The Group of Seven, 7 of the world’s richest countries, has agreed to put a global price cap on Russian oil, potentially cooling oil prices while hitting the revenue of Russia. The cap is planned to be enacted around the same time as the EU sanctions on Russian oil, which will come into effect 5^th December. No values have been given for the cap, which would allow buyers of Russian crude to continue with key services like the financing and insurance for tankers. However, the Kremlin has announced that it would stop supplying oil to countries that have imposed the price cap.

Meta and Qualcomm to Make VR Chips

Meta has struck a deal with semiconductor giant Qualcomm to produce custom chips for virtual reality products in the latest leg of Meta’s push to build a metaverse empire. The agreement will last multiple years, and will be using Qualcomm’s Extended Reality Snapdragon technology for virtual and augmented reality. These will go into the “future roadmap” of Occulus Quest products. “Unlike mobile phones, building virtual reality brings novel, multi-dimensional challenges in spatial computing, cost, and form factor,” Zuckerberg said.

US Restricts Chip Sales to China and Russia

Washington has placed limits on the sale of high-end GPUs to China and Russia. Sold by companies like AMD and Nvidia, these chips are often used in supercomputer and AI applications and have become a key piece in an ongoing tech cold war between the states. However, Chinese EV makers, which are reportedly heavily reliant on Nvidia chips, have dodged the blow for now as their auto systems are not included in the list of US-sanctioned products.