Hesai Group and Taikang Life Insurance Co. are among key companies set to invest in spatial-design software maker Manycore Tech Inc. ’s initial public offering in Hong Kong, according to people familiar with the matter. Hesai and Taikang Life are planning to participate as cornerstone investors, which get guaranteed allocation in a deal in exchange for holding the shares for a period of time, the ...
Hesai Group and Taikang Life Insurance Co. are among key companies set to invest in spatial-design software maker Manycore Tech Inc. ’s initial public offering in Hong Kong, according to people familiar with the matter. Hesai and Taikang Life are planning to participate as cornerstone investors, which get guaranteed allocation in a deal in exchange for holding the shares for a period of time, the people said, asking not to be identified to discuss a private matter. Manycore will start taking investor orders as early as Thursday for an IPO that may raise more than $100 million, people familiar with the matter said. Hesai declined to comment. Manycore and Taikang Insurance Group didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Read More: Chinese AI Startup Manycore Makes Global Push Amid US Tensions The Hangzhou-based company, which started operations in 2011, offers the Kujiale design software in China, while its Coohom platform serves international markets. The company filed for a US listing in 2021, then abandoned that plan after ride-hailing company Didi Global Inc. ’s ill-fated New York debut. Hong Kong listings recently notched their best quarter since 2021, though dealmakers have had to contend with regulatory tightening as well as the market impact of the war in Iran . Chinese technology firms have been a major driving force in the bumper share sales after a years-long slump, with OpenAI challenger MiniMax Group Inc. and chip designer Shanghai Biren Technology Co. among companies having gone public recently. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and CCB International Holdings Ltd. are joint sponsors of Manycore’s IPO, according to the company’s listing application.
Olga Mikheeva/iStock via Getty Images Rare earth elements have come under increasing focus owing to their criticality to defense equipment manufacturing and clean technology. China has monopolized this supply chain for over two decades and has not shied away from using it for geopolitical leverage, forcing others to think of a diversification strategy. This is Part 3 of a 5-part series in which Pl...
Olga Mikheeva/iStock via Getty Images Rare earth elements have come under increasing focus owing to their criticality to defense equipment manufacturing and clean technology. China has monopolized this supply chain for over two decades and has not shied away from using it for geopolitical leverage, forcing others to think of a diversification strategy. This is Part 3 of a 5-part series in which Platts News explores the strategies under play and the challenges they face. Western nations and their allies are making major investments in supply chains for recycled rare earths, but closing the gap with China comes with significant challenges. China dominates global rare earth supply chains, which are essential for defense applications, electric vehicles and other advanced technologies. The country accounted for 60% of global mined production and 91% of global refining capacity for key rare earths in 2024, according to data from the International Energy Agency. China has leveraged its dominance to develop a robust recycling supply chain that extracts more rare earths from production scrap and electronic waste. However, major investments from the US, EU and others aim to bolster rare earths recycling capacity and overcome economic challenges. "Recycling is important for future supply [outside of China], but the key issue right now is setting up the logistics and establishing those feedstock networks," Chris Berry, founder and president of the House Mountain Partners advisory firm, told Platts, part of S&P Global Energy. "Without that, I don't see how you go through the process of building a large enough scalable plant to make it economically feasible." China's lead China's long-term position as the world's largest producer of rare earths has enabled the development of mature, efficient systems in which plants convert scrap into powder that can easily be recycled to extract more rare earth elements, said David Merriman, research director at critical materials consulting fir...
The government's reliance on Planet Labs and BlackSky Technology for critical operations highlights a unique competitive advantage for their future growth.
The government's reliance on Planet Labs and BlackSky Technology for critical operations highlights a unique competitive advantage for their future growth.
adventtr/iStock via Getty Images I have been watching Elastic ( ESTC ) since 2015, three years before it went public. Back then the pitch was simple: take the world’s unstructured, ugly, impossible-to-find data and make it searchable. Early adopters were doing incredible things. Home Depot uses it to help its customers find the right tool for the job, and NASA uses it to glean insights from data s...
adventtr/iStock via Getty Images I have been watching Elastic ( ESTC ) since 2015, three years before it went public. Back then the pitch was simple: take the world’s unstructured, ugly, impossible-to-find data and make it searchable. Early adopters were doing incredible things. Home Depot uses it to help its customers find the right tool for the job, and NASA uses it to glean insights from data streaming off the Mars Rover. The US Geological Survey enriched seismographic data with social media feeds to better assess and react to earthquakes in real time. The enemy was complexity. The hero was search. Nobody was calling it infrastructure back then. It was a search tool. A clever one, but a search tool. In April 2026, Elastic is the infrastructure that keeps enterprise AI from making things up. The stock is near $50, roughly 49% off its 52-week high, and is being priced like a dying log management tool. The market is wrong about what this company is. That gap is the trade. Every Few Years, Someone Gets the Category Wrong I watched something like this happen with TIBCO , the messaging backbone that ran Wall Street's trading infrastructure for decades, repeatedly repriced as legacy middleware while the pipes it ran were irreplaceable. I watched it again when the big data honeymoon started in 2012. Every few years a genuinely useful infrastructure company gets caught in the wrong narrative at the wrong moment, and there are multiple collapses while the business keeps running. In early 2026, “SaaS” turned into a dirty word on Wall Street. The fear has a name: “seat compression.” If one AI agent can do the work of five humans, a company buys one license instead of five. For Salesforce, and ServiceNow, the seat-based giants, that’s a real structural threat. Makes sense. Elastic isn’t a seat-based business. It’s a data consumption business. At the March 2, 2026, Morgan Stanley TMT Conference , CFO Navam Welihinda confirmed that AI workloads drive roughly a 6% uplift in comp...
Private companies SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are three of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings (IPOs) on the horizon. SpaceX recently filed the necessary paperwork with the SEC, but all three companies could host IPOs before the end of 2026. However, retail investors can get exposure to all three companies today through the Ark Venture Fund (NASDAQMUTFUND: ARKVX) . Here are the ...
Private companies SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are three of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings (IPOs) on the horizon. SpaceX recently filed the necessary paperwork with the SEC, but all three companies could host IPOs before the end of 2026. However, retail investors can get exposure to all three companies today through the Ark Venture Fund (NASDAQMUTFUND: ARKVX) . Here are the important details. Image source: Getty Images. Continue reading