. Although it maintains a part of that bet, in recent years too He has focused on the premium with the support of luxury brands such as Leica. It is much more path of of some brands when arriving in Spain. The challenge. Among such good news, Xiaomi faces a problem: long waiting times and limited calendar. This explains that in China, the Su7 be the king of resalecosting more than new and with up to 10 months of waiting. To a limited production they also faced for years fAbricante as Teslaand Xiaomi has the best example of how to grow. In 2024 he achieved sell 4 million vehicles (In front of the 350,000 that Xiaomi hopes to sell this year). Xiaomi has a plan factor growth for his future cars and be able to face international expansion. It will be a crucial moment, for example companies like Novo Nordisk knows well: the problems for Ozempic in the United States began When they could not deal with demand. Cover image | Xiaomi In Xataka | Intel is closer than ever to be chopped. A giant is interested in buying its chips factories

Silicon Valley prefers to buy herself rather than invest in the future

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Great American technology They swim in money in cash but to a large extent they are preferring to spend it repurchase their own actions rather than invest. How the mechanism works. A shares is simple: the company uses its cash to buy its own market shares and withdraws them. If a company has 1,000 million shares and repurchase 100 million, there are 900 million. The trick is in arithmetic. If the benefits are the same but there are fewer actions, the benefit per action Go up. A company that earned 10,000 million with 1,000 million shares showed 10 dollars of benefit per share. With 900 million shows $ 11.11. The metric goes up even if the company has not improved at all. Executives charge on actions on actions. Your compensation increases. The funds see the value of their portfolios without waiting for years to mature real investments. The company avoids the risk of investing in projects that can fail .. It is capitalism without capitalism: financial returns without real value creation. Why is it important. The further reason towards the tendency to an increasing repurchase of actions can be inferred: fear. The American political climate has become especially complex for large industrial investments. Bureaucracy, regulations. It is safer to return money to shareholders than to risk building something real. Meta tried to expand his campus in Menlo Park next to a plan to create affordable homes and He crashed into years of bureaucracy. The project has been in pause for some time. Amazon He left his plan to open a second headquarters in New York for the strong political protests that unleashed his announcement. Intel has been trying to open factories. And seeing how China ends them in a couple of years. The financial refuge. Act repurchases have become the bunker where technological ones hide their cash. In 2025 They will exceed the billion dollarshistorical record. Warren Buffett himself, nothing suspicious of anti -capitalist, has once said that Many repurchases are “stupid”. Explained that they benefit more than paid executives in Stock Options (Actions options) than long -term shareholders. The context. The repurchases They were illegal in the United States until 1982when under the presidency of Ronald Reagan they were authorized. Until then they considered a form of market manipulation. They are now the main way to give back shareholders. They exceed traditional dividends. A Study of the Roosevelt Institute of 2018 He showed that S&P 500 companies then spent 94% of their benefits on repurchases and dividends, leaving barely margin for productive investment. And now what. In the United States, some Democratic senators proposed a couple of years ago a 4% tax on repurchase programs to discourage them. What came from the hand of Biden It was 1% that has not had a great effect. For Europe, which depends technologically on the United States, this trend is worrying. If Silicon Valley prefers financial engineering to real, vulnerability against Chinese advance increases. In Xataka | The agreement with the US seemed to pave the way to Nvidia in China. Now is the Asian giant who begins to close the door Outstanding image | Roberto Júnior

Something is happening in Silicon Valley. More and more startups are going to the day ‘996’ of China

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“If you want to leave at 5 you are not at the right work.” Lucy Guo said it, Founder of the Startup Scale AI. And it is not the only one. More and more Silicon Valley startups, especially those dedicated to AI, which are betting on this “extreme commitment” model that reminds us of the endless 996 Conference that were so controversial in China. What is happening? New culture. The culture of ultra-productivity defended by figures like Elon Musk It has been installed in Silicon Valley. In statements a WiredAdrian Kinnersley, CEO of a hiring company, says that “it is becoming very common. We have several clients who have as a prerequisite when selecting candidates who are willing to work on days 996”. Hysteria. In California, labor legislation is very favorable for workers and Kinnersley is surprised that many companies are “breastfeeding it.” It is one of the consequences of the AI career. Not only is there a great competition between China and the United StatesSilicon Valley has become the battlefield where small startups fight for being number one in his. The price: squeeze your workers. What was given was over. Not long ago, working in Silicon Valley was a dream for many. Companies like Google were known for offering gyms, coffee shops and even masseuses. All kinds of comfort for that employees felt at home. That is over. With the return to the offices after the pandemic, The dream began to fade. The tortilla has turned around. Today it is common for any startup to ask its employees to make marathon days and even work on weekends. Extreme commitment. It is another way of saying that you will not go through home much. We recently talked about the young CEO of Greptile and his controversial statements. “We do not offer conciliation”he said in Your X profile. The CEO says it directly in the work interviews: they work from 9 in the morning until late at night and, often, also on Saturdays. It looks a lot like China 996: from nine to nine, six days a week. The excuse: be competitive. In an interview, this CEO said that “nobody cares about the third best company, not even the second best, in any software category. If you are going to strive 95%, it is the equivalent of striving to 0%.” There are arranged people. In Spain we have attended the opposite in the hospitality sector: The waiters rebelled against the 12 -hour days, to the point that there was no labor. In Silicon Valley it seems that there are enough people willing to work 996. In Rilla, another AI startup, they say that 80% of their employees are working 72 hours a week. Even They put it in their job offers And they are not having problems hiring. His CEO says that there is “a very strong and growing subculture, especially in my generation (the Gene z), who grew up listening to stories by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, entrepreneurs who dedicated their lives to create companies that changed the world. ” 996 in China. The 996 day became popular in China among Chinese technology last decade. This model was the growth engine of companies such as Alibaba or JD.com for years, but there came a point where The workers were fed up and The protests began demanding better working conditions. The Chinese government ended up prohibiting The endless days and went from 996 to 1065 (from 10 in the morning to 6 in the afternoon, five days a week). Temporary and only for those who want. There are startups that defend a slightly more moderate hyper-productive culture. The CEO of Sotiraa startup that applies AI solutions to the logistics sector, sees it as something temporary: “During the first two years of your startup, you have to work in the 996 style.” He also states that these days are for the leaders of the companies and does not believe that the entire employee base must be imposed. This vision creates a kind of structure on two levels, where only a part of the company meets these schedules. It is what the CEO of the “Telesalud” Fella & Delilah company proposed to its employees in a Publication in your LinkedIn. Employees who adhere to this schedule will receive a 25% increase in their salary. Image |Ron Lach, Pexels In Xataka | Work tired, stress and generates burnout. There is a way to reduce all that impact: the four -day week

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