US private equity, Thomas Bravo has acquired Sophos, a UK cyber security company for £.308m ($3.9bn). Sophos, the FTSE 250 company based in Abingdon near Oxford employs 3, 400 people, specialising in antivirus and encryption produts, based in England, which mainly serves small and medium-sized businesses, is the latest UK company to be acquired by…
Dyson pulls the plug on electric cars. The billionaire businessman had hoped to harness his group’s expertise in battery systems, aerodynamics and high-tech manufacturing to break into a fiercely competitive industry. Weekly meetings of the auto team run by former BMW and Nissan executive Roland Krueger, who joined Dyson in January 2019, reviewed the outlook…
John Goodenough of the University of Texas in Austin, who is still active in research to lead the development of rechargeable Lithium-ion batteries that power everything mobile phones to laptops and even electric vehicles, at the age of 97. John Goodenough was the oldest laureate in any discipline in the 118-year history of Nobel Prizes,…
The US is looking at ways to channel money to Huawei’s European rivals, as officials warn that the Chinese company is becoming dangerously dominant in the race for the next generation of mobile communications. The US official have suggested issuing credit to companies such as Nokia and Ericsson to enable them to match financing terms…
Huawei has bought a stake in the company that commercialises research at Oxford University , giving the Chinese telecoms group access to soe of the early stage technology developed by British academics. Oxford Sciences Innovation, whose mission is to bring Oxford’s best ideas to the world, is the largest fund dedicated to academic spin-offs in…
A large underwater observatory that was stationed at a depth of 22 meters in the Baltic Sea has vanished without a trace. The $330,000 observatory managed by Ocean Research agencies had been on seafloor in a restricted area off the northern coast of Germany since December 2016. Divers were sent to locate the observatory found…
ISRO said on Saturday it had lost communication with its Vikram lander 1.2miles before touchdown on the moon’s south pole. The complex £114m mission involved carrying out a soft landing with a rover vehicle to search for signs of water. India would have become only the fourth country to land a vessel on the lunar…
Lithium Ion batteries were developed in 1980 at Oxford University but were first commercialised by Japan’s Sony in 1991 for use in its camcorders. Anil Srivastave CEO of Swiss Battery make Leclanche, said “UK needs to focus on how to commercialise innovations made in its universities and then scale them up quickly as their a…
China’s launch of a new technology focused stock exchange to rival Nasdaq on Wall Street has underlined the significance of state funding to the country’s fastest growing tech sector. Of the first 25 companies listed on Shanghai’s Starboard, 14 report state-owned investors among their top three shareholders . The first 25 listing, which raised $5.3bn,…
Elon Musk led aerospace startup SpaceX has successfully launched its 18th mission for NASA to deliver equipment, research and supply material to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission was launched using twice-flown dragon capsule and marked SpaceX’s 44th successful recovery of a Falcon 9 rocket booster. SpaceX had used the booster two months ago…