"Global Brand Memorabilia" is a regular research project of the Brand Alliance Development Research Center. From March 2022, the Brand Alliance observed, sorted out and summarized the global brand events that occurred in that month, and jointly compiled and announced them with Sino-Singapore Jingwei.
"Global Brand Memorabilia" aims to help people understand the development trends of global brands, learn from the experience of international brand development, enhance the international influence of brands, and promote the birth of world-class enterprises with global competitiveness.
Summary of the world's top 10 brand events in May 2024
01. Berkshire held a shareholders' meeting, and Warren Buffett announced the selection of successors [corporate brand]
02. OpenAI releases a new large language model, and the AI industry may usher in major progress [corporate brand]
03. Financial legend Simmons passed away, mathematical genius impressed Wall Street [Character Brand]
04. Nobel laureate Alice Munroe passed away and spent her whole life writing about the situation of women [Character Brand]
05. Sony Apollo acquires Paramount, Hollywood's five major patterns may end [industry brand]
06. Internet Leader Enters Southeast Asia to Build AI Infrastructure [Industry Brand]
07. Mobil's acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources brings U.S. oil giants to a new level [corporate brand]
08. Audi and SAIC develop a new platform to join hands in a new era of joint ventures [industry brand]
09. Nvidia's first-quarter results exploded, and Jensen Huang is expected to become the world's richest man [corporate brand]
10. Tesla's new gigafactory is expected to start production in the first quarter of next year [corporate brand]
Berkshire holds a shareholder meeting
Warren Buffett announced the selection of a successor
[Nature of the event: corporate brand]
On May 4, the annual "Warren Buffett Shareholders' Meeting" (that is, Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders' meeting) was held as scheduled, and business tycoons such as Bill Gates and Tim Cook were present at the conference. At the meeting, Buffett announced that his successor has been chosen, and the current Berkshire vice chairman Greg Abel will succeed him at the helm of the investment company, and it seems that Buffett, who will turn 94 years old in August, is finally retiring. The 62-year-old is responsible for all of Berkshire's non-insurance operations, including energy, rail, retail, financial products and manufacturing. Warren Buffett once said: "Abel is now responsible for a large business, with retail sales exceeding $150 billion and managing 275,000 employees. His performance in these areas has even surpassed my past results. The late Charlie Munger also commented that Abel was "an evolutionary version of Warren Buffett", "an outstanding business leader", and a "huge learning machine". At last year's Buffett shareholders' meeting, Buffett and his old partner Munger attended the 59th meeting to answer shareholders' questions, and this became a swan song. Last November, at the age of 99, Munger died in California, and Buffett lost his golden partner forever.
OpenAI Releases New Large Language Model
The AI industry may usher in significant progress
[Nature of the event: corporate brand]
On May 13, local time, OpenAI, an American AI research company, held an online spring conference and released GPT-4o, an iteration of ChatGPT4.0. Compared to GPT4.0, GPT-4o focuses on optimizing the performance of online chat and conversation systems, showing faster response times and higher quality in real-time conversations, while focusing more on human friendliness and avoiding confusing or irrelevant responses as much as possible. In addition, it has a more powerful error detection and self-improvement mechanism, which can correct errors and improve performance more effectively; It can receive any combination of text, audio, and image input, and seamlessly output a variety of forms of information; Even in the voice conversation test, there is the ability to perceive breathing. What's more, GPT-4o will be available to all users, not just paying ones. The release of GPT-4o not only improves the efficiency and quality of human-computer interaction, but also opens up new possibilities for the application of AI technology in customer service, education, entertainment and other fields.
Financial legend Simmons has passed away
The mathematical genius impressed Wall Street
[Nature of the event: character brand]
On May 10, the Simmons Foundation announced on its official website that James Simmons, the co-founder of the foundation, died in New York City, USA, at the age of 86. Simmons gave up his illustrious academic career to devote himself to the world of finance, which he knew nothing about, but became one of the most successful Wall Street investors of all time, known as the "father of quantitative investing." Since its inception in 1988, the Medal Fund under Renaissance Technology Co., Ltd. has an average annual after-fee return of 39%, including an average annual return of 71.8% from 1994 to mid-2014. In comparison, Warren Buffett's average annual net value growth rate from 1965 to 2018 was 21%, and Soros's Quantum Fund had an average annual return of 32% from 1969 to 2000. Simmons' investment success is inseparable from his status as a mathematician. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley at the age of 23, served as chair of the Department of Mathematics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and co-authored the famous Chen-Simons theorem with the famous Chinese-American mathematician Chern Shiing-Shen, who co-authored the famous Chen-Simons theorem. In his later years, Simmons turned to education and philanthropy, establishing a foundation that has donated more than $1 billion and invested heavily in supporting the research and development of autism drugs.
Nobel laureate Alice Munroe has died
She has been writing about the situation of women all her life
[Nature of the event: character brand]
On the evening of May 13, Canadian short story writer and 2013 Nobel Prize winner Alice Monroe died in a nursing home in Ontario at the age of 92. Monroe was born into a rural family in Ontario, Canada, and in 1968 he published his first collection of novels, Happy Shadow Dance, which won the Governor-General's Literary Award. Subsequently, she wrote "The Life of Girls and Women", "The Process of Love", "Escape" and other works, and won almost all major literary awards. Her work has been translated into many languages and sold worldwide, influencing countless readers and writers. In 2012, after the publication of the short story collection Dear Life, Monroe announced the closure of his pen. In 2013, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which at the time described her as a "master of contemporary short stories." Monroe's writing has been hailed as a model of feminist literary writing, and the main characters in her short stories are almost all women, showing the rich and subtle situation of women from the perspective of female characters. Margaret Atwood once called her "one of the leading writers of contemporary English fiction", and Jonathan Franzen once bluntly called her "one of the beliefs of the novel".
Sony Apollo acquires Paramount
Hollywood's five major patterns may end
[Nature of the event: industry brand]
On May 1, Sony Pictures and Apollo issued a non-binding $26 billion (about 180 billion yuan) all-cash takeover offer letter to Paramount, which included taking on Paramount's debt. On May 4, Paramount Universal's board of directors formally approved negotiations for a potential acquisition with Sony Pictures and Apollo Global Management. This could be the world's largest cash acquisition this year. In recent years, Hollywood has seen a surge in development and mergers and acquisitions. At the beginning of 2019, Disney, which has always pursued acquisitionism, ate 20th Century Fox for a sky-high price of $71.3 billion, and Hollywood officially became the Big Five, namely Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony, Disney and Universal. If Sony eats Paramount, Hollywood will become the Big Four. As a century-old corporate brand that has developed from the golden age of Hollywood, Paramount will mean the end of an era no matter who it ends.
Internet leaders have advanced into Southeast Asia
Increase the construction of AI infrastructure
[Nature of the event: industry brand]
Southeast Asia's digital economy market has huge potential, and international Internet leaders have deployed one after another. On May 7, Amazon announced that it will expand its investment in Singapore, planning to invest about $9 billion to expand cloud computing infrastructure to meet the growing demand for cloud services and accelerate the weight and use of AI in its business. At the end of April and the beginning of May, Microsoft CEO Nadella embarked on a trip to Southeast Asia, visiting Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, and announced new investment plans totaling $5 billion. Over the next four years, Microsoft will invest US$1.7 billion in Indonesia, about US$1 billion in Thailand, and US$2.2 billion in Malaysia to build cloud computing and AI infrastructure. Last year, Nvidia formed an alliance with Malaysia's YTL Power Company to set up a $4.3 billion AI data center park in the region. In April, Huang announced an additional $200 million investment to build an AI center in Solo, Java. According to analysts, Silicon Valley's huge investment in Southeast Asia is expected to increase the region's economic output by about $1 trillion by 2030.
Mobil acquires Pioneer Natural Resources
U.S. oil majors have reached a new level
[Nature of the event: corporate brand]
On May 3, the international oil giant ExxonMobil officially announced that it had completed the acquisition plan of Pioneer Natural Resources. It is understood that Pioneer Natural Resources is one of the largest oil producers in the Permian Basin in the United States and a relatively large producer of pure shale oil in the United States. ExxonMobil's acquisition of Pioneer cost about US$60 billion, or about 430 billion yuan. The completion of the acquisition marks a more than doubling of ExxonMobil's Permian Basin production, making it the largest oil and gas producer in the Permian Basin in the United States. In this way, Mobil's measures and decisions in product pricing, supply strategy, technological innovation, and industry standard formulation will have a profound impact on key factors such as the price mechanism, market supply and demand, technical level, and industry rules of the entire petroleum industry, thereby affecting the development direction and competitive landscape of the entire industry.
Audi and SAIC are developing a new platform
Hand in hand into a new era of joint ventures
[Nature of the event: industry brand]
On May 20, Audi, SAIC Motor and SAIC Volkswagen signed a cooperation agreement to jointly develop a new platform focused on the Chinese market, the "Intelligent Digital Platform", and build a new generation of high-end intelligent connected vehicles based on the platform. Following the signing of a memorandum of understanding in July 2023 to deepen strategic cooperation, SAIC, SAIC Volkswagen, and Audi officially signed a cooperation agreement, and the joint development of the ADP intelligent digital platform was officially launched. Since then, Audi has become the first luxury brand to jointly develop a new electric vehicle with a Chinese automaker. In 1984, SAIC and Audi's parent company, Volkswagen Group, formally established a joint venture, Shanghai Volkswagen. In the past 40 years, Volkswagen's "enlightenment" role in China's automotive industry has been indelible. 40 years later, when overseas car companies have the absolute right to speak in the joint venture, to the Chinese team "has the final say"; When "market for technology" becomes "technology for reverse output"; When overseas brand models change from "raising prices to make money" to "breaking bones"; When Chinese car companies begin to occupy the main stage of major auto shows in Europe and the United States, the "new era of joint ventures" with Chinese brands as the core has arrived. At present, it is a fashionable topic for Chinese cars to go overseas, but at present, overseas car companies need the Chinese market more and are more eager for Chinese technology.
Nvidia's first-quarter results exploded
Huang is on track to become the richest man in the world
[Nature of the event: corporate brand]
On May 23, local time, Nvidia released its financial report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025. According to the quarterly report, the company's revenue in the first fiscal quarter was US$26 billion, an increase of 262% over the same period last year, and analysts had expected US$24.65 billion, of which the net profit in the first quarter was US$14.88 billion, an increase of 628% year-on-year; The gross profit margin, which was previously a concern for the market, also continued to rise, reaching 78.4%. Driven by performance, NVIDIA's share price rose 9.32% against the market on the 23rd, breaking the $1,000 mark for the first time, and NVIDIA's share price has doubled since the beginning of this year; As of May 27, local time, Nvidia's stock price reached $1,064.69, with a market capitalization of more than $2.6 trillion, a record high. As Nvidia's stock price hit another all-time high, so did Huang's personal wealth. As of May 24, Huang's net worth reached $91.3 billion, making him the 17th richest person in the world. It is widely expected that the 61-year-old Huang is expected to surpass Tesla CEO Elon Musk and become the world's richest man by 2025 at the earliest.
Tesla's new Gigafactory begins
It is expected to be put into production in the first quarter of next year
[Nature of the event: corporate brand]
On May 23, Tesla's Shanghai Energy Storage Gigafactory officially started in Lingang, Shanghai. It is reported that the plant is Tesla's first energy storage gigafactory outside the United States, and it is also another large-scale investment project in China after the Shanghai Gigafactory since Tesla entered China 10 years ago, and has become another important landing for Tesla in the global energy storage layout. Zhu Xiaotong, senior vice president of Tesla, said that the start of construction of the Shanghai energy storage gigafactory will further consolidate Tesla's leading position in the field of energy storage and promote the progress and development of the global green energy industry. It is reported that at present, Tesla's energy storage products are distributed in more than 65 countries and regions around the world, with an annual installed capacity of 14.7 GWh (1 GWh = 1000 MWh) in 2023, and an installed capacity of 4.1 GWh in the first quarter of 2024, with a year-on-year increase of 140% in the gross profit of the energy storage business, which has become one of Tesla's fastest-growing businesses.