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Nokia Bell Labs has a long, storied historyproducing Nobel Prize winners, creating innovative new technologies, and bolstering critical infrastructure that underlies most of the devices we all use every day. This week, it held a special event at its Murray Hill, New Jersey campus to celebrate its 100th anniversary, and it featured appearances by politicians like New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, business leaders, and even a robot named Porcupine. The expansive campus houses a number of laboratories where, over the past century, numerous groundbreaking discoveries and inventions have been made or perfected, including cell phones, transistors, and solar cells. Nokia acquired Bell Labs in 2016 when it purchased Alcatel-Lucent. The vast complex is mostly empty now, as it was built for a time when thousands of workers would fill its labs and offices. As a part of the anniversary celebrations, Fast Company was able to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the complex, and several of the projects and laboratories that are working on new and advancing technologieslabs that are typically shut away from the public eye. Despite Bell Labs relatively small in-office workforce, there are still researchers and scientists toiling away on numerous projects, which include augmenting undersea data cable technology, creating real-time AI platforms to increase mining operations, and new tech related to telecommunications devices and arrays. This is all largely tech that flies under the publics radar, but is critical for supporting cell phones and wireless internet works. For example, because of the work thats been done at Bell Labs and other facilities over the past couple of decades, much of our wireless and telecom infrastructure was able to handle the surge in demand due to the pandemic, when much of work and schooling was done remotely. If the pandemic had occurred a decade earlier, one researcher said, it would have crippled us. There was also a demonstration related to Nokias ongoing Industrial GPT research, which includes training robots to understand and react to voice commands. One demonstration even included a robot named Porcupine that has the ability to find specific containers in a warehouse-like setting or figure out if inventory is missing, and how to replace it. The company is also hard at work on quantum computing projects, which have massive potential, if ever fully realized. Michael Eggleston, a physicist and Research Group Leader at Nokia, says that despite what some business leaders say, quantum computers are real, and theyre here. However, there are many different types that can be used for different aims. Whether or not the technology convergesthats the big question, he says. In effect, Eggleston and others are working on perfecting the underlying quantum technology before bringing quantum computing products and services to the market, where they stand to exponentially increase computing power across the boardsomething that could potentially dwarf the changes AI tech has recently brought to the world. The event also served as something of a swan song for the Bell Labs complex, as Nokia is preparing to transplant its labs and researchers to the new HELIX complex in nearby New Brunswick. That move is planned to be completed by 2028.
Category:
E-Commerce
As the threat of a U.S. trade war with China continues to send markets tumbling, the headlines have been chock full of stock market lingo. Now, analysts are saying the S&P 500 Index is on the precipice of bear market territory, but what does that even mean? Here’s a look at this and other Wall Street terms currently in the news. What is a bear market? First things first. A bear market is defined as when a broad market index, like the Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) falls by 20% or more from its recent peak for a sustained period of time. The S&P 500 is a good gauge because it tracks the performance of 500 leading companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges. Another good example is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Are we in a bear market? We certainly got close: On Monday, the S&P 500 opened lower, down 17.4 percent from its high on February 19. A close of Mondays trading with a loss of at least 3.1 percent would have tipped it into a bear market, according to the New York Times. But after stock markets surged on Wednesday after President Trump’s 90-day pause of reciprocal tariffs, we’re a little less at risk. However, stock markets continued to fall on Thursday: The S&P 500 closed down 3.34%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.46%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 4.31%. For some context, the last bear market occurred in 2022, when the S&P benchmark fell 34% in a one-month period, per the Associated Press. What’s the difference between a bear and bull market? Unlike a bear market, which marks a decrease of 20% or more from a recent market high, a bull market indicates a period when the index is rising. As Fidelity Investments points out, that could be a 20% increase from recent lows, although there are other thresholds. There have been 26 bull markets since 1877. As the AP explains it, bears hibernate while bulls charge ahead. What is a ‘circuit breaker’ and what causes the market to halt trading? Market-wide circuit breakers temporary halt trading during a major market decline to prevent panic during high volatility. In the U.S., those rules are governed and implemented by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and were created to prevent a repeat of the 1987 market crash when the Dow lost 22.6% in a day. Today, these rules have been updated to halt U.S. trading when the S&P 500 Index drops 7%, 13%, and 20% in a day. The first two circuit breakers halt trading for at least 15 minutes, and can only be triggered between 9:30 a.m. ET and 3:25 p.m. ET, according to Barron’s, who note if the S&P 500 declines 20%, that would stop trading for the rest of the day. On Monday, Nikkei stock futures trading briefly halted on Japan’s Tokyo Stock Exchange after the Nikkei 225 fell 7%, adding to last weeks 9% drop. A circuit breaker, was triggered at 8:45 a.m. local time, which paused trading for 10 minutes, the Wall Street Journal reported. That circuit breaker kicks in when trading is set to rise or fall more than 8%. While the trading paused the Nikkei 225 and several other futures contracts, it did not stop the direct buying and selling of stocks on the exchange.
Category:
E-Commerce
Chinese tea chain Chagee said on Thursday it was targeting a valuation of up to $5.1 billion in its U.S. initial public offering, braving choppy market conditions. Market volatility stemming from uncertainty over U.S. trade policy has tempered IPO activity as companies adopt a wait-and-see approach before proceeding. Shanghai-based Chagee is seeking up to $411 million by offering nearly 14.7 million American depositary shares priced between $26 and $28 each. The IPO also comes as the world’s two biggest economies are locked in an escalating trade war, prolonging macroeconomic uncertainty. While Chagee warned of some hit from the tariffs, it said “cross-border trade” was not its principal business. All of its products are manufactured in China. China in recent years has tightened scrutiny around firms pursuing offshore IPOs. Last year, Beijing stalled listings of several tea beverage companies worried over the poor performance of listed peers. Chagee, which specializes in raw-leaf fresh milk tea, is the latest in a string of Chinese consumer brands to pursue offshore IPOs in recent months. Chinese bubble tea firms Mixue and Guming went public in Hong Kong earlier this year. Chinese IPOs on U.S. exchanges raised $1.15 billion in 2024, compared with $469.7 million in 2023, according to data compiled by LSEG. That amount was still far below the $12.85 billion raised in 2021. “The IPO market rarely shuts down completely, and when it does, it doesn’t happen for long,” said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of IPO-focused research and ETFs. Cornerstone investors have indicated interest in purchasing Chagee’s shares worth up to $205 million sold in the IPO. Rapid rise Founded in 2017 by Junjie Zhang, Chagee opened its first store in Yunnan province and has since rapidly expanded across and beyond China. The tea brand generated 29.5 billion yuan ($4.03 billion) in sales last year, with over 6,000 teahouses worldwide at the end of 2024. Nearly all of its stores are set in China under a franchise scheme. Chagee plans on serving customers across 100 countries and selling 15 billion servings annually as it aggressively expands its global reach. In recent years, Chagee has expanded across Southeast Asia, entering Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Chagee will list on the Nasdaq under the symbol “CHA”. Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and CICC are the lead underwriters for the offering. ($1 = 7.3140 Chinese yuan renminbi) Arasu Kannagi Basil, Pritam Biswas, and Ateev Bhandari, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
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