Bad news! So various Western countries already imposed high tariffs on Chinese fast fashion products.
Showing posts with label business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 01, 2026
Shein’s Fall Exposes A Bigger Problem for Fast Fashion with Palki Sharma
Sunday, August 30, 2026
How Sweden built one of Europe’s hottest startup ecosystems
Recommendable!
"Sweden is perhaps one of the world’s hottest tech hubs right now. It has long been home to Spotify and Klarna, but this latest wave of companies — from legal AI startup Legora to vibe-coding tool company Lovable — has left everyone wondering what’s going on in one of the world’s happiest countries. ...
This year, the startup ecosystem has raised $2.8 billion in funding, according to Dealroom, and is projected to hit at least $5 billion.
Last year, the ecosystem raised $3.2 billion.
Nothing has quite matched the $8.5 billion raised in 2021 — a reflection of the hot venture market that later cooled and is now, per the data, starting to heat back up again. Other big emerging names from the ecosystem include Neko Health and autonomous freight company Einride. ...
the latest wave of startups in Stockholm is benefiting from the first generation of entrepreneurs, who are providing resources and mentorship to the latest generation — or, in some cases, becoming repeat founders themselves (Spotify founder Daniel Ek, for instance, is also the founder of Neko Health). ..."
What is not Lovable about Sophia Bendz (Source), a general partner at Cherry Ventures based in Stockholm. Just kidding!
Saturday, August 29, 2026
Friday, August 28, 2026
Dolly Parton a business manager, a wealthy lady and a great philanthropist
Maybe her best lifetime contributions!
I have to admit I was not aware of this side of her long career!
P.S. I just learnt that Dolly Parton died about within one year of her husband Carl Dean (died at age 83? Born 1942?) with whom she was married for over 60 years.
"Dolly Gave Away More Than She Kept
Dolly Parton, who died Tuesday at 80, built a $450 million fortune from a childhood in a one-room Tennessee cabin. By some estimates, she gave away even more, roughly $500 million.
Her defining deal was one she turned down. In 1974, Elvis Presley’s manager demanded half the publishing rights to I Will Always Love You. “Something in my heart says, don’t do that,” she later recalled. Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover of that song earned Parton an estimated $20 million.
She kept her name on the rest of her business, too: half of Dollywood, her Tennessee theme park empire, and a 3,000-song catalog valued at $120 million.
Her philanthropy was lifelong, and much of the giving went through her Dollywood Foundation, established in 1988. Its Imagination Library, a tribute to her father, who never learned to read, has mailed more than 330 million free books to children."
Dolly Parton in 1970 (Source)
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money
Bad news?
"YouTube announced on Monday that new creators will have to meet higher thresholds to begin earning money from ads and subscriptions.
Creators who want to start earning on the platform will need at least 8,000 qualified watch hours over the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days.
Currently, creators need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year or 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over the past 90 days. ..."
New opportunities to earn and changes to the YouTube Partner Program (original news release)
Sunday, August 09, 2026
There’s a 45% chance of being left empty-handed on your car insurance if you have a car accident.
Serious stuff if confirmed!
I know from personal experience that a car insurance paid way too much for a very minor accident presumably without proper or no investigation of the claims.
"Americans got into more than six million traffic accidents last year. But depending on the type of crash, the chance of getting a payout from your insurer has become increasingly remote.
Auto insurers didn’t pay out on 45% of auto liability and medical claims they resolved last year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of thousands of company regulatory filings. That’s up from around one in three [33%] of such claims a decade ago."
A suspected Miami gangster is causing headaches for Jared Kushner’s Albania luxury real estate deal
Doing business in foreign lands can be challenging! 😊
Jared Kushner is the current "United States Special Envoy for Peace Missions" (Source)
"An ambitious plan backed by Jared Kushner to build a high-end luxury complex along Albania’s Adriatic coastline has sparked widespread protests and an investigation by the country’s organized-crime prosecutors.
Anti-corruption officials allege that a Miami-based businessman who sold the site’s coastal land for €110 million (equivalent to around $125 million), laundered international cocaine money and forged property deeds to execute the deal. The criminal probe adds intense legal fuel to weeks of mass public protests against the multi-billion-dollar development."
Jared Kushner & Ivanka (Source)
Saturday, August 08, 2026
Tesla and SpaceX will invest an initial $16.8B to start building 'Terafab' chip factory in Texas
Impressive! This is huge!
"Tesla and SpaceX said Thursday that “Terafab,” the advanced chip factory they are jointly developing, will be built in Grimes County, Texas, outside Houston, and that they will make an initial investment of $16.8 billion in the project.
The factory will be “the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Elon Musk, CEO of both companies, wrote in a post on Thursday. More than 100 million square feet of manufacturing space is planned for the facility, according to SpaceX. ..."
"... construct a vertically integrated semiconductor fabrication plant in Grimes County. The first phase of the Terafab project represents a capital investment of more than $16.8 billion and will create 3,000 new jobs. ..."
"... Terafab will be epic in both its mission and in its sheer size, designed to build new compute at an unprecedented scale and speed.
A vertically integrated factory with more than 100 million square feet of manufacturing space is planned.
This facility will house the manufacturing, packaging, and testing of advanced logic and memory devices. Bringing these aspects together in one location will enable fast, recursive improvements and accelerate new compute deployed. Terafab will produce chips optimized for edge computing and inference for use in hardware like Tesla’s Optimus robots and self-driving Cybercabs, along with high-power chips designed for operating SpaceX’s space-based data centers. ...
Much of the world’s semiconductor production remains concentrated overseas, and the United States has recognized the importance of rebuilding advanced manufacturing capacity domestically. Terafab aligns with that broader national effort by expanding high-end manufacturing capacity in Texas. ...
The Terafab site is committing to the use of Gibbons Creek Reservoir water for industrial operations rather than local groundwater; planned on-site wastewater treatment facilities; water reuse and conservation efforts ..."
Breaking Ground on Terafab in Texas (original news release)
Thursday, August 06, 2026
Jeff Dean and three other top AI researchers are leaving Google to launch their own startup
This is serious stuff! What a brain drain! This translates into e.g. 1.3 million lifetime citations going away from Google according to Google Scholar.
At least Google was able to retain Koray Kavukcuoglu (345,000 citations).
I have read many of the papers by these well known ML & AI researchers.
"Jeff Dean, one of the longest-serving and most influential executives at Google, is stepping down from the search giant to launch his own AI startup.
Coming with him as co-founders are several other top researchers at the company, including Sanjay Ghemawat, a top engineer and senior fellow at Google; Quoc Le, a key AI researcher and founding member of Google Brain; and Oriol Vinyals, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind. Dean reportedly plans to serve as CEO. ...
Together, the group is starting Discovery Loop, a public benefit corporation that seeks to use AI to turbo-charge scientific research. ...
The startup is also interested in using AI to help create more powerful AI (a process known as recursive self-improvement), which would cut human iteration out of the loop entirely. ..."
"Google announced new leadership of its AI operations after a wave of high-profile departures and delays in releasing a model on par with top offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI.
Demis Hassabis is stepping down as chief executive of Google DeepMind to become chairman and chief scientist, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a post on X. Google DeepMind technology chief Koray Kavukcuoglu is taking on responsibility for all AI-model development, and Jeff Dean, Google’s current chief scientist, is leaving with three other company veterans to co-found a new AI startup. Despite early investments in AI and a massive user base, Google has struggled to maintain a dominant position in the market. ..."
Four Top Google A.I. Researchers Form New Start-Up (behind paywall)
Tuesday, August 04, 2026
Bending Spoons to buy Airtable for $1.28B
Business headline of the day!
Maybe the CEO or founders of Bending Spoons is a Uri Geller fan? Who bent over backwards? What was on the table? Caution satire!
"In its first acquisition since going public last month, Bending Spoons on Tuesday said that it has agreed to buy spreadsheet and database startup Airtable for $1.28 billion in cash. ..."
Uri Geller bending a spoon by mental force (Source)
After firing 600 workers monday.com CEOs seek double pay by 2029
This is probably the kind of headline no CEO ever wants to see! What went wrong? What were these two CEOs thinking? 😊 Or is this fake news? Or were these two CEOs previously underpaid?
"monday.com has approximately 2,500 employees" (Google Search)
What will the impact on the remaining employees be?
"Just two weeks ago they announced the layoffs of some 600 employees, and now monday.com (Nasdaq: MNDY) founders and co-CEOs Roy Mann and Eran Zinman are asking for a substantial pay rise. In advance of the company’s general shareholders meeting due to be held on August 6 ..."
Sunday, August 02, 2026
Chinese trains packed with ACs speed into Europe to help with heat wave
Headline of the day! Why does Europe not produce enough ACs?
Rooftop solar panel tariffs to fall sharply in 2027 in Israel
Food for thought! The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!
How heavy are rooftop solar panels government subsidized in Western countries? I bet way too much!
Caveat: I did not read the article.
India's consumers are starting to pay for apps, not just download them
Good news!
"For years, India was the world’s largest app download market but one of its toughest places to make money. That is beginning to change as Indian consumers spend more on AI, entertainment, and other premium apps.
India’s mobile app market generated a record $345 million in consumer spending during the second quarter of this year, up 35% from a year earlier, according to a new report by Sensor Tower. The app-market intelligence firm said the gains were increasingly driven by generative AI, streaming, and productivity apps rather than gaming, as Indian consumers became more willing to pay for digital subscriptions.
The record quarter builds on a broader trend of rising app monetization. India’s revenue per download has more than doubled over the past three and a half years, while quarterly app downloads have remained at around 6.3 billion since 2023. ...
attributed the change to the wider adoption of digital payments, including India’s Unified Payments Interface (a system that lets people pay directly from their bank accounts) and digital wallets, which have reduced friction for in-app purchases, alongside growing acceptance of app-based subscriptions and premium digital services. ...
India still trails more mature app markets by a wide margin. Revenue per download stands at about $4.60 in the U.S., $3.90 in South Korea, and $6.10 in Japan, compared with a small fraction of that in India. ..."
India Mobile App Market in Q2 2026: IAP Hit a New High of $345 Million (Up 35%); Story TV Emerged as India’s No.1 Short Drama App, While Meesho Led Shopping App Downloads "Market Overview: India’s Mobile App Market Reached Record Revenue, Fueled by Strong Non-Gaming Growth"
Uber is building an autonomous vehicle empire of over 30 companies in the US, Europe, Middle East, Japan and China
Recommendable! Impressive! This is kind of a survey article. Going far beyond traditional car rental.
I am ready to give up my own car (no mor car insurance payments, car repair costs, groceries by home delivery etc.). 😊
Thursday, July 30, 2026
SpaceX moves to keep Chinese nationals, parts out of supply chain
Good news!
I blogged here yesterday that President Trump asked the federal government to do similar things.
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Deutsche Automarken brauchen Technologie aus China
Neues aus der Bananenrepublik D! Schlagzeile des Tages!
Sunday, July 26, 2026
Elon Musk’s Boring Company reportedly raising funding at a $20 billion valuation up from $5.7 billion in 2022
What boring good news! 😊 Elon Musk, the man with a Midas Touch/drill or Tunnel Vision? Just kidding!
"Elon Musk’s tunneling startup The Boring Company is in talks to raise a $4 billion funding round at a valuation of $20 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The deal hasn’t closed and the terms could change, the WSJ says. At $20 billion, the valuation would be a significant increase from The Boring Company’s $5.7 billion valuation in 2022. ..."
Sam Altman's side project, the biometric startup World raises $52.5M via crypto sale
Good news! Sam Altman, a visionary or an altruist? Or is it Orwellian?
"... Sam Altman's side project — which seeks to scan the world's eyeballs and turn them into unique digital identifiers — has raised some fresh cash through a crypto sale."
"... The money will go to the World Foundation, an exempted limited guarantee foundation based in the Cayman Islands, created to steward the expansion of World’s network. ...
The World project is operated by Tools for Humanity (TFH), a startup based in San Francisco and led by CEO and co-founder Alex Blania. Altman is the company’s other co-founder. ...
To get a verified World ID (the highest level of verification within World’s system), users must have their eyes scanned by an Orb, a metallic ball that converts a user’s iris into a distinct cryptographic identifier. World’s Orbs are located at its offices and have also been deployed at partner stores around the world. ..."
The Orb or Orwellian?
Thursday, July 23, 2026
Chemical recycling plants closing in EU and US
Bad news! More research is certainly needed to find better and cheaper ways to recycle plastics or find better substitutes for plastics!
Is this article possibly spreading alarmism and hysteria?
"The nascent chemical recycling industry – in which plastics are broken down into oils or constituent monomers to be remade into new materials – is contracting across Europe and the US as recyclers call for policy stability to make the industry investable.
Recent closures, postponements or project cancellations ‘reflect the broader structural crisis facing the whole of Europe’s plastics recycling industry (both mechanical and chemical),’ says Maria Vera Duran, policy director at industry body Recycling Europe. ..."
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