Category: 3. Business

Swedish start-up Stegra is battling to avoid becoming the second multibillion-euro European green industrial project to fall into insolvency in a year.

The green steel company, which has raised $6.5bn in debt and equity, is on the ropes 11 months after battery start-up Northvolt, launched by the same Swedish financiers, went bankrupt despite raising $15bn.

While Stegra executives have told its board that “we must avoid parallels with Northvolt”, according to people familiar with the discussions, the similarities are hard to ignore as the company struggles in the face of a sudden crisis.

Stegra’s funding gap for its first green steel plant just below the Arctic Circle in Sweden has jumped to as much as €1.5bn from about €500mn as recently as July, executives told an emergency board meeting this month.

Several equity investors and multiple creditors are getting twitchy. Stegra will hold a crunch meeting with its lenders on Tuesday, several people familiar with the matter said.

Citibank is seen by Stegra, formerly known as H2 Green Steel, as particularly problematic as it has put its loans of about €29mn to the steel start-up in a workout group, according to people familiar with the matter who say some other banks share Citi’s concerns and have put Stegra into “special measures”.

“This looks more and more like Northvolt. It is hard to see anything else than equity investors getting all but wiped out,” said one person familiar with Stegra’s financing.

Lawyers from Mannheimer Swartling, one of Sweden’s leading law firms, told the emergency board meeting about the risk of insolvency and the various tests directors should apply to determine it.

They said Stegra should hold board meetings more regularly — as often as each week — to monitor its financial situation and especially its liquidity, people familiar with the meeting told the Financial Times.

The lawyers added that a board meeting should be held far enough in advance of the 12th of each month to decide whether social security fees should be paid, and also sufficiently before the 25th of each month to decide whether to pay wages, the people said.

Henrik Henriksson, Stegra’s chief executive, told the FT last week that he did not recognise “the very one-sided picture conveyed”. Stegra said on Monday it was “confident that our ongoing financing round, including opportunities for outsourcing and selected strategic partnerships, will be secured in an orderly fashion”.

It has started a new financing round aimed at raising almost €1bn and said that it had received “strong initial equity commitments from our founders and lead investors” including Altor, Just Climate, a Wallenberg family foundation and co-founder Harald Mix. “We have several avenues to pursue to manage our cash position,” it added.

But behind the scenes, Stegra is fighting to survive. A decision this year to delay a galvanisation line reduced its funding needs by about €140mn but will also lead to later deliveries for 15 of its 21 long-term customers including Volvo, Porsche and Scania, people familiar with its financing said.

People close to the company, however, said the delay would have no significant impact on customers.

Stegra is also discussing outsourcing several parts of its steel plant in Boden — which is about 60 per cent complete but has been subject to several delays — including its hydrogen and electricity plant assets, according to executives.

Such plans — to sell, and lease back or buy them as a service — could save as much as €1.3bn in capital expenditure but are likely to take until next April or May to conclude, according to information shown to the board.

It is far from clear that Stegra has that much time. The emergency board meeting two weeks ago was told that as the Boden project was consuming about €280mn a month in cash, the company only had about 1.7 months of liquidity left unless it could draw down more debt.

People familiar with its financing said that to unlock that debt Stegra needed to raise more equity, and that some investors were balking at that. Stegra said it was in talks with both existing and new investors, and was optimistic of a successful outcome.

Its funding gap — judged in July to be about €500mn — is now €1.2bn under its central scenario and €1.5bn under its worst-case scenario, according to information prepared for the board meeting.

Stegra has in recent weeks hired restructuring specialists PJT, just as Northvolt did, people familiar with the appointment said.

Both Northvolt and Stegra were started by Vargas, a Swedish private equity firm founded in 2014 by financiers Harald Mix and Carl-Erik Lagercrantz with a goal of decarbonising 1 per cent of global emissions through its projects.

Stegra’s lead shareholders include Swedish private equity group Altor, French investor Hy24, Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, and fund manager Just Climate as well as Mix and Vargas.

Stegra announced on Monday that it would replace co-founder Mix as chair with Shaun Kingsbury, co-chief investment officer of Just Climate.

The start-up’s biggest creditors include the Swedish Export Credit Corporation, investment managers AIP, the European Investment Bank, and European banks including ING, BNP Paribas and Santander, the people added.

Another similarity with Northvolt appears to be an unwillingness from the Swedish government to help out. Stegra executives blame Sweden’s refusal to disburse €165mn in aid approved by Brussels for part of its predicament. Northvolt ended up in bankruptcy only weeks after the government explicitly ruled out stepping in to help.

Northvolt’s assets in northern Sweden, about 125km from Stegra’s, may be revived after US battery start-up Lyten bought them out of bankruptcy at a steep discount.

Among Stegra’s backers, there is debate about how its predicament compares with Northvolt. “Everybody is very quick to say it is Northvolt mark two. But if you have something of value, you can raise money off it. That is a fundamental difference to Northvolt,” said one.

But another suggested that the best outcome would be for a bigger steel company to buy the assets “and run this properly”.

Either way, the struggles of another great hope of sustainable European industry raise serious questions both for policymakers and investors about Europe’s green transition.

“It does not look pretty,” said one Nordic minister.

Q: Could you summarize the key efficacy findings from the OrigAMI-4 trial, particularly response rates, duration of response, and progression-free survival, in this heavily pretreated population with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma?
Kevin Harrington, MD, PhD, FRCP, FRCR, FRSB: We presented data from the OrigAMI-4 phase 1b/2 study in patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer who had received prior treatment with an immune checkpoint blocker and a platinum-based chemotherapy.

We reported data on two populations: the safety population of 86 patients who received at least 1 dose of the drug and the efficacy population of 38 patients who had at least 2 tumor assessments or had stopped treatment for any reason. The efficacy data relate only to that smaller subset of patients.

In that group, we observed an overall response rate of 45%, with a further 45% showing disease stabilization. When we looked at the lesions themselves, 82% showed evidence of shrinkage—clear evidence of the drug’s efficacy. In the efficacy-evaluable population, the median duration of response was over seven months, median progression-free survival was 6.8 months, and median overall survival was not yet reached. These findings show that single-agent subcutaneous amivantamab, delivered on a 3-week schedule, is very efficacious in this disease.

Q: Given that these patients had progressed on both checkpoint inhibition and platinum-based chemotherapy, how clinically meaningful are the responses seen with amivantamab in this setting?
Harrington: This group of patients is very difficult to achieve responses in. Previously, single-agent chemotherapy or investigator’s choice therapies—such as cetuximab, another EGFR-targeted drug—typically achieve response rates in the single digits or low teens, usually between 5% and 15%.

To see a response rate as high as 45% in this group of patients is, we believe, clinically meaningful and hopefully leads to patient benefit.

Cloud-native architecture and high-density baseband processing improves operational efficiency, performance and TCO

Herndon, VA., 20 October 2025 – ST Engineering iDirect, a global leader in satellite communications, today announced the general availability of Intuition 1.1, its next-generation ground system. Built on cloud-native, multi-orbit architecture, this release introduces advanced capabilities designed to unify satellite operations, enhance adaptability and maximize efficiency.

The foundation of Intuition is its efficient, cloud-native architecture, which reduces compute resource requirements and is further enhanced by high-density processing savings with the XBB baseband solution. Together, these elements can reduce hardware requirements by up to 70%, significantly lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO). Its modular, microservices-based design enables seamless, low-risk deployments, including rapid feature upgrades with minimal operational disruption, while flexible cloud deployment options ensure scalability, efficiency and performance for any operational need.

“Our vision with Intuition is to redefine agility and intelligent operations across the satellite industry,” said Sridhar Kuppanna, CTO and SVP of Engineering at ST Engineering iDirect. “With its cutting-edge architecture, robust APIs to facilitate analytics, and seamless readiness for 5G NTN, Intuition empowers customers to stay ahead in the rapidly changing connectivity landscape. Our agile development practice, and accelerated release delivery cycles will ensure that our customers have access to new capabilities and ongoing innovation to drive growth.”

Intuition 1.1 integrates ST Engineering iDirect’s award-winning Mx-DMA® MRC return waveform technology with global bandwidth management and advanced mobility, enabling dynamic multi-orbit bandwidth pooling, automated resource allocation and a faster response to network demands. This combination dramatically enhances performance, reduces costs and optimizes resource allocation to support growing connectivity requirements. Additionally, satellite network resource orchestration APIs further empower operators with comprehensive control over ground and space assets, enabling them to fully leverage advancements in software-defined satellites.

Intuition, paired with ST Engineering iDirect’s AI-powered analytics platform, drives advanced network optimization and operational performance. Designed for the future, Intuition enables seamless adoption of emerging 3GPP standards and sets the stage for 5G NTN roaming in upcoming releases. By deploying Intuition today, satellite operators can maximize their return on investment, support high-density growth and maintain readiness for the next wave of industry innovation.

*****

Media contact:
Martyn Gettings Tank PR
Email: martyn.gettings@tank.co.uk

21 October 2025

Allen & Gledhill advised Renew Group Private Limited (“RGPL”) on its sale of approximately 14.42% of the ordinary shares in UltraGreen.ai Private Limited to, among others, Anchor VI Pte. Ltd. (“65 Equity Partners”), Verde Taano Pte. Ltd. (“Vitruvian Partners”) and AGP Healthcare Fund VCC (“August Global Partners”), at an equity valuation of US$1.3 billion.

Advising RGPL was Allen & Gledhill Partner Rhys Goh.

As consumers ready their carts for the year’s biggest sales events, brands and agencies across Southeast Asia gear up for their final, crucial push of the year.

Navigate the hyper-competitive peak season with insights into ad spend trends, the retail industry’s top advertisers and competing creative strategies.

[Paris, France, October 21, 2025] At the Network X telecom summit, leading research firm Omdia, together with Huawei and industry partners, released the Telco Cloud Manifesto: Building an Intelligent Telco Cloud Infrastructure for Service Innovation in the Mobile AI Era.

This marks the industry’s first white paper dedicated to the intelligent Telco Cloud, offering a fresh global perspective on telecom infrastructure and providing valuable guidance for operators as they transition into the AI era.

The white paper says the industry is moving toward 5G-A and AI, with Telco Cloud at the heart of this transformation. Around the world, operators are ramping up investments in container platforms and AI technologies while exploring how AI can improve core networks. Survey findings show that more than 60% of operators believe Telco Cloud should support AI training and inference tasks.

To meet this demand, telecom infrastructure must accelerate its evolution from being primarily based on general-purpose computing to AI infrastructure (AI-infra).

Over the past decade, cloudification of telecom networks has driven the adoption of layered architectures and expanded the technology choices of operators. But this shift has also introduced significant integration and O&M challenges, including time-consuming cross-vendor verification, complex cross-layer fault detection, CNF upgrade dependencies, and resource scheduling between VMs and containers. With the rise of AI applications, operators now face the added task of integrating heterogeneous computing power to optimize networks. This further increases system complexity.

In this context, as noted in the white paper, an increasing number of operators are choosing full-stack deployment solutions in order to balance cloud-native capabilities with operational simplicity. Key advantages of this approach include:

• Pre-integration that shortens the verification cycle and accelerates service rollout
• Unified automation frameworks that improve the efficiency of upgrades and O&M
• Direct Kubernetes upgrades to target versions, reducing maintenance costs
• System-level verification that ensures component compatibility and improves reliability
• End-to-end (E2E) performance optimization from the OS to the container platform and network elements (NEs), delivering an experience beyond what layered architectures can provide.

The white paper further emphasizes that future telecom infrastructure must address both evolution and performance. It should support a smooth transition from VMs to containers while protecting existing investments, while delivering carrier-grade performance through traffic offloading and hardware acceleration. To overcome the limitations of traditional CPU-centric architectures, the white paper advocates introducing high-speed peer-to-peer interconnection to converge general-purpose and intelligent computing. This allows for efficient collaboration across diverse computing resources.

In addition, the white paper calls for building an AI enablement platform that offers model management, scheduling, and acceleration capabilities. Such a platform will help operators rapidly develop and deploy AI applications, unlocking the full potential of network intelligence.

The white paper is available here: https://omdia.tech.informa.com/commissioned-research/articles/telco-cloud-manifesto

The release of this white paper signals the acceleration of the Telco Cloud’s evolution from cloud-native infrastructure to AI infrastructure. Additionally, it underscores the industry’s collective commitment to shaping the future of intelligent Telco Cloud. Huawei reaffirms its readiness to work with global partners to drive innovation and open a new chapter in the mobile AI era.

Samsung recognized for AI leadership and accelerating adoption

 

Samsung Electronics recently announced that it has been recognized by Interbrand, a global brand consultancy, as the 5th-ranked global brand for the sixth year in a row. Interbrand releases its list of “Best Global Brands” each year. For this year’s list, Samsung recorded a brand value of $90.5 billion, upholding its position as the only Asian company to remain in the global top five since 2020.

 

According to Interbrand, Samsung Electronics’ evaluation was positively influenced by:

 

• Strengthened AI competitiveness across the company’s business divisions
• Enhanced customer experiences through unified integration across products
• Focused investment in AI-related semiconductors
• Execution of a customer-centric brand strategy

 

“Through AI innovation and open collaboration, Samsung has worked to ensure that more customers can experience AI in their daily lives,” said Won-Jin Lee, President and Head of Global Marketing Office at Samsung Electronics. “Moving forward, we will continue to focus on benefits for customers including in health and safety so that Samsung can grow into an even more beloved brand.”

 

Under the vision of “Innovation for All,” Samsung consistently strives to make AI accessible to more customers worldwide.

 

This year, Samsung reinforced its leadership in mobile AI with the continued advancement of Galaxy AI, aiming to make it available on 400 million devices within the year driving the democratization of AI. In Consumer Electronics (CE), Samsung has expanded AI competitiveness by introducing AI technologies tailored to each product category, such as Vision AI and Bespoke AI.

 

Through open collaboration with diverse partners, Samsung has enhanced personalized AI experiences for customers, while also providing industry-leading security with Samsung Knox.

 

In semiconductors, Samsung has been addressing the growing demand for AI with a comprehensive portfolio across cloud, on-device, and physical AI. This includes actively responding with advanced products including HBM, high-capacity DDR5, LPDDR5X and GDDR7.

 

Beyond AI, Samsung continues to enhance the accessibility of its products and services and drive sustainable innovation across all business divisions. This includes energy savings through energy-efficient appliances connected via SmartThings.

 

 

Samsung’s Recognized Efforts in Each Business Division

 

Mobile

 

• Leading the mobile AI era and driving the popularization of AI with Galaxy AI
• Strengthening foldable category leadership with the launch of Galaxy Z Fold7 and Z Flip7
• Enhancing customer trust through strengthened privacy and security technologies
• Expanding health services through advanced wearables, Samsung Health enhancements, and open collaboration

 

Networks

 

• Reinforcing leadership in AI-powered virtualized Radio Access Networks (vRAN) and Open RAN
• Consistently innovating technologies to support various 5G use cases, including high quality streaming and gaming

• Leading the technical standardization of 6G

• Enhancing partnerships with customer companies and communicating the sustainability aspects of Samsung’s network technology

 

Visual Display

 

• Solidifying global leadership in TVs, soundbars, and gaming monitors
• Innovating viewing with rich AI features based on Vision AI
• Enhancing The Frame and Art Store services to deliver personalized art TV experiences
• Expanding content offerings through partnerships in TV Plus, entertainment, gaming, and music

 

Digital Appliances

 

• Maintaining global leadership in categories such as refrigerators and washing machines through consistent product innovation and advanced AI capabilities
• Providing differentiated convenience and advanced AI experiences through SmartThings integration
• Expanding Bespoke AI appliance leadership across energy efficiency, usability, performance, and design

 

Semiconductor

 

• Operating a diverse portfolio across cloud, on-device, and physical AI applications
• Maintaining leadership in mobile and automotive semiconductors, including DDR, SSD, LPDDR, UFS, and Auto SSD
• Continuing development and investment in innovative solutions like CMM-D and HBM
• Sharing vision and industry leadership through influential tech events

 

Interbrand’s Best Global Brands are ranked based on brand value evaluation, which involves a comprehensive analysis of the company’s financial performance and outlook, the influence of the brand on customer purchases, and brand competitiveness (including strategy, empathy, differentiation, customer engagement, consistency, trust, and more). The ranking is one of the world’s longest-standing brand value evaluations, widely recognized for its credibility.