Nissan Tumbles; Google AI Fund; Waymo Torched

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Nissan Tumbles 12% on Earnings

The share price of the Japanese auto giant [7201:T] logged its biggest drop in more than two decades Friday, wiping out $1.8bn of its market value, after quarterly earnings came in well below analyst predictions. The firm also cut its sales forecast, attributing this to tough competition in the key Chinese market — Nissan’s biggest until 2022, when domestic brands began to supplant it, Reuters reported.

Huang: AI Costs Will Drop

“You can’t assume just that you will buy more computers. You have to also assume that the computers are going to become faster and therefore the total amount that you need is not as much,” said Nvidia [NVDA] CEO Jensen Huang at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday, responding to reports that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is seeking to raise $7trn from Middle Eastern investors, with a view to funding chipmaking projects to challenge Nvidia’s predominance.

New Google AI Training Fund for Europe

On Monday Google [GOOGL] announced it is to dedicate €25m to training Europeans to use artificial intelligence (AI); the tech giant said it was accepting applications from social enterprises and non-profit organisations to partner with on the project. It will also run a series of “growth academies” to help businesses scale with AI, and has expanded its free online AI training courses to include 18 languages.

Major Novo Investment Pipeline

Novo Holdings, Novo Nordisk’s [NVO] controlling shareholder and the investment arm of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, plans to invest some $35bn by 2030, CEO Kasim Kutay told Reuters on Monday. Meanwhile, a new study has found that the use of Ozempic, Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster semaglutide prescription for diabetes patients, was associated with a 44% lower chance of infection in new hip replacements.

San Francisco Crowd Cheers Waymo Torching

A self-driving car produced by Alphabet-owned [GOOGL] Waymo was vandalised and set on fire in San Francisco on Saturday night, in the most destructive attack on such vehicles to date. The car was moving along a street in the city’s Chinatown during Lunar New Year celebrations; nobody was inside. This comes as the California state regulator reviews an incident in which a Waymo robotaxi hit a bicyclist in the city last week.