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BEIJING (Reuters) -Apple's iPhone Air would be available for pre-order in China later this week, as major Chinese telecom operators obtained regulatory approvals for eSIM services, the company said on Monday. The iPhone Air, priced from 7,999 yuan ($1,121.56), will be the only model in China to have service providers' support for an eSIM – a digital SIM embedded in the device. The country's three major telecom companies – China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom – have all been cleared by regulators to provide trial eSIM services, a website affiliated with the industry ministry said on Monday. "Excited to announce iPhone Air will be available next week and pre-orders start this Friday, October 17!,"​ Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is currently in Shanghai, said on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, weeks after the iPhone 17's launch in the country. ($1 = 7.1320 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Xiuhao Chen and Ryan WooEditing by Tomasz Janowski)

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(Reuters) -Brookfield Asset Management said on Monday it would invest up to $5 billion in Bloom Energy's fuel cell technology to power data centers, as companies seek cleaner energy to meet the needs of the artificial intelligence boom. Shares of Bloom Energy surged 24.5% to hit a record high of $108.17 in morning trading. Brookfield's first investment in its dedicated AI Infrastructure strategy taps into a shift to cleaner power sources such as nuclear, renewables and fuel cells as firms invest billions into building and expanding data centers amid the surge in demand for AI and cloud computing services. Evercore ISI analysts in a note said Bloom's solid oxide fuel cells offer "reliable, scalable and clean on-site power". "Hybrid power solutions" could become more important, addressing long lead times and regulatory hurdles for new generation capacity of the legacy grid, they said. Bloom Energy has already deployed its fuel-cell technology to data centers, through partnerships with American Electric Power, Equinix and Oracle. The companies are working on the design and delivery of AI factories globally, including a site in Europe that will be announced before the end of the year, according to a statement. Brookfield is pushing to expand Europe's largest AI infrastructure cluster. In June, it announced plans to invest up to 95 billion Swedish crowns ($9.98 billion) to build an AI data center in Sweden and a 20 billion euro commitment for AI projects in France. Fuel cells offer a cleaner alternative to traditional power by generating electricity through chemical reactions rather than combustion. Depending on the fuel, byproducts can include water and heat, making them more environmentally friendly. ($1 = 0.8639 euros) ($1 = 9.5158 Swedish crowns) (Reporting by Dharna Bafna and Tanay Dhumal in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema, Leroy Leo and Sriraj Kalluvila)

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By Duncan Miriri NAIROBI (Reuters) -Kenyan lawmakers have passed a bill to regulate digital assets like cryptocurrencies, a senior parliamentarian said on Monday, as it seeks to boost investments into the sector by putting clear rules in place for the emerging industry. Legislators enacted the Virtual Asset Service Providers Bill last week, said Kuria Kimani, the chairman of the finance committee in the national assembly, seeking to address worries over the lack of clear regulations to govern the sector. The move puts the East African nation one step away from joining others like South Africa as the only African nations with laws to govern the digital assets industry, he said, adding President William Ruto now needs to sign it into law. The act sets out the central bank as the licensing authority for issuance of stablecoins and other virtual assets, while the capital markets regulator will license those who wish to operate crypto exchanges and other trading platforms. The government's move comes as countries now brace for a boom in U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins that global rulemakers have warned could undermine less developed economies' own currencies. The expected legal clarity is likely to attract increased investments into the financial technology sector including from crypto exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, Kimani said, citing past conversations between those platforms and the government. "We are hoping that Kenya can be now the gateway into Africa," he said. "Most of the young people between 18 and 35 years of age are now using virtual assets for trading, settling payments and as a way of investment or doing business." Although the digital assets industry has grown exponentially across the world in the last decade, regulation has been an area of concern as governments wrestle with ways of preventing criminals from taking advantage of the anonymity of the systems. The Kenyan law has borrowed from established practices from other countries like the United States and Britain, Kimani said. Kenya is recognised for pioneering mobile-phone-based financial services, with its M-Pesa technology — operated by telecoms company Safaricom — providing services like money transfer, savings and investments to tens of millions of people. (Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Additional reporting by Marc Jones in London; Editing by William Maclean)

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By Krystal Hu (Reuters) -Data startups Fivetran and dbt Labs will merge in an all-stock deal, creating a combined data infrastructure company with nearly $600 million in annual revenue, the two companies told Reuters. The deal is structured as an all-stock exchange based on an agreed ratio tied to revenues and growth rates, Fivetran Chief Executive George Fraser said in an interview. The combined entity is worth more than its last private valuation, Fraser said, but added that the valuation will ultimately be determined by the market.  Fivetran was last publicly valued at $5.6 billion in September 2021, while dbt Labs was valued at $4.2 billion in a Series D round in February 2022. The companies share some investors, including Andreessen Horowitz. Upon closing, Fraser will serve as CEO of the combined company, while dbt Labs CEO Tristan Handy will become co-founder and president. The transaction, which unites two highly valued venture-backed startups, marks significant consolidation in the data tooling market as enterprises race to adapt infrastructure for artificial intelligence applications, which require organized access to internal data. "The thing is really unique about this combination is our emphasis on open infrastructure and interoperability… as everyone is trying to figure out how to use their business data in the context of AI," Fraser said. Oakland, California-based Fivetran specializes in automated data movement, helping companies pull information from various sources into a central data warehouse. Philadelphia-based dbt Labs created dbt, an open-source tool for transforming and preparing that data for analysis. Describing the companies' products as complementary, Fraser estimated that 80% to 90% of Fivetran's customers use dbt's tools. The new company will also keep dbt Core, the popular open-source version of dbt Labs' software, available under its current license. The goal is to build a more comprehensive platform for enterprises' data needs, Fraser said, with the increased scale and broader platform strengthening its position for a public listing, even though an IPO is not imminent. Fraser added that the deal is a merger of equals rather than an acquisition as the new company's board will have representation from both Fivetran and dbt Labs, and that the firm will be near cash-flow break-even. Fivetran and dbt Labs expect the deal to close within a year. The Information had earlier reported on talks between the two firms. (Reporting by Krystal Hu in San Francisco; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)

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(Reuters) -Private equity firm Warburg Pincus has struck a deal to buy Germany's PSI Software for more than 700 million euros ($811 million), with shareholder and customer E.ON remaining a strategic investor, the firms said on Monday. Reuters first reported on both a nearing takeover of PSI last week and Warburg Pincus' offer for the maker of software for energy networks on Sunday. Having jumped nearly 11% on Friday after the news broke, PSI shares gained a further 35% to trade at 44.9 euros apiece – their highest level since January 2022. That was close to the offered price of 45 euros per share in Warburg Pincus' deal, amounting to a premium of about 50% from the company's closing price on Thursday. MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE, BERLIN HQ, TO BE MAINTAINED PSI's software helps run power and gas transmission grids, the backbone of energy infrastructure, as well as factories, and Reuters has reported that it was seeking funding for the development of product upgrades. Last year, the group was hobbled for weeks by a cyberattack that forced it to take most of its IT systems offline, exposing the vulnerability of software supply in critical infrastructure. As a result, PSI posted an annual loss before interest and taxes of 15.2 million euros ($17.6 million) in 2024. PSI said its board supported the suitor's offer and intends to recommend it to its shareholders. PSI plans to delist from the German stock exchange after the closing of the deal. PSI added that Warburg Pincus would maintain the company's management structure and its headquarters in Berlin. E.ON STAYS A KEY SHAREHOLDER "With our deep experience in software and energy, as well as a strong track record in take-private transactions, we believe Warburg Pincus is the right partner to support the next phase of PSI's growth," Warburg Pincus managing directors Max Fowinkel and Ryan Dalton said in a statement. Warburg Pincus has signed agreements for about 28.5% of PSI's equity with its anchor shareholders, PSI said. The statement said that an unnamed anchor shareholder will partially reinvest its proceeds alongside Warburg Pincus into PSI's holding structure. German businessman and newsletter publisher Norman Rentrop is PSI's largest shareholder with a 23% stake, while German utility E.ON, Europe's largest operator of energy networks, is its second-largest investor with around 18%. For the purpose of the transaction, E.ON will be regarded as acting jointly with Warburg Pincus, the firms said. Goldman Sachs is running the sale process. ($1 = 0.8607 euros) (Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal, Shubham Kalia and Disha Mishra in Bengaluru, Alexander Huebner in Munich and Christoph Steitz and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus, Aidan Lewis and Bernadette Baum)

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(Reuters) -OpenAI has partnered with Broadcom to produce its first in-house artificial intelligence processors, the latest chip tie-up for the ChatGPT maker as it races to secure the computing power needed to meet surging demand for its services. Shares of Broadcom rose more than 7% in early trading. The companies said on Monday that OpenAI would design the chips, which Broadcom will develop and deploy starting in the second half of 2026. They will roll out 10 gigawatts' worth of custom chips, whose power consumption is roughly equivalent to the needs of more than 8 million U.S. households or five times the electricity produced by the Hoover Dam. The agreement is the latest in a string of massive AI chip investments that have highlighted the technology industry's surging appetite for computing power as it races to build systems that meet or surpass human intelligence. OpenAI last week unveiled a 6-gigawatt AI chip supply deal with AMD that includes an option to buy a stake in the chipmaker, days after disclosing that Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in the startup and provide it with data-center systems with at least 10 gigawatts of capacity. "Partnering with Broadcom is a critical step in building the infrastructure needed to unlock AI's potential," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed and it was not immediately clear how OpenAI would fund the deal. CUSTOM CHIP BOOM The tie-up with Broadcom, first reported by Reuters last year, places OpenAI among cloud-computing giants such as Alphabet-owned Google and Amazon.com that are developing custom chips to meet surging AI demand and reduce dependence on Nvidia's costly processors that are limited in supply. The approach is not a sure bet. Similar efforts by Microsoft and Meta have run into delays or failed to match the performance of Nvidia chips, according to media reports, and analysts believe custom chips do not pose a threat to Nvidia's dominance in the short term. The rise of custom chips has, however, turned Broadcom – long known for its networking hardware – into one of the biggest winners of the generative AI boom, with its stock price rising nearly six-fold since the end of 2022. The company unveiled a blockbuster $10 billion custom AI chip order in September from an unnamed new customer that some analysts and market watchers speculated was OpenAI. Broadcom and OpenAI said on Monday that the deployment of the new custom chips would be completed by the end of 2029, building on their existing co-development and supply agreements. The new systems will be scaled entirely using Broadcom's Ethernet and other networking gear, giving the company an edge over smaller rivals such as Marvell Technology and challenging Nvidia's InfiniBand networking solution. (Reporting by Max Cherney in San Francisco and Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

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Sydney (dpa) – The natural sugar alternative stevia could have an unexpected second use: helping curb baldness and hair loss. Scientists based in Australia and China have found that stevioside, the sweetener found in the stevia plant, helps improve the skin’s absorption of minoxidil, a hair loss treatment for men and women. While human trials have not yet taken place, animal tests showed that using the two together "effectively promoted hair follicles to enter the growth phase, leading to new hair development." "Using stevioside to enhance minoxidil delivery represents a promising step toward more effective and natural treatments for hair loss, potentially benefiting millions worldwide," said Lifeng Kang of the University of Sydney, who carried out the research with colleagues from China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing. Alopecia treatments such as minoxidil are hindered by their water insolubility and poor skin permeability, according to the team, whose research was published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials. "Animal studies demonstrated that the patch significantly promoted hair growth," the team wrote, after observing "a significant increase in hair follicle transition to the growth phase." The following information is not intended for publication dpa spr coh

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(Reuters) -OpenAI has partnered with Broadcom to produce its first in-house artificial intelligence processors, the latest chip tie-up for the ChatGPT maker as it races to secure the computing power needed to meet surging demand for its services. Shares of Broadcom rose more than 12% in premarket trading. The companies said on Monday that OpenAI would design the chips, which Broadcom will develop and deploy starting in the second half of 2026. They will roll out 10 gigawatts' worth of custom chips, whose power consumption is roughly equivalent to the needs of more than 8 million U.S. households or five times the electricity produced by the Hoover Dam. The agreement is the latest in a string of massive AI chip investments that have highlighted the technology industry's surging appetite for computing power as it races to build systems that meet or surpass human intelligence. OpenAI last week unveiled a 6-gigawatt AI chip supply deal with AMD that includes an option to buy a stake in the chipmaker, days after disclosing that Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in the startup and provide it with data-center systems with at least 10 gigawatts of capacity. "Partnering with Broadcom is a critical step in building the infrastructure needed to unlock AI's potential," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed and it was not immediately clear how OpenAI would fund the deal. CUSTOM CHIP BOOM The tie-up with Broadcom, first reported by Reuters last year, places OpenAI among cloud-computing giants such as Alphabet-owned Google and Amazon.com that are developing custom chips to meet surging AI demand and reduce dependence on Nvidia's costly processors that are limited in supply. The approach is not a sure bet. Similar efforts by Microsoft and Meta have run into delays or failed to match the performance of Nvidia chips, according to media reports, and analysts believe custom chips do not pose a threat to Nvidia's dominance in the short term. The rise of custom chips has, however, turned Broadcom – long known for its networking hardware – into one of the biggest winners of the generative AI boom, with its stock price rising nearly six-fold since the end of 2022. The company unveiled a blockbuster $10 billion custom AI chip order in September from an unnamed new customer that some analysts and market watchers speculated was OpenAI. Broadcom and OpenAI said on Monday that the deployment of the new custom chips would be completed by the end of 2029, building on their existing co-development and supply agreements. The new systems will be scaled entirely using Broadcom's Ethernet and other networking gear, giving the company an edge over smaller rivals such as Marvell Technology and challenging Nvidia's InfiniBand networking solution. (Reporting by Max Cherney in San Francisco and Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

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(Reuters) -Cloud software provider Salesforce said on Monday it would invest $15 billion in San Francisco over the next five years to support artificial intelligence innovation and workforce development in the city. The investment will support a new AI incubator hub on Salesforce's San Francisco campus and help companies adopt AI agents, which can perform tasks on behalf of the users, the company said. "This $15 billion investment reflects our deep commitment to our hometown — advancing AI innovation, creating jobs and helping companies and our communities thrive," Chief Executive Marc Benioff said in a statement. (Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)

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(Reuters) -OpenAI has partnered with Broadcom to produce its first in-house artificial intelligence processors, the latest chip tie-up for the ChatGPT maker as it races to secure the computing power needed to meet surging demand for its services. Shares of Broadcom rose more than 12% in premarket trading. The companies said on Monday that OpenAI would design the chips, which Broadcom will develop and deploy starting in the second half of 2026. They will roll out 10 gigawatts' worth of custom chips, whose power consumption is roughly equivalent to the needs of more than 8 million U.S. households or five times the electricity produced by the Hoover Dam. The agreement is the latest in a string of massive AI chip investments that have highlighted the technology industry's surging appetite for computing power as it races to build systems that meet or surpass human intelligence. OpenAI last week unveiled a 6-gigawatt AI chip supply deal with AMD that includes an option to buy a stake in the chipmaker, days after disclosing that Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in the startup and provide it with data-center systems with at least 10 gigawatts of capacity. "Partnering with Broadcom is a critical step in building the infrastructure needed to unlock AI's potential," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed and it was not immediately clear how OpenAI would fund the deal. CUSTOM CHIP BOOM The tie-up with Broadcom, first reported by Reuters last year, places OpenAI among cloud-computing giants such as Alphabet-owned Google and Amazon.com that are developing custom chips to meet surging AI demand and reduce dependence on Nvidia's costly processors that are limited in supply. The approach is not a sure bet. Similar efforts by Microsoft and Meta have run into delays or failed to match the performance of Nvidia chips, according to media reports, and analysts believe custom chips do not pose a threat to Nvidia's dominance in the short term. The rise of custom chips has, however, turned Broadcom – long known for its networking hardware – into one of the biggest winners of the generative AI boom, with its stock price rising nearly sixfold since the end of 2022. The company unveiled a blockbuster $10 billion custom AI chip order in September from an unnamed new customer that some analysts and market watchers speculated was OpenAI. Broadcom and OpenAI said on Monday that the deployment of the new custom chips would be completed by the end of 2029, building on their existing co-development and supply agreements. The new systems will be scaled entirely using Broadcom's Ethernet and other networking gear, giving the company an edge over smaller rivals such as Marvell Technology and challenging Nvidia's InfiniBand networking solution. (Reporting by Max Cherney in San Francisco and Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

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