SWIFT backs Blockchain Ledger

SWIFT is adding a blockchain ledger to its infrastructure stack. 

It is developing this ledger with 30 financial institutions from 16 countries, including Absa, Banco Santander, Bank of America, BBVA, Citi, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Emirates NBD, Societe Generale-FORGE, Wells Fargo and Royal Bank of Canada, taking part.

SWIFT CEO Javier Pérez-Tasso (CEO since 2019) remarked: "We...are moving at a rapid pace... to create the infrastructure stack of the future".

EA Looks to Go Private for $50bn

DE Shaw Looks to Build Out Cogence Fund

DE Shaw is building out its Cogence Fund with $3bn to $5bn over the coming months, with most of the capital coming from existing investors, according to Bloomberg. This will be a discretionary rather than quantitative hedge fund. DE Shaw manages around $70bn in assets.

GRID Bill Passed to Expedite Dispatchable Generation

The American House of Representatives has passed a bill which could accelerate the progress of dispatchable power generation. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Troy Balderson, lamented "shovel-ready projects" were being delayed "while demand continues to climb". 

In the US, a bill must go through both both "chambers" (House and Senate, which together form the US Congress) and then be signed into law by the President who has the right to veto the bill as well.

The GRID Power Act gives FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) a total of 60 days to review proposals from RTOs and ISOs for projects to be pushed to the front of interconnection queues. 

The projects need to show how they would boost the reliability and resilience of the grid.

Interconnection queues are lists maintained by grid operators that track requests from power developers to connect new generation projects like wind turbines, solar farms, battery storage or dispatchable plants to the electricity grid. Projects in the interconnection queues may be withdrawn due to financing issues or delays in gaining regulatory approval.

For example, we may have a BESS project (Battery Energy Storage System) in Howard County Texas that wants to connect into the ERCOT system, with a capacity range of 200MW-300MW. Another example can be a small gas project that wants to connect into AESO (Alberta Electric System Operator) - Alberta is a province in Western Canada - supplying, say, 0-10 MW.

Monitoring the queues can give an indicator of future capacity. CAISO (California ISO, or California Independent System Operator, to give it its full title) queue reports can be found here. 

EPSA (the Electric Power Supply Association) has published an article explaining the GRID Act and how it contributes to reliability in a growing power system.

DR Congo Ends Export Ban

The Democratic Republic of Congo will end its 7-month ban on cobalt exports (intended to reduce the glut on global supply) on October 17th, replacing it with quotas.  

Market intelligence firm Project Blue said the move will push the cobalt market from "surplus to shortage" given the demand from electric vehicles.

A great deal of cobalt supply in Congo comes from unregulated artisanal mining. This creates compliance and traceability issues for global buyers. This has also been the subject of the book Cobalt Red, which asserts that industrial and artisanal mining output are inextricably intertwined.

Cobalt's specific role in the energy transition is in the cathodes for lithium-ion batteries.

Swiss Capital Requirements Weigh Heavy on UBS

The Swiss government has proposed heavier capital requirements on UBS, as revealed by UBS Group CFO and Stern-school MBA grad Todd Tuckner (Todd joined UBS in 2004 and is thus a 21 year veteran, prior to which he was an international tax partner at KPMG). 

These capital requirements would up the bar on core capital (removing currently allowed items such as software and deferred tax assets from counting as capital). Software was counted as an intangible asset with some regulatory value, especially if it supported core banking operations. However, concerns that is less loss-absorbing and more volatile in valuation than current treatment requires have prompted its exclusion from core capital (CET1- Common Equity Tier 1 capital, basically the highest form of capital, acting as a high quality shock absorber in the event of losses).

UBS will need to decide what to do - either push back, and hope for the best, or relocate its HQ to be outside of Swiss regulation, or plan both in parallel.

The proposed rules are to avoid an incident such as the collapse of Credit Suisse in 2023 from happening again. UBS has criticised the proposal as being non-proportionate.

AI Acceleration Firm Groq Gets $750m New Funding

Groq is the creator of the Groq "LPU" (Language Processing Unit) which aims to accelerate AI inference by having a purpose built hardware accelerator that is optimised for running pre-trained models. 

Despite the hardware product, or rather in conjunction with it and enabled by it, Groq's approach is "software first" designed to give developers direct control and simplify hardware utilization (compare the Mojo approach). The hardware and software are tightly linked to enable higher performance. 

This tight coupling has an impact on the software stack - whereas Groq has a proprietary stack, Nvidia's GPUs are supported across open source products like PyTorch and TensorFlow.

You could say its sweet spot is low latency AI inference.

Groq's latest funding round of $750m was led by Disruptive. Other VCs participated as well. Its early funding rounds were from Social Capital (Series A and B) and TDK Ventures (Series B), the corporate venture capital arm of TDK Corporation.

Kyndryl Plans Investment in AI Lab in India

Kyndryl, specialist in infrastructure outsourcing and modernisation, is investing $2.25 billion over three years, including building out an AI lab in Bangalore, India.

Kyndryl was divested from IBM three years ago in November 2021, with Martin Schroeter (MBA, Carnegie Mellon) as its first CEO. Around 88,500 engineers moved to Kyndryl as part of the deal.

At the time of the divestment, Martin emphasised that Kyndryl would continue to have strong links to IBM, but being independent they were not free to work with other hyperscalers and grow the business.

Gunvor Expands Precious Metals Business

Energy firm Gunvor Group, known especially for crude oil, refined products, natural gas and LNG trading, is diversifying its precious metal trading activities (derivatives) to physical trading, off the back of the rally in gold prices. 

Other active areas for the company include biofuels (specifically trading the feedstocks, such as corn or sugarcane, whose juice can be fermented to produce ethanol), power and emissions trading.

AIM-listed Filtronic PLC Secures SpaceX Contract

Filtronic PLC, a leader in advanced microelectronics (AIM:FTC), has secured a £47.3m ($62.5m) order from SpaceX for the company's proprietary gallium-nitride ("GaN") E-band product.

Higher power and efficiency are what's offered over the company's gallium arsenide product range. Gallium's semiconductor properties are key to its usage in communications applications.  GaN and GaAs allow faster data transmission than silicon and is reliable at high temperatures. 

Nat Edington, CEO, reflected on the order, stating "we are extremely proud".

Gallium is not considered a rare earth currently, it is quite abundant but concentrated deposits are rare.