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Bloomberg Apple Inc. is spending $390 million to boost production from a maker of laser technology that’s critical for new iPhone X features such as facial recognition. Apple, whose products can stretch the manufacturing capabilities of suppliers, will invest the money in Finisar Corp. from a $1 billion manufacturing fund announced earlier this year with the aim of creating more ...

Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co. is aiming to introduce a smart speaker in the first half of 2018, entering a crowded field of voice-controlled devices from Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc., people briefed on the plans said. The device by the South Korean technology giant will have a strong focus on audio quality and the management of connected home ...

Bloomberg China is churning out robots. Annual production of industrial robots surpassed 100,000 for the first time — and it only took 10 months. Shipments were up 67 percent through October compared with a year earlier, state media reported. And there’s more to come: full-year output will reach 120,000 units, according to Ministry of Industry and Information Technology forecasts. China ...

Bloomberg Japanese companies are planning to kick-start the lunar economy by backing a local startup’s mission to land on the moon by 2020. Tokyo-based Ispace Inc . said it raised $90 million from some of the country’s biggest businesses, including Japan Airlines Co. and television network Tokyo Broadcasting System Holdings Inc. The funds will be used to send a spacecraft ...

Bloomberg After a six year absence, BP Plc returned to the solar-energy business with a $200 million investment in a British company that develops and maintains photovoltaic farms in Europe. The move marks another step by the largest oil companies into renewable-energy technologies starting to disrupt the energy industry. BP’s rivals such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA ...

Bloomberg Crude’s rally fizzled out for a third week, with prices stalled near $57 a barrel as concerns over excess supplies next year temper enthusiasm for OPEC’s extended production curbs. Futures in New York closed just about where they started, with small gains over the past two days merely offsetting losses in previous sessions. While the halt of the Forties ...

Bloomberg A week ago, Cameroon was getting ready to jostle for space in a global liquefied natural gas market already crowded with new supplies from the US and Russia. Now the extra output couldn’t come at a better time. France’s Perenco SA and US-traded Golar LNG Ltd. will start shipments from their $1.2 billion LNG project off Cameroon in February, ...

Bloomberg Brazil’s biggest wind company has set its sights on dominating the country’s nascent solar market. CPFL Energias Renovaveis SA has 1 megawatt of solar power in operation now, a pilot project in Sao Paulo State, but has plans to build another 450 megawatts. That’s a lot in a country where there’s only 1,300 megawatts of solar panels running, compared ...

Bloomberg Lebanon granted its first offshore energy rights to a group comprising Total SA, Eni SpA and Novatek PJSC, joining a regional race to find and develop oil and natural gas wealth in the eastern Mediterranean after years of delay. The cabinet awarded two licenses in its first offshore bidding round, allowing the companies to jointly explore blocks 4 and ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s stock exchange proposed to let “innovative” companies list in the Chinese enclave with dual-class share structures to avoid losing out on more initial public offerings by technology giants like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Allowing shares with extra voting power is part of a package of measures that may be the biggest change to the exchange’s listing rules ...