Tech, in brief

Companies selling shares to pay for AI

Anthropic picked the Nasdaq for a share sale widely expected next month. [1] Z.ai, a Chinese AI company, plans to raise about $5 billion, two months after raising $4 billion. [7] Ligent, a Chinese maker of optical parts used in data centres, wants $723 million from a Hong Kong listing. [8]

The US government against Huawei

A US government bank will lend nearly $100 million to Africell, an American-owned phone company in Africa, to buy American and allied network gear. [9] Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, went on trial in a New York federal court on Wednesday. [10]

Doubts about what AI is worth

SoftBank, an investor in OpenAI, fell as much as 13.2% in Tokyo on Monday. [3] Gartner, a research firm, forecasts that nearly a third of workers laid off because of AI will need rehiring by 2029. [13] The investor Jim Chanos argues that firms renting out AI computers cannot earn enough to cover the cost of the money they raise. [14]

1. 1Anthropic picked the Nasdaq for its share sale. In Asia on Monday, AI shares fell after its boss asked the industry to slow down.
2. 2Z.ai raises money again, and its shares fall
3. 3Huawei goes on trial in New York
4. 4US lends Africell $100m to keep Huawei out
5. 5A Reuters column likens AI cloud firms to the 2000 telecom bust

Anthropic, the US company that makes the Claude AI models, has picked the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York for its first sale of shares to the public. [1]

The next thing that can be checked is Anthropic's accounts, which must be public at least 15 days before its investor pitch and should show whether the reported profit is real. [2][4]

Z.ai, a Beijing company that makes the GLM family of AI models, said it will raise about $5 billion. [7][3]

About $2 billion is to come from new shares priced at HK$714 each, 10% below where the shares closed on Friday. [7]

The other $3 billion is to come from bonds that can later be swapped for shares. [7] Z.ai raised about $4 billion in July. [7]

Its shares fell as much as 10.5% in Hong Kong on Monday. [3]

Z.ai says the money pays for new models and the computers to train and run them. [7]

Its rival MiniMax, also listed in Hong Kong, fell 5.4% in the same Monday sell-off of AI shares. [3]

Building AI costs more than most AI companies earn, so they sell shares to pay for it, and each share raises less when prices fall.

So a weekend of worry about AI can make the next data centre harder to pay for.

It needed money again, priced its new shares 10% below Friday's close, and its shares fell as much as 10.5% the same day.

A maker of data-centre parts is selling 172 million shares to pay for research and more production, at a price set before trading begins.

Nscale, Lambda and SB Energy are preparing share sales because Nvidia's chips are so expensive that these firms are short of cash.

A company that already makes a profit, as Anthropic reportedly now does, can keep building from its own earnings even when its shares fall.

People whose savings sit in those funds would then gain when Anthropic's price rises. They would also lose when it falls.

Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, went on trial in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York, with opening statements on Wednesday. [10]

US prosecutors accuse it of stealing trade secrets from six companies, including Motorola Solutions and T-Mobile. [10]

The case began with the 2018 arrest in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's finance chief. [10] The US Justice Department said she defrauded banks to get around sanctions on Iran. [10]

She made a deal in 2021 and returned to China. [10]

The trial could last four months, and former Huawei employees are expected to testify. [10] Huawei has been effectively barred from selling its products in the US since 2019. [10]

The US Export-Import Bank, a government lender, will lend nearly $100 million to Africell, Reuters reported on Friday. [9]

Africell is Africa's only American-owned telecoms firm, with 15 million customers in Angola, Gambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone. [9]

A draft press release says the money is for network technology from American and allied suppliers. [9]

Huawei holds about 52% of Africa's market for 5G network equipment, according to Counterpoint Research. [9]

The US government has sanctioned Huawei over claims that it could spy on users, which Huawei denies. [9]

The loan follows a 2025 Trump order telling US agencies to promote American technology abroad. [9]

A Reuters Breakingviews column compared neoclouds, independent companies that rent out AI computers, to the upstart telecoms firms of the late 1990s. [14]

North American telecoms firms spent nearly $500 billion on internet networks by 2002, about half of it by upstarts. [14]

When investors stopped funding them in mid-2000, their shares collapsed and several went bust. [14]

CoreWeave, the biggest neocloud, had $72 billion of liabilities at the end of June, up 56% since January. [14]

Nscale, Lambda and SB Energy are preparing stock market listings, and Nvidia has invested in several neoclouds, much as equipment makers once lent to the telecom upstarts. [14]

It is one column's argument, and IREN's co-chief executive says this boom is fundamentally different. [14]

Gartner, a global research firm, forecasts that by 2029 nearly a third of employees laid off because of AI will need to be rehired. [13]

It says hiring them back will often cost significantly more. [13] Its reasoning is that the number of workers worldwide is flat or falling, so recruiting and training will get dearer. [13]

It also predicts that by 2027 three-quarters of firms chasing AI cost savings will be overtaken by rivals that reinvest them. [13]

Oracle's workforce shrank by 21,000 over the past year, and its annual report said using AI has led to cuts. [13]

Gartner's numbers are a forecast, not a count, and the cost of hiring back would fall on the firms that cut. [13]

PitchBook, a company that collects data on markets, said on Friday that no European company is yet worth $1 trillion. [15]

Its research named ASML, the Dutch maker of the machines that print patterns onto advanced chips, as the likeliest to get there first. [15]

Based on past growth, which it says guarantees nothing, it put that between 2028 and 2031. [15] Its closest rival could be Arm, the British chip designer listed on the Nasdaq. [15]

PitchBook blames stock markets and rules that are split between Europe's countries, and a lean among Europe's biggest companies towards health care, consumer goods and energy rather than technology. [15]

Only four European companies had more than $100 billion of revenue in the year to 20 August. [15]

Ligent Technologies, a Chinese maker of optical equipment, filed on Monday to raise about $723 million by listing in Hong Kong. [8]

It makes optical transceivers and optical chips used in data centres, cloud computing and telecoms networks. [8] A transceiver turns electrical signals into light so data can travel down fibre cables.

It is offering 172 million shares at HK$32.96 each, which would value it at about $4.13 billion. [8]

Ligent is controlled by Hisense, a Chinese technology conglomerate, and its shares are due to start trading on 22 September. [8]

The prospectus says the money will pay for research and more production capacity. [8]

Finland, Czechia, Norway and Poland will jointly own a quantum computer made by IQM, the company said on 10 September. [11]

It is funded through the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, the EU body that pays for shared supercomputers. [11]

It will be installed at CSC, Finland's IT centre for science, in three steps: a 150-qubit machine in 2027, an upgrade in 2028 and a newer machine in 2029. [11]

After the last step it should run up to 9 logical qubits, which are groups of physical qubits that correct each other's errors and so work more reliably. [11]

IQM calls it Europe's first such machine, and that is the maker's own claim about a computer three years away. [11]

VodafoneZiggo, the Dutch phone and cable company, agreed to sell its mobile towers to three investment funds, the buyers said on 8 September. [12]

They are DigitalBridge, an American investor in towers and data centres, with L&G, a British financial group, and TD Asset Management, part of Canada's TD Bank. [12]

The masts will join DigitalBridge's Belgian tower company, making one business with more than 6,600 sites. [12]

VodafoneZiggo and Telenet stay on as the main customers using the masts. [12] The deal needs regulators' approval, is due to close in early 2027, and no price was published. [12]