Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer Inc (宏碁) has invested in US start-up Jibo in a bid to tap into the robotics industry, media reported yesterday.
Jibo, which manufactures home assistance robots, is to start shipping the products this autumn, Acer CEO Jason Chen (陳俊聖) said on Thursday on the sidelines of the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.
Chen said Acer participated in Jibo’s second round of fund-raising last month, but did not disclose the exact amount it invested.
Jibo raised US$11 million last month after securing US$25.3 million from investors in January.
The company’s robot is available for pre-order at US$749.
Chen said the investment in Jibo is a strategic move for Acer, as the company had no plans to set up a robotics research and development facility on its own.
Instead, acquiring other robotics companies would be one of the options for Acer to expand its reach in this booming market, Chen said.
While Jibo’s main market is the US at the moment, Acer is to play a role when the robots enter the Asian market, Chen added.
The company would like to integrate its cloud-computing platform with Jibo’s robots in the long run, but the details of their strategic cooperation with Jibo has not yet been finalized, Chen said.
Acer is also in talks with another company that produces robots for commercial purposes and Chen planned to settle the details of that investment before the end of this year, reports said.
Meanwhile, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) has set up an advanced research center for a robotics project in a bid to seek long-term growth for the company.
In an interview with technology blog network Engadget last month, Asustek chairman Jonney Shih (施崇棠) said that he monitored the robotics project on a weekly basis.
Asustek is set to unveil its first interactive service robot as soon as next year, Engadget reported.
The latest push by Acer and Asustek into the robotics industry came after Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) teamed up with Softbank Corp in the production of the Pepper humanoid robot in June.
Softbank has already sold 3,000 Peppers in Japan since the robots hit the market on June 20. The firm is to take new orders for the fourth batch of 1,000 Peppers on Sept. 26.
TRADE WAR: Tariffs should also apply to any goods that pass through the new Beijing-funded port in Chancay, Peru, an adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump said A veteran adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump is proposing that the 60 percent tariffs that Trump vowed to impose on Chinese goods also apply to goods from any country that pass through a new port that Beijing has built in Peru. The duties should apply to goods from China or countries in South America that pass through the new deep-water port Chancay, a town 60km north of Lima, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump transition team who served as senior director for the western hemisphere on the White House National Security Council in his first administration. “Any product going
STRUGGLING BUSINESS: South Korea’s biggest company and semiconductor manufacturer’s buyback fuels concerns that it could be missing out on the AI boom Samsung Electronics Co plans to buy back about 10 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) of its own stock over the next year, putting in motion one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history. South Korea’s biggest company would repurchase the stock in stages over the coming 12 months, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday. As a first step, it would buy back about 3 trillion won of paper starting today up until February next year, all of which it would cancel. The board would deliberate on how best to effect the remaining 7 trillion won of buybacks. The move
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
RSS