Category: 3. Business

Investigators from Mass General Brigham have developed a way to promote antitumor immunity by hijacking cellular machinery within cancer cells. The study demonstrated that inducing cancer cells to produce an immune-activating molecule led to reduced tumor growth in preclinical models. Results are published in PNAS.

“Tumor cells comprise a significant proportion of the tumor microenvironment but are often under-utilized for immunotherapy,” said corresponding author Natalie Artzi, PhD, a researcher in the Mass General Brigham Department of Medicine. “These findings highlight how tumor cells can be used to actively contribute to their own elimination.”

The presence of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) in a cell’s cytoplasm activates innate immune sensors that set off defense mechanisms against potential infections or cellular damage. One such sensor known as cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) detects cytosolic dsDNA and produces cyclic GMP-AMP (cGAMP), which triggers the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway and leads to inflammatory immune responses. Furthermore, cGAMP can be transported out of the cell to activate neighbouring cells. While cancer cells can have high levels of cytosolic dsDNA, they often silence the cGAS-STING pathway – preventing their own activation and of bystander immune cells within the tumor microenvironment.

The research team exploited this innate mechanism within cancer cells to increase cGAMP production and thereby boost antitumor immunity. They found that cultured mouse melanoma cells upregulated cGAMP production when treated with dsDNA and lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) carrying mRNA coding for cGAS. Immune cells showed signs of activation in response to elevated extracellular cGAMP levels produced by cancer cells. Similarly, treatment with cGAS LNPs activated surrounding immune cells, slowed tumor growth and improved overall survival in mouse models of aggressive melanoma. Combining this treatment with immune checkpoint blockade therapy further improved outcomes.

The authors suggest that this strategy could find future applications beyond cancer therapies, including in vaccines.

Story Continues

By Claudia Assis

Advertising side gets hurt in part because of Google AI Overviews

Barry Diller, IAC’s chairman. The bulk of IAC’s revenue comes from the media division, People Inc., that saw revenue shrink 2% year over year.

Media and internet holding company IAC Inc., led by digital-media mogul Barry Diller, late Monday reported revenue below Wall Street’s expectations and pointed to a growing concern among others in the same business.

That’s the heightened presence of Google AI Overviews, a relatively new feature of Alphabet Inc.’s (GOOGL) (GOOG) Google Search that appears at the very top of query results.

Shares of IAC (IAC) dropped more than 8% in the extended session Monday, after ending the regular trading day up 1.1%.

AI Overviews uses generative AI to provide users with an overview of a topic, but may bury sites where people would ordinarily seek information about an issue.

IAC’s media brands include instantly recognizable print and digital names such as People, Food & Wine and Better Homes & Gardens, to name a few. The company reported third-quarter revenue of $590 million, or $10 million less than the FactSet consensus for the quarter.

The bulk of its sales come from the media division, People Inc. That saw revenue shrink 2% year over year to $430 million.

That reflects a 3% drop in advertising revenue, part of a downward pressure mostly due to “the impact of the increasing prominence of Google AI Overviews on Google search sessions,” IAC said. Higher advertising rates and higher premium advertising softened that, the company said.

Alphabet said last week its Google Search business has remained strong. On a post-earnings call, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said that overall queries and commercial queries have continued to increase thanks to AI Overviews and Google’s AI Mode. Google Search revenue rose more than 14% year on year to $56.57 billion in the third quarter.

IAC, for its turn, also reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss: It lost 27 cents a share in the third quarter, whereas analysts polled by FactSet had expected a loss of 24 cents a share.

People Inc. is the “heart of our future” alongside IAC’s investment in casino operator MGM Resorts (MGM), CEO Diller said. Diller doesn’t seem afraid of AI: He also praised People Inc.’s licensing deal with Microsoft AI.

People Inc. has signed a deal with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) to be one of the publishers building Microsoft’s Publisher Content Marketplace, a two-sided content marketplace that would compensate publishers for use of their content by AI. Microsoft’s AI Copilot assistant would be the first buyer, the company has said.

-Claudia Assis

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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  11-03-25 2019ET
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Tokyo, Japan, November 4, 2025 – NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) has concluded a Technology Partner Program Agreement with Siemens Industry Software Inc. (Siemens) to expand global solutions in the field of 3D robot simulations. Through this agreement, the two companies will further consolidate their strengths, accelerate the deployment of solutions internationally, and mutually strengthen their resources to support the continued growth of customers.

NEC has developed a digital twin solution, which leverages advanced technologies to help manufacturing customers optimize worksite operations, improve productivity, and transition to fact-driven management. This solution is offered under NEC’s value creation model “BluStellar” (*1).

As a leading technology company, Siemens promotes the realization of digital enterprises and provides a suite of software that enables manufacturers worldwide to rapidly create value.

Through this agreement, the two companies will jointly develop a robot teaching automation solution that combines the “NEC Robot Task Planning” digital twin service with Siemens’s “Process Simulate” software for 3D robot simulations (*2). Together, the companies will use their multifaceted marketing initiatives, such as joint seminars and exhibitions, as well as their own sales channels to accelerate deployment of the solution throughout global markets.

Traditionally, the creation of plans for coordinating the motion of multiple robots was done manually by skilled engineers through a process known as teaching. This process is extremely complex, and in manufacturing sites, designing the motion plan for robots to produce a single product requires substantial cost. As a result, there are many delays in launching production lines that use multiple robots.

The NEC Robot Task Planning software is equipped with a proprietary algorithm that optimizes the coordinated operation of multiple robots and automatically generates robot motion plans using AI. The Process Simulate software from the Tecnomatix® portfolio is a globally adopted 3D robot simulator that enables virtual teaching without interrupting production lines.

As part of this collaboration, NEC Robot Task Planning has been seamlessly integrated into the Process Simulate user interface, allowing users to execute robot motion plan creation with a single click, significantly reducing the workload required for teaching. This capability complements the currently available automatic path planning and robot programming tools available in Process Simulate. In addition, it shortens the production line setup period, optimizes cycle time, enables fact-driven management, and facilitates the sharing and transfer of operational know-how that is often dependent on individual expertise.

By Christine Ji and Britney Nguyen

The software company is boosting its outlook, and its CEO is cheering gains for retail investors

Palantir posted third-quarter results on Monday.

Palantir Technologies Inc. broke records once again with its third-quarter earnings as the company’s artificial-intelligence offerings drove aggressive business growth, but the stock fell in after-hours trading.

Palantir (PLTR) on Monday posted its best-ever results, reporting $1.18 billion in revenue and adjusted earnings of 21 cents per share for the quarter that ended Sept. 30. The results surpassed Wall Street expectations – analysts polled by FactSet had been anticipating $1.1 billion and 17 cents, respectively.

The company raised its full-year guidance as a result of its momentum. Palantir now anticipates around $4.40 billion in revenues for the 2025 fiscal year, up from the $4.14 billion to $4.15 billion the company had guided for in the second quarter.

Overall revenue grew 63% year over year, with much of the growth being driven by Palantir’s biggest segment, U.S. commercial, which saw sales rise by 121% year over year. Ryan Taylor, Palantir’s chief revenue and legal officer, told MarketWatch that Palantir is prioritizing the domestic market, which now comprises 75% of the business’s total revenue.

The stock initially climbed 7% in Monday’s extended session, but soon gave up those gains, and ended down 4.3%.

“As we have seen thus far this earnings season, earnings beats aren’t necessarily being rewarded owing to extended positioning and lofty expectations already baked into price,” Jake Behan, head of capital markets at Direxion, said in a note. “At this valuation, even great numbers don’t move the needle. The bar is sky high and not an easy one to clear, even for Palantir.”

The latest quarter was the fourth in a row in which Palantir’s U.S. commercial business was larger than its U.S. government segment, David Glazer, Palantir’s chief financial officer and treasurer, told MarketWatch.

Meanwhile, Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, continues to see strong demand. Taylor said that’s because it’s “the only platform delivering transformational impact in this market.”

Palantir has been a controversial name on Wall Street due to its rich valuation – the stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 253 times, according to FactSet – and its reliance on government contracts. Only 24% of the analysts covering Palantir polled by FactSet assign the stock a buy or buy-equivalent rating. But what Palantir lacks in institutional support, it makes up for with its fervent retail following, which CEO Alex Karp emphasized as a key part of what distinguishes Palantir from other software businesses.

“People who are most excited about our results in America now are average Americans,” Karp told MarketWatch.

In a shareholder letter, he said Palantir “has made it possible for retail investors to achieve rates of return previously limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto.” Shares closed Monday above $207, after opening at $10 when the company conducted its 2020 direct listing.

The company’s earnings beat sends a strong message of continuing demand for Palantir’s products. Prior to the earnings report, Citi analyst Tyler Radke questioned whether Palantir could surpass the high expectations set by last quarter’s results, which saw the company crossing $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time.

Read: Here’s Palantir’s ‘secret sauce,’ which these analysts say can boost the stock even more

-Christine Ji -Britney Nguyen

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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  11-03-25 2016ET
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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China has increased subsidies that cut energy bills by up to half for some of the country’s largest data centres, as Beijing steps up efforts to boost its domestic chips industry and compete with the US.

Local governments have beefed up incentives to help Chinese tech giants such as ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, which have been hit with higher electricity costs following Beijing’s ban on purchasing Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter.

They added that the new subsidies come after several tech groups complained to regulators about the increased costs of using domestic semiconductors from companies such as Huawei and Cambricon, most of which are less energy-efficient than Nvidia’s.

Local governments in data centre-heavy provinces such as Gansu, Guizhou and Inner Mongolia have responded by offering subsidies that slash big data centres’ electricity bills by as much as 50 per cent, provided that they are powered by domestic chips.

Data centres using chips from foreign vendors such as Nvidia are not qualified for such entitlements, the people said.

The move is a further sign of how China is incentivising its tech companies to break their reliance on Nvidia and boost the country’s homegrown semiconductor industry so it can compete in an AI race against the US.

Electricity required to generate the same amount of tokens — units of compute power — from the current generation of Chinese chips is about 30 to 50 per cent higher than Nvidia’s H20, according to experts.

Huawei, China’s leading chipmaker, has sought to overcome the weaker single-chip computing performance of its flagship Ascend 910C chip by combining them into larger clusters, which has added to the operating electricity costs.

While tech companies typically lease compute power from third-party data centre operators, they still need to build a significant amount themselves to meet surging demand from AI-driven businesses.

Despite the higher energy costs related to using domestic chips, China’s more centralised grid network still provides cheaper and greener electricity than the US with no near-term shortage.

China’s energy-rich remote provinces such as Gansu, Guizhou and Inner Mongolia have become hotspots for data centre clusters.

To attract the biggest projects, these local governments have already been competing to offer some energy subsidies as well as cash incentives.

Some of these are enough to cover a data centre’s operating cost for about a year, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

Unit costs of industrial electricity in these provinces are about 30 per cent cheaper than those from the more developed coastal areas of eastern China. With the new subsidies, they will be cut further to about 0.4 yuan, or 5.6 cents, per kWh.

This compares with the average industrial electricity cost of about 9.1 cents per kWh in the US, according to August data published by the US Energy Information Administration.

Electricity prices vary significantly in different US states due to fragmented grid networks, while US tech groups such as Meta and Elon Musk’s xAI are also building their own generators near their data centre clusters in order to lower energy costs.

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent did not respond to requests for comment.

The local governments of Guizhou, Gansu, Inner Mongolia and China’s National Development and Reform Commission did not respond to requests for comment.

Additional contributions from Cheng Leng in Beijing

Spectro Cloud, a Goldman Sachs–backed (NASDAQ:GS) startup valued at about $750 million, announced on Tuesday that it entered a strategic partnership with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) to address one of the biggest challenges in artificial intelligence: approximately 70% of computing power that often sits unused.

Spectro Cloud unveiled its PaletteAI platform with Nvidia integration, which promises to increase graphics processing unit efficiency from 30% to 60%, potentially saving enterprises millions on infrastructure costs, Business Insider reported.

“AI infrastructure is super expensive,” Spectro Cloud co-founder and CEO Tenry Fu told BI, adding that most organizations achieve only 30% GPU utilization. “That’s not really the best way to put such an expensive hardware into use,” he said.

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Many organizations spend large sums on Nvidia hardware and software but still face management challenges that leave much of their computing power unused, according to BI.

PaletteAI serves as what Spectro Cloud Chief Technology Officer Saad Malik calls the “glue layer,” BI reported. The platform connects different hardware and software components, helping them work together without friction.

The system integrates with Nvidia AI Enterprise software and tools such as Nvidia NeMo and Nvidia NIM, according to Spectro Cloud. While designed for Nvidia technologies, PaletteAI remains open and flexible, allowing companies to connect products from other technology providers as well.

“Growing adoption of AI across every industry calls for scalable, adaptable infrastructure that bridges the data center and the edge,” Nvidia Senior Director of Enterprise Anne Hecht said in Spectro Cloud’s statement. “Spectro Cloud’s integration of full-stack Nvidia AI is empowering enterprises to build and operate AI factories with performance, efficiency, and trust.”

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Spectro Cloud Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer Dave Cope told BI that the pace of technological change has reached an entirely new level. “We live in a really interesting time now where, for the first time and perhaps ever, we have — because of AI — everything changing rapidly and at the same time,” he said, adding that AI is transforming multiple areas of business at once, creating constant pressure to adapt.

Cope said this fast evolution adds what he called a “tremendous amount of complexity” that can slow innovation and delay adoption, BI reported.

PaletteAI addresses that challenge with what Spectro Cloud describes as “one-click deployment” of AI systems. The platform separates roles between administrative teams, who manage governance and security, and AI specialists, who need freedom to experiment and build new solutions.

See Also: If there was a new fund backed by Jeff Bezos offering a 7-9% target yield with monthly dividends would you invest in it?

PaletteAI offers advanced security functions using Nvidia BlueField data processing units, which enable zero-trust access and support federal information processing standards compliance. According to Spectro Cloud, the platform automates setup, provisioning, and management across cloud, data center, and edge environments.

Enterprises can create full AI environments using Nvidia infrastructure in a matter of hours instead of weeks, Spectro Cloud said. The system supports the latest Nvidia technologies, including Blackwell GPUs, Grace central processing units, and the BlueField-3 and BlueField-4 data processing units.

Administrative teams manage oversight through policy controls while AI practitioners work from approved templates, creating an environment that stays efficient, secure, and consistent across every deployment, Spectro Cloud said.

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Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is establishing a new center dedicated to developing AI-based imaging tools to improve the diagnosis and precision treatment of cancers, cardiovascular disease, neurological diseases and numerous other conditions. The new Center for Computational and AI-enabled Imaging Sciences brings together collaborators from across WashU Medicine and others from WashU’s McKelvey School of Engineering.

AI already has shown promise for its ability to analyze vast collections of medical images to generate clinically relevant insights, identifying patterns and anomalies that physicians might otherwise not detect on their own.

Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology has long been a national leader in developing innovative imaging technologies, from the invention of positron emission tomography to today’s AI applications in diagnostics and image analysis, and this new center represents an ambitious expansion of our capability. Integrating AI into imaging will enhance how we diagnose disease, predict its progression and tailor treatments to the unique needs of each patient.”

Pamela K. Woodard, MD, the Elizabeth E. Mallinckrodt Professor and head of MIR at WashU Medicine

The new center will help advance AI-driven imaging technologies, such as two recently developed at WashU Medicine – in collaboration with MIR – that are being commercialized. One tool can analyze mammograms to predict an individual patient’s risk of breast cancer over the next five years.

Another rapidly maps the brain to help neurosurgeons plan delicate surgeries and avoid sensitive areas that control speech, movement and cognitive function. The center will be a hub for expertise in image analysis that uses sophisticated computing tools to find patterns in datasets of millions of medical images and de-identified patient records, providing insight on both the progression and the potential treatment of disease. The center will also support training on these tools for clinicians and researchers.

The new center will join a growing WashU ecosystem of collaborative AI initiatives that are helping to shape the future of medicine. These include the Center for Health AI (CHAI), which was established as part of the joint agreement to build deeper collaboration between BJC Health System and WashU Medicine and is focused on making health care more personalized and effective for patients and more efficient for providers; and the AI for Health Institute at WashU McKelvey Engineering, which is working on other AI-powered medical innovations.

The Center for Computational and AI-enabled Imaging Sciences will primarily focus on developing AI-based medical imaging applications that integrate information from different imaging types – ranging from digital microscope images of cells to MRI scans to X-rays – to identify clinically informative connections between them. This may include identifying previously unknown early indicators of disease onset that could allow for more effective clinical interventions.

The center will bring together AI imaging experts and researchers from across the Medical Campus, including Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine, and from the school’s Departments of Medicine, of Neurology, of Psychiatry and of Radiation Oncology.

A clear image of the future of medicine

The new center will house information from the imaging databases of all the participating departments, collectively representing a range of imaging modalities across many different types of disease. The AI-powered tools developed from those large datasets will enable increasingly precise diagnosis for individual patients, Woodard said.

AI algorithms applied to medical imaging have already been used to detect and classify new subtypes of some disorders in ways that can guide clinical treatment decisions. The breadth of information that will be available at the new center will accelerate this work in a broader range of conditions.

The new center will be led by Mark Anastasio, PhD, a leading expert in computational imaging science and AI for imaging applications. He joins WashU as the Mallinckrodt Endowed Professor of Imaging Sciences for MIR, where he will also be the Vice Chair for Imaging Sciences and AI Research. He will also be Professor of Electrical & Systems Engineering in McKelvey Engineering. Anastasio comes to WashU from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he has served as head of the Department of Bioengineering for the past six years.

“Institutions with leading academic medical centers that unite medical data, clinical expertise and advanced AI research will lead the next revolution in healthcare,” said Anastasio. “WashU is exactly such an institution and an ideal home for this center that will enable us to build a community to drive innovation that advances patient care in ways few other institutions can achieve.”

As part of that community building, Anastasio will join the leadership team of the Oncologic Imaging Program at Siteman Cancer Center. He will also be the associate Chief Research Information Officer for Biomedical Imaging at the Institute for Informatics, Data Science & Biostatistics (I2DB), where he will work with institute director Philip R.O. Payne, PhD, the Janet and Bernard Becker Professor of Medicine. Payne is also the chief health AI officer for CHAI and the Vice Chancellor for Biomedical Informatics and Data Science at WashU Medicine.

“AI-enabled imaging has the potential to be as transformative for medicine as earlier waves of innovation – from the adoption of electronic health records to the rise of precision medicine and the advent of real-world evidence generation,” said Payne. “That transformation is being realized here at WashU Medicine because of the dynamic and collaborative environment that exists at our institution, exemplified by leading-edge, transdisciplinary initiatives like this one.”

Aaron Bobick, PhD, dean of WashU McKelvey Engineering and the James M. McKelvey Professor, said dedicated centers such as this will be crucial to maximizing the medical and engineering expertise needed to build out the potential for AI in medical applications.

“Medical imaging offers some of the most exciting challenges in imaging science and artificial intelligence, both of which are core domains for McKelvey Engineering,” said Bobick. “I am certain that the innovations that this center will facilitate by combining the skills of WashU Engineering faculty with the broad range of medical expertise at WashU Medicine will lead to advances that both drive the science forward and benefit patients.”

TOKYO, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Japan’s manufacturing activity shrank in October at the fastest pace in 19 months, hit by slumping demand in the key automotive and semiconductor sectors, a private-sector survey showed on Tuesday.

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The headline index has remained below the 50.0 mark that separates growth from contraction for four consecutive months.

New orders dropped at the quickest pace in 20 months, driven by constrained client budgets and weak demand, the survey found. Export orders continued to fall for a 44th month, particularly from Asia, Europe and the United States, but the rate of contraction was the slowest since March.

“Demand weakness, particularly in the automotive and semiconductor sectors, weighed on the Japanese manufacturing industry,” said Pollyanna De Lima, Economics Associate Director at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Despite reduced demand, the drop in production output was less severe than in September, as manufacturers adjusted to shortages in new work, according to the survey.

Input cost inflation accelerated to a four-month high, driven by rising expenses in labour, materials and transportation. Firms’ output prices rose to a three-month high as they rushed to protect profit margins in response.

Manufacturers’ outlook for output turned more optimistic in October, supported by hopes for new products, growing AI adoption and auto and semiconductor sector recoveries as global trade conditions normalise, the PMI survey showed.

“They generally hope that new product releases will be successful and that the detrimental impact of U.S. tariffs will fade,” De Lima noted.

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