Shares of Tesla rose sharply in U.S. premarket trading on Monday after the electric car maker passes a significant milestone to roll out its full self-driving technology in China.

The company’s share price spiked more than 10% just after 7:30 a.m. ET, as investors reacted to news surrounding Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s visit to China.

Tesla on Sunday said that local Chinese authorities removed restrictions on its cars after passing the country’s data security requirements.

The move raised expectations that Tesla’s driver-assistance software Full Self Driving (FSD) would soon be available in the country, which is the largest market for electric vehicles.

While Tesla’s electric cars are some of the most popular vehicles in China, they have reportedly been banned from some government-related properties due to data security concerns.

Separately, the Biden administration earlier this year announced a probe into whether imported cars from China pose national security risks due to their ability to potentially collect sensitive data.

FSD is an upgrade to Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistant. Tesla has offered its FSD technology in China for years, but with a restricted feature set that limits it to operations, such as automated lane changing.

Data security concerns have been a key obstacle preventing Tesla from achieving a full rollout of the system in China.

Tesla also reportedly scored a deal with Baidu that would give Musk’s firm access to the Chinese internet giant’s mapping and navigation technology for Tesla’s FSD feature.

The agreement would allow Tesla to tap into Baidu’s mapping service license, which is a requirement for intelligence driving systems to operate on public roads in China, Reuters reported, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

CNBC was unable to independently verify the report. Tesla and Baidu were not immediately available for comment.

With the license, which foreign companies can only clinch in partnership with local Chinese firms, Tesla will be allowed to legally operate FSD on Chinese roads, and its fleets will be able to gather data about traffic, road signs and routes.

The breakthrough for Tesla toward bringing its FSD self-driving technology to China marks a key win for the firm at a time when it is facing hefty competition in the Chinese market. Local rivals such as Warren Buffett-backed electric vehicle maker BYD, Nio, and Xpeng have ramped up their competition with Tesla in recent years.

BYD was temporarily the largest electric vehicle maker globally, producing more than 3 million new energy vehicles in 2023. The firm recently lost its crown as world’s largest EV maker, after a 43% plunge in sales in the first quarter.

– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report

U.S. cloud infrastructure provider Oracle is boosting its generative AI capabilities as cloud competition intensifies and more companies jump into AI.

The AI boom — fueled by the launch of chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022 — is driving an increase in demand for cloud computing services and data centers, as large amounts of data are required in AI model training and the cloud provides access to vast datasets.

Oracle has been introducing generative AI capabilities into its cloud infrastructure and applications to complement the traditional AI already embedded in them.

“The classic AI is very good in terms of detecting patterns or predicting numbers … but you cannot use large language models to predict numbers,” Rondy Ng, executive vice president of applications development at Oracle, told CNBC.

“So we combined the predictive numbering capability with the explained ability in words. So the two together become very powerful and you need both. In the past many years, the number prediction part is already very mature. As part of the product we continue to evolve that and it’s not going to stop. Generative AI is basically the talk of the town right now,” said Ng.

In March, Oracle announced additional generative AI features embedded across applications in finance, supply chain, human resources, sales, marketing, and service. The generative AI capabilities can perform tasks such as generating financial reports and drafting job ads, improving productivity and reducing business costs, Oracle said.

This comes after the firm announced the implementation of generative AI across its technology stack in January.

“We believe Oracle is seeing a renaissance of growth with its AI strategy. [It is] well positioned to be a major beneficiary of the AI revolution,” said Dan Ives, managing director of Wedbush Securities, in emailed comments to CNBC on Wednesday.

“The data Oracle sits on and installed base gives Ellison & co. a major advantage to monetize the software layer of AI,” said Ives, referring to Oracle’s chairman and chief technology officer Larry Ellison.

As firms talked up the generative AI story last year, technology providers have to be one step ahead of the cycle, research firm Gartner said in a report on April 17. “They are bringing GenAI capabilities to existing products and services, as well as to use cases being identified by their enterprise clients.”

JPMorgan has said generative AI and AI could drive incremental IT spending and growth across the software landscape. “Many software vendors, including Oracle, have cited benefits from ongoing investments by businesses into AI technologies,” JPMorgan analysts said in a note on March 12.

Oracle might see an increase in revenue and positive impact on its shares if the company manages to capture a larger-than-expected share of the spending into AI, the U.S. investment bank said. Oracle’s shares have spiked 23.74% in the last 12 months, according to FactSet data.

“Generative AI services [are] basically a huge advantage comparing with our competition. The competition needs to work with different companies and cloud providers for that infrastructure and those kinds of services. We actually take everything into an integrated stack, and we consume that,” Ng told CNBC.

Oracle has lagged behind rivals like Amazon, Microsoft and Google in cloud infrastructure service market share, according to Synergy Research Group, which ranked Oracle as the sixth-largest service provider, alongside IBM, globally.

While Oracle was late to cloud infrastructure, the AI boom has increased demand for the company’s AI technology. Ellison had in 2018 dismissed cloud computing as “complete gibberish.”

“Oracle did follow the hyperscalers. [I think] that’s not a competitive concern, say for the rest of 2024 and in the foreseeable future. We’re at the very beginning stage of this whole new generative AI journey,” said Ron Westfall, research director at Futurum Group.

CEO Safra Catz said in March the company added several “large new cloud infrastructure” contracts during the fiscal third quarter. Cloud revenue rose 25% year over year to $5.1 billion, Oracle said.

“Interesting to us is management commentary suggesting its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure backlog is significant and AI isn’t yet really driving revenue, which is expected to be more meaningful in FY25,” said Deutsche Bank analysts on Mar. 12.

Ellison said in March that a Salt Lake City data center that Oracle is building can fit eight Boeing 747 airplanes nose-to-tail.

Laying out future market opportunities, Ellison said he sees more national and state government applications being run on platforms like Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and added that the firm is negotiating sovereign regions with a number of countries.

“Another area [where Oracle] is ahead of the curve, although everybody’s jumping on it, is in terms of offering sovereign AI cloud – a cloud that operates exclusively within a country,” said Westfall.

“More and more countries are going to say when it comes to gen AI, we want all that information, all that data stored within the country.”

In April, Oracle said it would invest more than $8 billion in Japan over the next 10 years to grow cloud computing and AI infrastructure.

Oracle and Nvidia in March announced they will be partnering up to deliver sovereign AI solutions to customers around the world.

Despite blockbuster earnings from giants such as Alphabet and Microsoft, layoffs continue to ripple through the tech industry.

Layoffs.fyi, a platform monitoring job cuts in the tech sector, recorded more than 263,000 job losses in 2023 alone. As of April, there have been more than 75,000 job losses in the industry so far in 2024.

“So instead of rewarding the growth that we saw [tech companies] all pursue years ago, they’re now rewarding profit,” said Jeff Shulman, professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. “And so the layoffs have continued. People have become used to them. Regrettably and sadly, it seems that the layoffs are going to be the new normal.”

Even though mass tech layoffs continue, the labor market still seems strong. The U.S. economy added 303,000 jobs in March, well above the Dow Jones estimate for a rise of 200,000, with the unemployment rate edged lower to 3.8%.

According to Handshake, a popular free job posting site for college students and graduates, the tech layoffs have prompted new workers to seek other opportunities. The share of job applications from tech majors submitted to internet and software companies dropped by more than 30% between November 2021 and September 2023.

“Part of the reason why this is happening is because stability is such a major factor in students’ decisions around what types of jobs they apply to and what types of jobs they accept,” said Christine Cruzverga, chief education strategy officer at Handshake. “They’re looking at the headlines in the news and they’re paying attention to all of the layoffs that are happening in Big Tech, and that makes them feel unstable.”

Mass layoffs have eroded the shine of the tech industry, which is why workers are questioning whether getting a job in the tech industry should still be regarded as a “dream job.”

“For the people who are chasing … a tech dream job, I think keep your options open and be realistic,” said Eric Tolotti, senior partner engineer at Snowflake, who got laid off from Microsoft in 2023. “Don’t just focus on one company and feel like you have to get into that one company because it’s the dream.”

Watch the video to learn about tech workers’ sentiments, considerations for aspiring Big Tech employees, and more.