Welcome back. State and local governments must come to grips with the fact that their decisions about public services and the operations of private businesses have mounting life-or-death consequences. Researchers at the University of Virginia are looking to help by making widely available an artificial-intelligence system that can simulate the impact of policy decisions on health outcomes in a particular community.

Also: SoftBank, which poured nearly $100 billion into pricey, cash-burning startups in the last years of the bull market, said it would sell billions of dollars in assets to prop up its plunging stock price.

State and local officials struggle to understand how their decisions about public services and businesses will affect the spread of the new coronavirus. Researchers at the University of Virginia are hoping an artificial-intelligence system that can simulate the impact of policy decisions on health outcomes in a particular community can help, WSJ Pro's Jared Council reports.

Madhav Marathe, a division director at the University of Virginia's Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative who led the team that developed the platform, said his team plans to refine the system so that it can also project the economic impact of certain Covid-19 policy decisions, such as orders to close stores or mandates that employees work from home.

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makers to consider the economic implications of Covid-19 measures. President Trump has said he wants to open the economy as soon as possible and the White House is discussing easing social-distancing guidelines as early as next week.

• The institute built digital twins, or digital replicas, of U.S. cities that mimic the buildings, transportation systems and movement of citizens in each location. Those “synthetic populations,” which preserve the confidentiality of the original data sets, are based on more than 40 data sources, including Census data.
• Once the digital twins were created, the researchers brought in disease data from organizations such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to simulate how viruses spread.

SoftBank to sell $41 billion in assets. SoftBank Group Corp., which poured nearly $100 billion into pricey, cash-burning startups in the last years of the bull market, said Monday it would sell billions of dollars in assets to prop up its plunging stock price and shore up its debt-laden balance sheet following the threat of a ratings downgrade, WSJ’s Phred Dvorak reports.

The plan marks a remarkable comedown for SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son and his company, which until recently was one of the boldest providers of capital to the world’s billion-dollar unicorns. It earmarks up to $18 billion for share buybacks and $23 billion to redeem debt and build up cash reserves.

Mr. Son didn’t say which assets he would sell, but analysts said that in order to raise $41 billion, he would have to look first at Alibaba and SoftBank’s majority stake in Japan’s third-largest cellphone carrier, called SoftBank Corp. SoftBank owns nearly half of the parent of Yahoo Japan, the country’s top internet portal.

Spain looks to increase virus testing with robots. Spanish authorities over the weekend said they would increase coronavirus testing, possibly with robot assistance, Reuters reports. Raquel Yotti, director of Carlos III Public Health Institute, said the use of robots could help boost the number of tests from 15,000-20,000 a day to 80,000, according to the report.

Robot manufacturer sees increased sales since virus outbreak. Demand has been growing for ZhenRobotics Corp.’s six-wheeled robots, which can deliver groceries and patrol malls, since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, reports the Associated Press. The company’s RoboPony unit, which can move at up to 6 miles-per-hour, is being sold to retailers, hospitals and other buyers. The Beijing city government has included ZhenRobotics on its official list of “anti-epidemic new technology,” according to the report.

Democrats blocked a coronavirus rescue package totaling at least $1.6 trillion from advancing for a second day, in an impasse that turned on Democratic concerns the GOP-written legislation would help businesses more than the public. (WSJ)

Write to Enterprise Technology Editor Steven Rosenbush and Pro AI Deputy Editor John McCormick.

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