The Snips Journal - Weekly Newsletter - Issue #6
This week, we have for you:
5 Snips In Numbers
5 Tiny Snips
1 Snip Thread
Sit back and feel those knowledge gains coming!đȘđȘđȘ
Snips In Numbers
SiN #57 â $212 Billion
That is the annual budget for the State of New York for the Financial Year 2021 â â22! It is a 10% increase over the previous year. For context, The Annual Budget of the whole nation of India for 2021 â â22 is just about $470 Billion!
Sin #58 â $110 Billion
That is how much the on going worldwide semiconductor chip shortage is expected to cost the global automotive industry in revenue in 2021, according to consulting firm AlixPartners.
SiN #60 â $208 Million
That is the value of Bitcoins sold within a 10 minute period in all the exchanges after Elon Muskâs Tweet on May 13 regarding Tesla suspending its policy of accepting Bitcoins as payment for their cars and his concern for the volume of fossil fuels Bitcoin consumes for it to operate.
Over the course of a day, it went from about $57000 to about $47000.
SiN #63 â 258,700
That is the total number of employees working for the Logistics division of the Chinese E-commerce giant JD.com. For a comparison, that is almost double that of the whole of Alphabet, Googleâs parent company(135,301).
SiN #65 â 350
That is the number of startups that operate in blockchain and cryptocurrencies in India. There are approximately 1.5 crore Indians who have invested in cryptocurrencies holding Rs 15,000 crore according to Moneycontrol. Ironically, Indians have substantial exposure to crypto even when the government is trying to ban them!
Tiny Snips
TS #29 Big Blue goes Nano
IBM on May 6th unveiled a breakthrough in semiconductors design with the announcement of their 2 nanometers(nm) chips. These were achieved with their nanosheet technology. It is projected to achieve 45% higher performance, or 75% lower energy consumption compared to the current industry standard 7nm chips.
Semiconductors are essentially the âbrainâ of our smart devices. Each incremental reduction in size translates to an improvement in efficiency and performance and key to unlocking the true potential of Artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT).
Among many things IBM has shared about the potential use cases of 2nm, some noticeable ones are:
Quadruple the life of a cell phone battery
Drastically speeding up a laptopâs functions, ranging from quicker processing in applications to assisting in language translation more easily, to faster internet access.
Allow the lightning-fast object detection and reaction time necessary for safe autonomous vehicles.
Slashing the carbon footprint of data centers,which account for one percent of global energy use. Changing all of their servers to 2 nm-based processors could potentially reduce that number significantly.
TS #31 â The Curse of a Verse!
Recently, the CEO of the Chinese Delivery Giant Meituan had posted a verse from a 1,100 year old poem on the Chinese microblogging site Fanfou(Weibo). Over the course of the next 2 days, his company lost $26 billion in value and he personally lost $2.5 billion of his wealth!
The reason? The quote.
The verse he posted was from the poem The Burning Book which criticized Qin Shi Huang, who proclaimed himself the first âemperorâ of a unified China in 221 BC.
Many took it as an indirect criticism of the government, which has been on the back of some of the tech giants of the country in the name of antitrust and is implementing strict regulations.
Others compared it to the way Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma criticized the government last year.
Either way, it lead to investors and the public becoming doubtful of the companyâs prospects in the near future as is clear from the market reaction to the stock of Meituan.
More here.
TS #35 â E-Scooter Franchising
Bird is a micro-mobility startup that lets customers share e-scooters parked in sidewalks, in a way becoming Uber for e-scooters.
Started in 2017 by a former Uber and Lyft executive, Bird initially started by dropping electric scooters onto the sidewalks of major cities and let the customers remotely unlock and rent them using their app.
This model grabbed many eyes and led to Bird becoming one of the fastest startups to reach $1billion. This model was so popular in Silicon Valley that it was picked up by Uber and Lyft, only to drop it a few years later. In 2018, it was valued at around $3 billion.
The journey hence has been difficult for Bird. In 2019, it had an adjusted EBITDA loss of $226 million followed by a loss of $183 million in 2020. It forecasts its loss to be $96 million for this year.
It has announced plans recently to go public via a SPAC deal valuing it at $2.3 billion, about 20% less than its valuation peak in 2018.
Bird launched its Fleet Management Program last year whereby local entrepreneurs sign up to manage and maintain a fleet of e-scooters on Birdâs behalf. Bird encourages Fleet Managers to purchase fleets of e-scooters from Bird, with the company providing financing according to Motley Fool. This program makes it the McDonaldâs of e-scooter sharing. Bird believes this initiative to improve its unit economics.
TS #37 The Wildcard of Batteries
The future of the automotive industry are EVâs and thatâs an undisputable fact. But at the present moment EVâs are still lacking when it comes to competing with ICE (Internal Combustion Engines) vehicles. This âlackâ is mainly seen in the range of the vehicles. The current lithium-ion batteries used in EVâs get the job done but they are not efficient in the long run of a car.
Here enters the Lithium Metal batteries. A lithium-ion battery is composed of cathode, anode, separator and electrolyte. A lithium-ion battery uses a liquid electrolyte solution. On the other hand, a solid-state battery uses solid electrolyte, not liquid*. Engineers at Harvard have developed a solid-state lithium-ion battery that is capable of charging and discharging over 10,000 charge cycles and it still held 82% of itâs charge after 10,000 cycles.
Until now scientists were unable to create a stable lithium-metal battery which could be used for commercial purposes. The development, made by the team at Harvard Universityâs School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) would increase the lifetime of electric vehicles to that of of their gasoline counterparts â while simultaneously increasing their range and reducing their charge time (10 minutes for a full charge!!). âA lithium-metal battery is considered the holy grail for battery chemistry because of its high capacity and energy density,â said Xin Li, an associate professor at SEAS.
TS #39 â Alibaba X Tencent
Alibaba and Tencent, both are Chinese tech giants with diversified interest across different business sectors ranging from commerce to social media and gaming. Among the two, Alibaba has a market cap of $588 Billion(approx.) while Tencent boasts a $730 Billion valuation.
With the Chinese governmentâs crackdown on its tech giants recently regarding antitrust issues both these companies were slapped with gigantic fines â Alibaba to the tune of $2.8 Billion and Tencent with $1.5 Billion. But the corresponding effect was different.
This is the first time Alibaba has reported a loss since becoming public in 2014.
The vast difference may be attributed to the following factors:
Tencent has a significant stance on the gaming market worldwide, with its distribution of PUBG and Honor of Kings. It also owns Chinaâs WhatsApp(WeChat). The pandemic saw an increase in the use of these two services manifolds.
Alibaba has been in the crosshairs of the government since its failed IPO of Ant Financial(its payments arm) and JackMaâs October 2020 speech criticizing the government. Alibaba also has most of its resources in commerce, which has tight competition from other players like Pinduoduo. Its CEO attributed the loss to its $2.8 Billion fine.
Snip Threads
The Mega Media âUn-dealâ
Prologue
In any sector, the company that has a control over its whole vertical â from the underlying infrastructure to the products delivered through â tends to provide the best results both for the customer as well as the business itself. For the business, it leads to better management, reduced costs, better integration etc. which, for the customer, translates to an overall better experience.