Germany’s Robert Bosch plans to invest nearly $3 billion on artificial intelligence over the next two years as the auto-parts supplier aims to boost productivity and power new products.

At the CES trade show in Las Vegas, Bosch said it would extend its collaboration with Microsoft to use AI to optimize factory production, and presented new AI-based driver-assist systems, the WSJ’s Dominic Chopping reports. It also said it would work with Kodiak AI on platforms for driverless trucks, building specialized hardware and software systems to give standard trucks autonomous capabilities. Bosch will supply sensors, steering technology and other hardware.

Last year, Bosch said it was looking to harness AI to boost manufacturing productivity and improve supply-chain efficiency to cut costs, as strained market conditions, heightened competition and struggles to penetrate new markets prompted it to announce 13,000 job cuts by the end of 2030. That was on top of 9,000 redundancies announced in 2024.

• Autonomous driving company Mobileye is acquiring AI-powered humanoid robotics startup Mentee Robotics for $900 million. (WSJ)
• Uber, Lucid, and Nuro started on-road testing of their robotaxi service last month in the San Francisco Bay Area. (WSJ)
• Amazon Web Services and German auto-hardware company Aumovio are joining to support the ​commercial rollout of self-driving vehicles, starting with Aurora's autonomous trucks. (Reuters)

Anheuser-Busch InBev agreed to repurchase a minority stake in its U.S.metal-container plants for around $3 billion, to better secure supplies of cans and other packaging for the world’s biggest brewer.

The 49.9% stake was held by a group of institutional investors led by Apollo Global Management, the Journal’s Aimee Look reports. AB InBev’s metal-container plant operations span seven facilities in six states, the Belgian brewer of Budweiser said. It sold the stake in 2020 to help pay down debt.

The repurchase of the plants will provide manufacturing jobs in the U.S., said AB InBev, which like its peers has been wrestling with falling sales volumes as tastes change and consumers cut extra spending.

A Bill Gates-backed nuclear-fusion company has teamed up with Nvidia and Siemens to aid its effort to harness the energy that powers the sun, the WSJ’s Clara Hudson reports. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is working with the tech companies to develop a virtual replica of CFS’s nuclear-fusion machine.

Fusion engineers will use this “digital twin” to run simulations, ultimately to hasten the goal of producing fusion energy at a commercial scale. CFS, which is backed by Gates’s technology fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures, says it is aiming to start producing commercial fusion energy in the 2030s.

• Trump Media & Technology Group and fusion firm TAE Technologies are looking for sites for a fusion power plant, after agreeing in December to a $6 billion merger. (WSJ)

• German inflation fell in December, tracking a decline in French consumer prices. (WSJ)
• China banned exports of goods with potential military uses to Japan in retaliation for Prime Minister Takaichi’s remarks about Taiwan. (WSJ)
• Ford posted higher fourth-quarter sales, with lower-price trucks helping more than offset a drop in EV sales after a key tax credit expired. (WSJ)
• Lockheed Martin committed to boosting its Patriot missile output to roughly 2,000 interceptors a year in response to demand from Pentagon officials. (WSJ)
• A judge cleared the path for a lawsuit alleging STG Logistics and majority creditors violated minority lenders’ rights to interest payments when they were excluded from a liability management transaction. (WSJ)
• GPS devices have been installed on about 75,000 intermodal containers shared by North American Class I railroads after a multiyear effort, Union Pacific said. (Journal of Commerce)
• Standard Forwarding Freight, which served the Midwest, temporarily suspended its operations and cut its workforce following a strategic review. (TruckingDive)
• U.K. ship-management company V.Group acquired consulting firm Njord from Maersk Tankers. (ShippingWatch)
• Asia-Pacific region airlines posted a 6.2% year-over-year rise in air cargo volumes in November, as measured in freight tonne kilometers, according to the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines. (Air Cargo News)
• Ice in the Great Lakes has slowed commercial traffic across the region, with the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards struggling to keep up icebreaking efforts. (SupplyChainBrain)

Mark R. Long is editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Reach him at mark.long@wsj.com. Follow the WSJ Logistics Report team on LinkedIn: Mark R. Long, Liz Young and Paul Berger.