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A pedestrian in the Lagos Island district of Lagos, Nigeria, on Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.

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SoLo Funds, a community lending platform created to offer credit to the underbanked and American consumers long shut out of the financial services sector due to pervasive discrimination in the loan process, is expanding for the first time overseas, to Nigeria.

Founded by Rodney Williams and Travis Holoway (CEO) in 2018, SoLo Funds has grown to over one million users, the vast majority (82%) of which are from underserved zip codes in America. The company has issued over $200 million in loans and a total of $400 million in transaction volume through a fintech offering that caters to communities that have historically been economically disenfranchised. 

Expansion to Nigeria, Williams said, is a first step on the path to further international growth. 

“It is the test case. It is the template. It is the first,” Williams said in an interview with CNBC after revealing the Nigeria plans during a session at the Aspen Ideas Festival earlier this week. “We are not stopping with Nigeria – we look at Nigeria as the gateway to the continent,” he said. 

Nigeria has both the largest economy in Africa and the fastest-growing middle class. The economic profile of the nation was an important factor in SoLo’s decision, which sees its product as an important tool for empowering the middle class, giving them a chance to both make ends meet during times of financial hardship and make a return when they have a bit more of a reliable cash flow. 

Nigeria’s existing fintech ecosystem was also a plus. “For us to do what we do, we have to partner,” Williams said. “We have to leverage many partners to deliver our solution and those partners have to be in market and be successful in market. And in Nigeria, we saw many examples of that.” 

Opay and Flutterwave, which made the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, are two examples of the various fintech unicorns that have found immense success in the country. 

SoLo Funds ranked No. 50 on the 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.

Williams is one of only two founders (the other being Elon Musk) to have two companies make the annual list. Williams, who came from an executive background at Procter & Gamble, first founded Lisnr, whose investors include Visa, Intel, and Synchrony Financial, and has deals in eight countries for its secure digital data transfer technology.

Rodney Williams, SoLo Funds co-founder

Siobhan Webb

In Nigeria, SoLo Funds has already connected with Paga, a mobile payment company, Platform Capital, an African investing firm based in Nigeria, and Endeavor, an entrepreneurial community network. 

Williams said the lack of investment opportunities that currently exist in Nigeria is part of the market opportunity for the company. The bank rate offerings for savings in Nigeria are far below the level of inflation.

“The average Nigerian consumer with savings is not growing in any capacity. And that’s a characteristic of many developing nations, not just Nigeria. So what that ultimately means is that it has a very, very attractive group of citizens that want to grow their money,” Williams said. 

SoLo Funds users have the opportunity to lend small amounts of money, ranging from $50-$1,000, to peers on the platform. Borrowers lay out the terms of their loan, including if they want to tip the lender. Through these tips, lenders are able to generate a return. Approximately 99% of users choose to tip their lenders, according to the company.

“We believe SoLo is the evolution of microfinance and community finance,” Williams said. “We are building a financial product for the masses, and not just the people who have money.”

That mission has not come without controversy, and allegations that SoLo Funds is creating a new form of predatory short-term lending. Williams referred to the controversy that has trailed the company himself during the Aspen talk, telling attendees, “Go to Google Search.”

A case brought by banking regulators in Connecticut was recently settled, following resolution to cases in California and Washington, D.C. SoLo Funds has added several lawyers to its staff with experience in the banking, fintech, and regulatory sectors. Williams has argued throughout the controversies that policymakers fail to consider the needs of “everyday Americans” when making their decisions. 

“Every day I wake up,” he said, “and I can see a single mom or a dad put food on the table. And I can also see a single dad or a mom make a return. And that return can pay for taking their kids out to the movies this weekend, just as much as it can pay to keep someone’s lights on. That’s what makes me know that I’m doing the right thing. And what excites me about Nigeria, and anywhere else in the world we go, is that we’re gonna do it for more people in more places than I think I ever thought we could.” 

Many startups that have expanded internationally have had to pull back, especially as venture funding has dried up and the growth-at-all-costs startup strategy that dominated for a decade has been replaced by a focus on a quicker path to profits.

The risks of expanding to a middle class market on an international scale, Williams says, are very similar to those in America. 

“I was just looking at a Twitter post, and it mentioned that banks don’t serve [the middle class] because they have said that it’s too expensive to serve. And they have said that this consumer is not credit worthy and that’s why banks don’t build products for them. Well, that’s the risk of building a product for mass market,” Williams said. “We face the same conclusion or the same challenge of why build products for everyone, when, you know, you could build products for the top 10% and be a billion-dollar company?” he added. 

Williams said that he plans to address international risk the same way that he addressed risk in the United States – with data, testing, and partnerships with ecosystem leaders. The complexity of lending regulation in the U.S. on a state-by-state basis has prepared SoLo Funds for the equally complex international launch. “Even though international expansion sounds like a massive undertaking, when we have analyzed it, it’s very similar to introducing new products in the United States on a state-by-state basis,” he said. 

The company has plans for additional international markets over the next 12-18 months across multiple continents, starting with key entry countries. 

“We’ve identified that country in Latin America as well. We’ve also identified that country in Southeast Asia,” Williams said. 

NBCUniversal News Group, of which CNBC is a part, is the media partner of the Aspen Ideas Festival.

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Super Micro ‘confident’ it will meet SEC deadline and reach $40 billion next fiscal year

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Super Micro 'confident' it will meet SEC deadline and reach  billion next fiscal year

Super Micro Computer CEO Charles Liang at the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 5, 2024.

Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Super Micro Computer gave optimistic commentary for its fiscal 2026 and delayed annual report that overshadowed its slashed fiscal 2025 revenue guidance in Tuesday’s preliminary second-quarter results.

CEO Charles Liang said he is “confident” that the company will file its delayed annual report by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Feb. 25 deadline. The company also said it expects to hit $40 billion in revenue in fiscal 2026. Analysts polled by LSEG expected $30 billion in revenue for the period.

Shares of Super Micro were up as much as 10% in extended trading. 

For the near term, however, the company slashed its guidance for fiscal 2025 revenue. The company said it expects revenues to range between $23.5 billion to $25 billion for fiscal 2025. That was down from a previous forecast of $26 billion and $30 billion. Analysts polled by LSEG expected revenues of $24.9 billion for the year.

The company also said it expects to report net sales between $5.6 billion and $5.7 billion for the quarter that ended Dec. 31. Wall Street expected $5.89 billion, according to analysts polled by LSEG. The company also offered weaker-than-expected guidance for the current period.

Super Micro also said that it “continues to work diligently” to meet the deadline to file its delayed fiscal 2024 annual and fiscal 2025 first and second quarter reports as it faces the possibility of a Nasdaq delisting.

Shares of the company, known for its servers powered with Nvidia graphics processing chips, have been on a rollercoaster ride since Hindenburg Research revealed a short position in the stock and the company delayed releasing its annual report in August. The company’s auditor quit in October, citing governance issues, and Super Micro’s drop in share price spurred the possibility of a delisting from the Nasdaq exchange.

The rollercoaster continued into Tuesday’s release. The stock is up about 27% in 2025 but down from its March 2024 high.

Super Micro’s prime position in the artificial intelligence world catapulted the stock to new heights as ChatGPT’s 2022 debut set off a craze for AI infrastructure. Recent earnings reports and commentary suggest that megacaps Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft plan to invest as much as $320 billion into AI projects this year.

WATCH: Super Micro Computer cuts full year revenue guidance

Super Micro Computer cuts full year revenue guidance

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Tesla drops 6% after BYD partners with DeepSeek, Musk adds to DOGE distractions with OpenAI bid

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Tesla drops 6% after BYD partners with DeepSeek, Musk adds to DOGE distractions with OpenAI bid

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joins U.S. President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on Feb. 11, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Tesla shares dropped 6% on Tuesday after Chinese rival BYD announced plans to develop autonomous vehicle technology with DeepSeek, and said it would offer its Autopilot-like system in nearly all of its new cars, adding to fears that Elon Musk’s company is falling behind the competition.

There’s also growing concerns surrounding Musk’s distractions outside of Tesla, after news surfaced that the world’s richest person is offering to lead an investor group in purchasing OpenAI, while he steps up his work with President Donald Trump’s White House.

Tesla’s stock price has slid for five straight days, falling close to 17% over that stretch to $328.50, and wiping out over $200 billion in market cap.

BYD, which has emerged as Tesla’s fiercest rival on the world stage, said on Monday that at least 21 of its new model vehicles will come equipped with its partially automated driving systems that include features for automatic parking and navigating on highways.

Tesla doesn’t yet offer a robotaxi and its EVs currently require a human driver to remain at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time. On Tesla’s earnings call last month, Musk said the company is aiming to launch “Unsupervised Full Self-Driving,” and a driverless rideshare service in Austin, Texas, in June. Alphabet’s Waymo already operates a robotaxi service in Austin as well as in parts of Phoenix, San Francisco.

“In our view, competition between Waymo, Tesla and a host of Chinese players is a key driver on the path to commercialization” of robotaxis,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to clients after the BYD announcement. The firm recommends buying the stock and has a price target of $430.

Waymo said on Tuesday that it added 10 square miles of coverage to its robotaxi service in Los Angeles.

The rise of Phoenix as a major tech hub with chips, autonomous cars and drones

In a report on Tuesday, Oppenheimer analysts wrote that the “autonomy competition may limit [Tesla] profitability.” Even if Tesla meets its June 2025 timeline for driverless cars in Texas, the company is “one of several autonomous technology providers, suggesting competition on price and performance,” they wrote.

In addition to running Tesla, Musk is CEO of SpaceX, owns social media company X and is head of artificial intelligence startup xAI. He’s also spending significant time these days in Washington, D.C., running the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) as a special government employee, aiming to slash federal spending, personnel, regulations and even entire agencies.

Many projects, many distractions

Investors already concerned about Musk’s hefty commitments beyond his trillion-dollar EV company have more reason for trepidation after events that unfolded on Monday. Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, confirmed to CNBC that Musk was leading a consortium of investors in a $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI.

Musk was among the founders of OpenAI in 2015, when the AI startup was created as a nonprofit research lab. Musk sought to have Tesla acquire OpenAI, and he later departed the organization’s board.

OpenAI has since commercialized numerous products, most notably ChatGPT. Co-founder and CEO Sam Altman is seeking to restructure OpenAI as a for-profit entity. Musk has sued OpenAI to prevent that transition, and started xAI as a direct competitor.

The Oppenheimer analysts wrote that, “While [Tesla] has shifted focus to being a Physical AI play, we view Elon Musk’s bid for Open AI as a distraction from [Tesla’s] challenges.”

Altman told employees in a memo on Tuesday that OpenAI’s board hasn’t received an official offer from Musk and reminded staffers that “Elon has a history of making claims that don’t hold up.” 

Later on Tuesday, Toberoff said in a statement that he emailed the bid for OpenAI on behalf of the Musk-led consortium a day earlier to OpenAI’s outside counsel William Savitt and Sarah Eddy “for transmission to their client.” Toberoff said the bid was “in the form of a detailed four-page letter” and was addressed to OpenAI’s board.

“Whether Sam Altman chose to provide or withhold this from OpenAI’s other Board members is outside of our control,” he wrote.

Oppenheimer’s analysts also highlighted the added risks associated with Musk’s extensive work with the Trump administration.

While Musk’s behavior “has fans in certain circles,” his public life “risks alienating consumers and employees as the Trump administration tests the limits of its power,” they wrote. For example, they referenced recent vehicle registration data that showed steep year-over-year declines in California and across several European markets.

Tesla and Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

WATCH: Tesla still on track

Tesla is still on track and we will add exposure when it's near $300 per share: KKM's Jeff Kilburg

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Amazon opens beauty and personal care store in Italy as part of brick-and-mortar expansion

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Amazon opens beauty and personal care store in Italy as part of brick-and-mortar expansion

Amazon is opening a beauty and health products store in Milan, Italy, marking the company’s latest brick-and-mortar experiment.

The store is located in the city center of Milan, and features a range of beauty and personal care items, as well as nonprescription drugs, Amazon said in a blog post. The first store, which is called Amazon Parafarmacia & Beauty, will open its doors to the public on Wednesday.

The store will be stocked with products from beauty and skin-care brands including La Roche-Posay, Eucerin and Vichy. There are also “Derma-bars,” where shoppers can get a “complimentary digital skin analysis” of their skin type and condition, and receive product recommendations.

Amazon says the store includes a section staffed by on-site pharmacists where shoppers can purchase “non-prescription, over-the-counter medications.”

By launching its first “parapharmacy,” the e-commerce giant is hoping to parlay its online success in the beauty and personal care category into sales in the physical world. Beauty and personal care items, which include everything from hairspray and cosmetics to deodorants and Q-tips, make up one of the fastest-growing verticals on Amazon.

The company began offering health and beauty products in 2000, but its selection was initially limited to most mass-market brands. It has since added more luxury brands such as Estée Lauder and La Mer.

The new store format also marks Amazon’s latest experiment in physical retail. The company opened and then shuttered all of its bookstores, pop-up shops, four-star stores and apparel stores. It has also shrunk its footprint of Amazon Go convenience stores, shutting down a storefront in Woodland Hills, California, last month. In grocery, Amazon’s portfolio includes Whole Foods supermarkets and its own chain of Fresh stores.

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