A merchant sells crystal ornaments via a live TikTok broadcast.
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TikTok Shop is a rising threat to major e-commerce players such as Shopee and Lazada in Southeast Asia.
It comes as its parent ByteDance pushes the short video app in markets outside the U.S. and India to create alternative revenue streams.
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TikTok Shop is the e-commerce marketplace of short video app TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance. The shopping app enables merchants, brands and creators to showcase and sell their goods to users.
In 2022, TikTok Shop expanded to six Southeast Asian countries — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
“TikTok continues to grow rapidly in Southeast Asian countries. We estimate that TikTok’s 2023 [gross merchandise value] will reach 20%~ of Shopee, which we suggest prompted Shopee to defensively increase sales and marketing since April,” said Shawn Yang, analyst at Blue Lotus Research Institute, in a recent report on Sea Group, the owner of Shopee.
TikTok did not want to comment or reveal numbers.
TikTok Shop’s GMV, or total value of goods sold, skyrocketed more than four times to $4.4 billion in Southeast Asia in 2022, according to internal data obtained by tech media outlet The Information. TikTok Shop is reportedly aiming for a GMV target of $12 billion by 2023.
Impulse buying from watching content is an advantage TikTok has.
Sachin Mittal
Head of telecom & internet sector research, DBS Bank
To be clear, TikTok Shop’s current GMV is only a fraction of Shopee and Lazada’s.
Shopee netted $73.5 billion in GMV in 2022 while Lazada’s GMV was $21 billion for the year through September 2021, according to available public figures.
Rising threat
A TikTok spokesperson told CNBC that TikTok Shop “continues to grow rapidly” as both large and small users use the platform to reach new customers. TikTok is “focused on the continued development of TikTok Shop in Southeast Asia,” said the spokesperson.
As of May, the number of TikTok users in Southeast Asia alone is 135 million, according to market research company Insider Intelligence.
Indonesia has the second largest population of TikTok users after the U.S., according to Statista.
“Impulse buying from watching content is an advantage TikTok has,” Sachin Mittal, head of telecom & internet sector research at DBS Bank, told CNBC.
Sea Group is banking on its e-commerce arm Shopee to lift the group’s balance sheet as its gaming arm Garena continues to see revenue decline, given the lack of a strong games pipeline and the continued ban of its flagship game Free Fire in India due to national security threats.
TikTok is spending an incredible amount of money right now on incentives to onboard buyers and sellers, which may not be sustainable.
Jonathan Woo
Senior analyst, Phillip Securities Research
A survey conducted by online retail insights company Cube Asia revealed that consumers spending on TikTok Shop are reducing their spending on Shopee (-51%), Lazada (-45%), Offline (-38%) in Indonesia, Thailand, and Philippines.
Shopee and Lazada declined to comment on competition from TikTok Shop.
Data from web analytics firm Similarweb revealed that Shopee is currently the largest online marketplace in Southeast Asia, holding 30% to 50% traffic share across the region in the last three months, while Lazada holds the second spot with 10% to 30% traffic share.
Scrutiny on TikTok
TikTok Shop’s push comes as the app is being scrutinized in its largest market, the U.S., amid rising geopolitical tensions and tech rivalry between China and the U.S.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s testimony before Congress in March did not ease lawmakers’ worries about the app’s connections to China or the adequacy of Project Texas, its contingency plan to store U.S. data on American soil.
TikTok has also been banned in India since 2020, alongside other apps said to have Chinese origin. It is not accessible in China, though its Chinese version Douyin is widely used by over 750 million daily active users.
Not sustainable
But TikTok is burning cash to grow, a tested strategy to win market share.
“TikTok is spending an incredible amount of money right now on incentives to onboard buyers and sellers, which may not be sustainable,” said Jonathan Woo, senior analyst at Phillip Securities Research. Woo said he estimates the incentives to be between $600 million and $800 million a year, or 6% to 8% of a $10 billion GMV in 2023.
Data from Apptopia, an app analytics company, showed that TikTok Shop Seller Center app has been attracting an increasing number of downloads in Indonesia over the past one year.
Meanwhile, Shopee charges more than 5% on commission, transaction and service fees.
A CNBC check revealed that four-ply toilet paper from Nomieo was selling on TikTok at 5.80 Singapore dollars for twenty-seven rolls. In comparison, the same goods are selling at around SG$16.80 on Shopee.
Woo noted that TikTok Shop is “still very young” and in the “burn-cash-to-grow phase which may not bode well in today’s market given higher cost of funding.”
TikTok Shop is also “just a platform with no end-to-end capabilities” unlike Shopee and Lazada which have been investing heavily in improving logistics for faster deliveries and returns, increasing overall user experience and trust for sellers and buyers, he said.
Overall, I think TikTok Shop has the potential to be as big as Shopee or Lazada, though this might take quite a number of years.
Jonathan Woo
Senior analyst, Phillip Securities Research
It also has a smaller user base at this point in time with a younger demographic which means less spending ability, said Woo.
“I don’t think there’s a big risk to Shopee from TikTok,” said Mittal. “Shopee can afford to lose some market share, but Lazada cannot.”
Lazada has been trying to catch up with Shopee ever since Shopee overtook the company to become Southeast Asia’s biggest e-commerce platform in 2020.
“Overall, I think TikTok Shop has the potential to be as big as Shopee or Lazada, though this might take quite a number of years,” said Woo, noting the gap between TikTok Shop and Shopee’s GMVs.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
Read more CNBC tech news
The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.
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Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.
The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.
Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.
The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.
In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.
Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.
As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.
One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.
HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.
Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.
There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.