Graphcore Gifted $200m in Series D Round

Bristol, UK based chipmaker Graphcore has received $200m in Series D funding from the likes of Microsoft and BMW (iVentures arm, based in Mountain View, San Francisco and Munich).

"Patient capital" provider, Sofina was also involved (whose current Chairman is Sir David Verey, CBE, ex Lazard). This investment values the company at $1.7bn. (Note that Sequoia invested $50m at Series C).

Founders are Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles.

Nigel has been CEO of two VC-backed companies before founding Graphcore, one of which was XMOS in which Graphcore was incubated prior to spin-out. Simon is co-founder and CTO, and has founded and exited two fabless semiconductor companies, Element14 and Icera for a combined value of $1bn. Prior to that he headed microprocessor design at ST Micro.

CNNs (convolutional) and RNNs (recurrent neural networks) are among the skills being hired for in their new round of expansion as well as knowledge of PyTorch and Horovod. Horovod uses MPI (Message Passing Interface) to distribute machine learning load across multiple GPUs.

RNNs have been used to analyze temporal dynamical behaviour such as handwriting recognition and speech recognition.

Apple's Big DC Plans - $10bn over 5 Years

Apple is investing big in US DCs.

This includes plans to build a 133 acre campus in Austin, Texas and another build-out in Waukee, Dallas County, Iowa. Tax breaks are helping incentivise investment.

Existing capacity in Maiden, North Carolina; Mesa, Arizona and Sparks, Nevada will be expanded.

Outside of the US, back in July 2017, Apple announced it was building a second DC in Denmark, after their initial one in Viborg (166,000 square metres), with go-live in Q2 2019, shortly after Facebook a similar announcement in January. The DC will be located in Aabenraa in Southern Denmark near the border with Germany and will be powered 100% from renewable energy from day one. The Danish Foreign Ministry was said to have worked with Apple for three years in line with its Invest in Denmark program prior to its investment.

Apple's additional DC capacity will be used to power the iTunes store, Maps, iMessage and Siri.

Interserve PLC in Rescue Talks with Creditors

Interserve, one of the UK's largest providers of public services, has seen its shares plunge by 70%.

Better VPNs - LC's StackPath Drives to the Edge

Three-year old startup StackPath founded by Lance Crosby (who sold his previous business, SoftLayer, to IBM in 2013 for $2bn) provides "edge computing infrastructure as a service" - or what he describes as a "secure platform at the edge".

StackPath started its initial play by acquiring rack space in 45 locations (colocation data centers) and is now advancing into cell towers as its founder pivots the company towards 5G. It fills out its real estate with space-efficient custom hardware (packing in as much compute, network, memory and storage as feasible to stick within 10kW per rack). Rack switches are made by the company itself, combining "merchant silicon" (i.e. off the shelf components) with StackPath's network operating system. Arista 7500 series switches are used in some cases, manufactured by Santa-Clara based Arista Networks, led by President and CEO Jayshree Ullal.

Clubbing together with technology experts such as Vapor IO (who combine cell tower and data center technology), Edge Micro (co-founded by Mike Hagan, who previously launched Schneider Electric's colocation and cloud division) and BitBox (owned by Compass Datacenters), Crosby is looking at the next phase of expansion. MEC, or mobile edge computing, is a term which has been used to describe this nascent sub-sector of the TMT world.

StackPath emerged from stealth in 2016 and has made six acquisitions since then, adding Web Application Firewall (WAF), DDoS mitigation and VPN - in other words, software components that can plug into its integrated hardware-software edge platform.

A corporate VPN that is fast, secure and sensitive to the needs of mobile workers is envisioned as a potential use case (allowing workers to connect to the servers at the base of the nearest cell tower).

Another target application is software or data distribution as part of a CDN (content delivery network) - a company can send a software patch in one location and have it delivered via StackPath infrastructure efficiently and securely in each target location. Media, gaming and security are also industries where StackPath is aiming to build client base.

Lance is looking to to accomplish all this at low cost to the customer. For example, 50 VMs could potentially cost $2,500.

Former UBS-owned entity GAM Restructures

Swiss fund manager GAM founded in 1983 by Gilbert de Botton, and later acquired by UBS in 1999, who sold it to Julius Baer, is executing on a restructuring plan put in place by David Jacob, interim Chief Executive, a dual UK-US citizen, who replaces Alexander Friedman, a former Chief Investment Officer at UBS Wealth Management with an MBA from Columbia. This involves consolidating various teams, including bringing European equities into a single team. In fixed income, four strategic areas have been identified - emerging markets, global credit, structured credit and global strategic bonds. Blackrock owns just over 3% of GAM.

New CEO Larry Culp Cuts GE's Dividend to 1 cent per share

Larry Culp cut GE's dividend to 1 cent per share from its quarterly level of 12c per share, saving GE around $3.9bn a year. Despite the loss of dividend shares rose.

Larry Culp is known for his "hands-on" approach, having cut his teeth from the age of 37 as CEO of Danaher. He has a BA from Washington College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is the first outsider to lead GE, ousting former incumbent John Flannery (who was a 30 year veteran of GE taking the reigns from Jeff Immelt). On Larry's appointment, shares surged 10%.

GE's debt, complexity of corporate structure and bad deals have contributed to its troubles. This has wiped off half a trillion dollars of market value over the past 18 years (its market value peaked in 2000). GE Power is one of its worst performing divisions reporting a 33% decline in Q3 sales. Renewable energy generation is taking away some of its business.

A bright spot in GE's business is GE Aviation, where sales have climbed 12%, in which the company builds jet and turboprop engines (engines that drive aircraft propellers). The division also has a Digital subdivision which offers products in the cloud aimed e.g. at aircraft maintenance records (AVRAD).

IBM to Buy Red Hat for $34bn in "Software for the Cloud" Transaction - Cops 5% Loss on Stock Price, RH up 45%

IBM (NYSE:IBM, Beta 0.87, PE 20x) has confirmed it will pay $190 per share for Red Hat (NYSE:RHT, PE 77x - clearly will push up as people buy up the target), a 60% premium to the current stock price. IBM shares traded down 5% mid afternoon New York time, with some bounce back towards the close, and a traded volume of around 17.5 million (average volume is around 2m).

In terms of approvals, IBM already has the approval from the Boards of Directors of IBM and Red Hat. Shareholder and regulatory approvals are remaining now.

Key management include

• IBM CEO Virginia (Ginni) Rometty (a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering graduate from Northwestern)
• IBM CFO James Kavanaugh (appointed January 2018), also oversees Transformation and Operations. He has an MBA from Ohio State and joined IBM in 1996 from AT&T.
• Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst (a Computer Science and Economics graduate from Rice in Houston) who began his career at the Boston Consulting Group. He was also COO of Delta Air Lines for 6 years overseeing all aspects of Operations from Sales to Strategy.
• Red Hat CTO Chris Wright,  who has spent time working deep in the Linux kernel.

The focus of the acquisition is software for the cloud (Dell EMC was bigger at $67bn but that was both hardware and software).  This will allow IBM to tap into a market where they estimate 80 percent of business workloads have "yet to move to the cloud". Linux, containers, Kubernetes and multi-cloud management are all on the cards in the new world of IBM. "Open hybrid cloud" is the mantra of the deal.

The acquisition is designed to be free cash flow and gross margin accretive within 12 months. IBM has also expressed commitment to growing its dividend and maintaining strong investment grade credit ratings. It will target a leverage profile consistent with mid to high single A credit rating.

Jim Whitehurst stated that Red Hat is the leading open-source software business, with growth in 66 consecutive quarters, and could leverage IBM's scale and infrastructure and depth in customer relationships to continue its growth journey. He also mentioned that Red Hat and IBM have partnered over 20 years. Ginni Rometty stated "this lifts all boats for IBM" and that the deal prepares IBM for the "second chapter of the Cloud".