Philippa Kaur

A rare beast may soon lumber across the hills of Silicon Valley: not a $1bn unicorn, nor a $10bn decacorn, but a hectocorn—a startup valued at more than $100bn. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is understood to be in talks to raise $6.5bn from investors to fund the expansion dreams of its co-founder, Sam Altman. If it pulls off the deal, OpenAI’s valuation will be about $150bn, making it only the second ever $100bn-plus startup in America after SpaceX, a rocketry giant led by Elon Musk (who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and is now Mr Altman’s nemesis). More

The car industry’s effort to decarbonise revolves around replacing petrol with batteries. A growing number of customers want both. Buyers who cannot afford a fully electric car, or worry about the availability of charging points, are turning to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), sales of which are rocketing. But the hybrid ride may prove to be short. More

The car industry’s effort to decarbonise revolves around replacing petrol with batteries. A growing number of customers want both. Buyers who cannot afford a fully electric car, or worry about the availability of charging points, are turning to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), sales of which are rocketing. But the hype for hybrids may prove to be short-lived. More

Each year China makes as much steel as the rest of the world combined. The vast scale of its output—around 1bn tonnes a year—is obscured by the fact that most of it stays in the country. Lately, however, China’s exports of the metal have surged, reaching 90m tonnes in 2023, up by 35% on the previous year (see chart 1). That may be a fraction of China’s total production, but it is more than what America or Japan make in a year. And it is enough to build a thousand Golden Gate bridges. More

SINCE ITS founding in 1968 Intel has been synonymous with shrinkage. In its first four decades this was high praise. Every two years or so the American chip pioneer came out with new transistors half the size of earlier ones, a regularity that came to be known as Moore’s law, after one of the company’s founders. Twice as many chips thus fit onto roughly the same silicon wafer—and could be sold profitably for roughly the same price. That allowed Intel to corner the market for memory chips and then, when “memories” became commoditised in the 1980s, for the microprocessors which powered the subsequent PC revolution. More

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On September 9th Mario Draghi, a former prime minister of Italy and former president of the European Central Bank, published his long-awaited report on European competitiveness. The continent’s productivity lags behind America’s, and it lacks world-beating corporate giants. Rising geopolitical tensions have made this problem more acute for European policymakers. They are right to worry. Listed American firms are, on average, bigger and more profitable than European ones. The difference is particularly striking among tech firms, which are twice as profitable and more than ten times the size in America. ■ More

Among the products of Dog by Dr Lisa, an Australian pet-care brand, you will find a cleanser for sensitive skin, a soothing balm and a cologne. All are free of genetically modified ingredients—and vegan, which dogs are not, at least by choice. Still, canines craving meat need not eat like animals: Butternut Box, a maker of fresh pet food taste-tested by humans, can offer your furry friend a low-fat chicken dish with peas, lentils and “a whiff of sage”. It is the most popular meal it offers. More