Bayer and Google in drug discovery partnership

In today’s top stories, chipmaker TSMC reports a 78% revenue rise, Tata Motors reveals new electric vehicle portfolio models, and Bayer announces a partnership with Google that will deploy machine learning to aid drug discovery. Tesla emerges as one of Wall Street’s top five car stocks, and investment banks begin cutting jobs.

TSMC revenues up 78%

TSMC [TSM] reported revenues up 78% to NT$295.9bn ($9.7bn) in its Q4 earnings report on Thursday morning. Rumours spread on the previous day that TSMC was considering lowering prices on its 3nm chips, the cost of which have been high enough to prevent widespread adoption. Meanwhile, a bill passed in Taiwan last week could offer TSMC a 50% tax break for its operations within the country.

Tata Motors to expand EV portfolio

Tata Motors [TTM] will be expanding its EV portfolio, reported Reuters, in an effort to maintain its position as the top seller of EVs in India. Shailesh Chandra, managing director of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and its EV subsidiary acknowledged the range in the needs of buyers, saying, "Customer needs are getting very individualistic”. At India’s Auto Expo this week, the company showcased five EV models among a total of 12 new vehicles.

Bayer and Google announce ML drug discovery partnership

Bayer [BAYN.DE] announced a collaboration with Google [GOOGL] that will deploy Google Cloud’s Tensorflow Processing Units (TPUs) to accelerate drug discovery. TPUs running “cutting-edge machine learning models (ML) and computationally intensive workloads [will] accelerate and scale Bayer's quantum chemistry calculations”, Wednesday's press release explained. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian called drug discovery “one of the most important applications for AI.”

Investment banks in ‘brutal’ headcount cuts

2023’s selloffs have led BlackRock [BLK] to plan 500 job cuts globally, amounting to roughly 2.5% of its total workforce. Its assets under management fell 16% in the year to 30 September. Goldman Sachs [GS], meanwhile, began cuts of 3,200 employees, approximately 6.5% of its workforce last week, with many employees given just 30 minutes to leave after receiving no bonuses last year.

Tesla one of Wall Street’s favourite car stocks

Tesla [TSLA] is one of Wall Street’s five favourite car stocks according to analysis from Barron’s, despite its share price falling over 65% in the last year. Sixty-four percent of analysts covering Tesla gave it a ‘buy’ rating. The list includes a range of auto players, including parts suppliers and service providers. O’Reilly [ORLY], Lithia [LAD], Aptiv [APTV] and Copart [CPRT] comprised the top four, with 80% of analysts giving Copart a ‘buy’ rating.