The crypto treasury firm hoping to be the 'MicroStrategy of Ether'. Here's a breakdown
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CNBC
a few seconds ago
- CNBC
Trump trade rep sets low bar for China trade talks, no 'enormous breakthrough' expected
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Monday that China's willingness to hold trade talks with the United States this week is a "good sign," but he is not expecting any "enormous breakthrough." "I don't expect some kind of enormous breakthrough today, what I expect is continued monitoring and checking in on the implementation of our agreement thus far," Greer said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." His comments come as top officials from President Donald Trump's administration meet in Sweden with their Chinese counterparts for the third round of trade talks since Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff announcement earlier this year. One of the chief questions looming over the talks is whether the two nations will extend their temporary pause on the sweeping tariffs that brought two of the world's largest economies to the brink earlier this year. The current 90-day pause on tariffs between the U.S. and China is currently set to expire on Aug. 12, an agreement that was reached after leaders from the two nations held talks in Switzerland in May. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested last week that an extension of such a pause was likely to come out of this week's trade talks. "We'll be working out what is likely an extension," he said last week in a Fox Business interview, adding that he thinks "trade is in a very good place with China." Still, as the world anxiously watches for signs of a detente in the trade war between the two nations, Greer down-played expectations of the talks, while insisting that the U.S. wants to "move forward in a positive way." "Our discussions with the Chinese are always cordial and constructive," Greer said. "This is the third round in the past three months, so just the fact that we're talking and we want to move forward in a positive way, is its own good sign," he continued. With Trump's Aug. 1 trade deadline just days away, the White House in recent days has announced a number of deals with major trading partners, including Japan and the European Union. Greer said Monday that the White House doesn't "feel under pressure to have more deals." "We'll see how ambitious countries want to be, we don't feel a necessary urgency for deals, we like to have deals, we want to have something that can help restructure trade," he said. "But we've all heard the president repeatedly say that he's happy with the tariff, he's happy to just send a letter and set a tariff, as opposed to having a deal."
CNBC
2 hours ago
- CNBC
5 things to know before the Monday open: EU trade deal, all-time high streak, 'quishing'
President Donald Trump on Sunday announced a trade agreement with the European Union — just days before the Friday deadline. Trump said most goods, including cars, will face a 15% import tax, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said some products, such as aircraft and select chemicals, would be exempt. The baseline 15% rate is notably lower than the 30% level Trump previously called for on the U.S.'s largest trading partner, but is above the 10% tax the EU originally hoped for. In other words, both parties seemed to compromise. Investors may have more good news coming, with the U.S. and China set to resume tariff discussions Monday. Buckle up: It's the busiest week of the earnings season. Around 30% of the S&P 500 is set to share quarterly results. Big Tech is headlining the week, with Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Apple all on deck. Several other well-known companies, ranging from Boeing to Ford to Starbucks, are also on the docket. While expectations were low coming into this season, results so far show corporate America is faring better than expected. Of the more than 30% of the S&P 500 done reporting, more than 82% beat Wall Street's forecasts, according to FactSet as of Monday morning. CNBC Pro subscribers can gear up for the week with an exclusive Earnings Playbook. The S&P 500 finished every session at a record high last week. Now, the question is if these good market vibes can continue in a week that, as CNBC's Yeo Boon Ping incisively pounced, is the "Olympics for market watchers." Beyond the earnings deluge and the looming trade deadline, there's also a Federal Reserve policy meeting and closely watched economic data on the labor market and inflation expected. Stock futures rose on Monday as the action-packed week kicked off; you can follow live market updates here. Suffice to say, it's a week where you'll want to have your news notifications and TVs turned on. Movie theatres have gotten a nice boost over the past few weeks. "Superman" and "F1" both passed the $500 million box office threshold this weekend. On top of that, the latest "Fantastic Four" installment from Marvel and Disney raked in more than $200 million globally in its debut weekend. Yes, two of those three are superhero movies. The odd man out in this group, "F1," has been Apple's best film yet, as pointed out by CNBC's Sarah Whitten. Remember all those complaints about QR code menus during the pandemic? Turns out, that wouldn't be the worst use case of the scannable link. More than 26 million Americans have been sent to malicious sites via scanning the codes, according to cybersecurity company NordVPN. The rise of QR code-connected scams prompted the Federal Trade Commission and other groups to warn consumers about the trend, which has been named "quishing." Scammers seem to be hoping that users are too busy to ensure QR codes are legit before using them for everyday activities like paying a parking meter or utility bill. — ,
CNBC
4 hours ago
- CNBC
Where is Nvidia? Chinese rivals take the limelight at major AI event in Shanghai
BEIJING — Less than two weeks after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's high-profile visit to Beijing, the U.S. chipmaker was conspicuous by its absence at China's biggest AI event of the year. Despite renewed hopes this month of selling its less advanced H20 chips to China again, Nvidia didn't have a booth at the World AI Conference that opened Saturday in Shanghai. The company declined CNBC's request for comment. In contrast, Nvidia's China rival, Huawei, had a large display — focused on its Ascend AI chips — near the venue entrance. Huang has called Huawei "one of the most formidable technology companies in the world," while warning that it could replace Nvidia in China if U.S. sticks with its export curbs on Beijing. The telecoms giant showed off for the first time the hardware for its computing system that links 384 Ascend chips together to power AI model training and use. Huawei is marketing the product as "Atlas 900 A3 SuperPoD." Earlier this year, research firm SemiAnalysis pointed out that even though one Ascend chip may be less powerful than Nvidia's most advanced Blackwell chip, an early look at a Huawei system similar to the one unveiled in Shanghai more than offsets the disparity by piling in five times more chips than Nvidia does in its GB200 computing system. But there's an efficiency cost as Huawei's systems require far more power than Nvidia's to operate, the report said. Huawei is far from being the only Chinese player in the complex supply chain for advanced chips. For example, semiconductor designer Moore Threads and startup Yunsilicon both had booths at the AI expo center in Shanghai. Many of the exhibitors from startups to giants such as Tencent and Alibaba showed off AI applications in robotics, smart glasses and translation apps. Overall, there was less talk at the expo about needing Nvidia to power their products. Internet tech company NetEase's Youdao business displayed a handheld bar device that uses AI to help students study material including that for college entrance exams. The device currently uses both AI based in the cloud and "edge" AI that runs on the device, said Gao Huituan, product manager of educational learning hardware at Youdao. Looking ahead, he said that new AI chips are becoming more power efficient and are able to support different types of products. While Nvidia's chips focus more on cloud computing power, "many domestically made, very excellent chip manufacturers are working on some edge devices," he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. "Now everyone has relatively good computing power." Nvidia has become the world's most valuable company, riding on the demand for its chips that have been heled drive the latest generative AI breakthroughs. The company had to stop sales to China in April due to new U.S. restrictions, following tougher export controls over the last three years aimed at reducing China's AI capabilities and which have prevented Nvidia from selling its most advanced chips to the country. The company tailored the H20 for China, which Huang has said is a $50 billion market. Tesla, Google, Amazon Web Services and Siemens were among the U.S. and European companies with booths at the AI conference in Shanghai. Nvidia had a booth in Beijing earlier this month at an annual supply chain conference, which coincided with Huang's third visit to China this year and news that the U.S. will allow the chipmaker to resume sales of the H20 chips to China. But the company has not shared when shipments would begin or how many orders it had received from Chinese customers. "Nvidia is the model in (AI) GPU development for the short to medium term not just because of H20, but also because of flagship products like the GB300," Phelix Lee, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said in an emailed statement. "The return of H20 could help Nvidia to remain as the de facto standard in AI datacenter systems, especially when domestic alternatives are lurking." Beijing has been striving to boost tech self-sufficiency as it has faced U.S. restrictions accessing high-end tech. The country over the weekend also took another step toward promoting its AI standards globally. Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced plans for a global AI cooperation organization during a speech at Saturday's opening ceremony. The initial headquarters will likely be in Shanghai, state media said. The plans come just days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced an American action plan for AI that included calls to reduce alleged "woke" bias in AI models and support the deployment of U.S. tech overseas.
