Philippa Kaur

.css-f1to7x{margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-f1to7x +.ezpf5o0{margin-top:0.75rem;}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-f1to7x +.ezpf5o0{margin-top:1.75rem;}}@media (min-width: 80rem){.css-f1to7x{margin-top:0.25rem;}}.css-jwv1ak{position:relative;border-bottom:0;color:var(–ds-color-london-35);}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-jwv1ak{border-bottom:0.0625rem solid var(–ds-color-london-85);}}.css-jwv1ak .ds-actioned-link{margin-right:0.625rem;}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-jwv1ak .ds-actioned-link{margin-left:0.625rem;margin-right:0;}}.css-jwv1ak .ei4w8y0{margin-right:0.625rem;margin-top:0;}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-jwv1ak .ei4w8y0{margin-right:0;}}.css-jwv1ak .ei4w8y0 .ds-actioned-link{margin-right:0;}.css-jwv1ak >.eygoqsu0 >*{padding:1rem 0;}.css-jwv1ak >.eygoqsu0 >*:nth-of-type(2){border-top:0.0625rem solid var(–ds-color-london-85);}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-jwv1ak >.eygoqsu0 >*:nth-of-type(2){border-top:0;}}.css-w0h03k{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-items:stretch;-webkit-box-align:stretch;-ms-flex-align:stretch;align-items:stretch;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:flex-start;justify-content:flex-start;}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-w0h03k{-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;}}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-w0h03k{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}}@media (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-w0h03k{-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;justify-content:space-between;}}.css-1c8ktq7{font-size:var(–ds-type-scale–1);font-family:var(–ds-type-system-sans-lining);font-weight:400;line-height:var(–ds-type-leading-lower);color:var(–ds-color-london-35);} More

This week 180,000 people descended on Abu Dhabi to attend ADIPEC, the global oil-and-gas industry’s biggest annual gathering. This year’s focus, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the nexus of artificial intelligence (AI) and energy. On the eve of the jamboree Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of ADNOC, the Emirati national oil giant, convened a private meeting of big tech and big energy bosses. A survey of some 400 energy, tech and finance bigwigs released in conjunction with the event concluded that AI is set to transform the energy business by boosting efficiency and cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. More

Visitors to Bangalore, India’s tech hub, quickly learn why locals measure distances in minutes and not kilometres. The city’s clogged streets turn every outing into a test of patience. Other large cities in the country are just as bad. So it is no surprise that Indians are getting everything from biryanis and books to mangoes and mobile phones delivered straight to their doors—often in under ten minutes. “Quick commerce” is a booming business in India. Zomato, the largest company in the industry, is valued at $26bn; its share price has nearly doubled this year. Swiggy, its closest rival, is expected to go public on November 13th at a valuation of $11bn. Zepto, another competitor founded in 2021, is now worth $5bn. More

When Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, releases its latest smartphone this month, techies will strip it down to figure out how it works. The semiconductors powering the Mate 70, as the device is called, will reveal how much progress China has made in building its own chips and breaking its reliance on foreign technology. But the software in the phone may prove more important than the hardware. Huawei is expected to install HarmonyOS NEXT, its new homemade operating system, on the devices. This would be China’s first clean break with the Western-backed systems on which it and the rest of the world rely. More

For investors concerned that America’s tech giants are making recklessly large bets on generative artificial intelligence (AI), big tech’s latest quarterly results have offered some reassurance. The growth in demand from companies for the cloud services of Amazon, Microsoft and Google was red hot. Andy Jassy, boss of Amazon, put it most strikingly. He said that AI revenue for Amazon Web Services (AWS) was growing at triple-digit rates—three times faster than AWS itself grew in the early years after it pioneered cloud computing in 2006. More

“You want to know the secret to surviving air travel?” the man sitting next to Bruce Willis on the plane asks in “Die Hard”, a film from 1988. “After you get to where you’re going, take off your shoes and your socks, then you walk around on the rug barefoot and make fists with your toes.” More

ADAM SMITH would be baffled by microelectronics. When the great economist died in 1790 James Watt’s two-cylinder steam engine passed for the height of technological sophistication. If he recognised the prefix “nano”—a fair bet for a precocious classicist proficient in dead languages by 14—it would be as a derivation of the Greek word for “dwarf”, not as a reference to the billionths of a metre in which modern semiconductors are measured. The word “billion” had entered the English language by Smith’s time but the number it denotes would have seemed unfathomable. Some 200bn transistors etched onto a few halfpennies in Nvidia’s latest Blackwell artificial-intelligence (AI) chip? Black magic, even for an enlightened Scottish rationalist. More

To decarbonise the global economy and build the data centres needed for ever smarter artificial-intelligence models, the world will need lots of minerals. China wants first dibs. Last year its companies ploughed roughly $16bn into mines overseas, not including minority investments. More