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Arm rally continues after IPO

Arm Holdings jumped another 6% on Friday at the market open, but those gains cooled off some in its second day of trading after its Nasdaq debut Thursday.

The British chip designer’s shares were trading at just more than $67 around the market open, implying a valuation of more than $72 billion. Arm shares were even higher earlier in premarket trading but pared some of those gains.

It comes after Arm shares rallied nearly 25% on the company’s first day of trade on Thursday. Shares for its blockbuster IPO were originally priced at $51 each, valuing the company at about $54.5 billion.

With the rally ongoing, Arm continues to trade at a premium to chip giant Nvidia, even as its faces headwinds to its growth. Some analysts have expressed concerns over the valuation.

“The pricing is expensive … I think a lot of investors are thinking on the sidelines … and waiting to see how they execute on those drivers,” Ben Barringer, equity research analyst at Quilter Cheviot, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

SoftBank, which acquired Arm in 2016, floated about 10% of the company, with the Japanese giant holding on to 90% ownership.

SoftBank has faced criticism about its investment strategy with its massive Vision Fund tech investment arm posting a significant loss in its last fiscal year. This has been enough to put off some investors from the Arm IPO.

You could say that Arm is 'riskily valued,' analyst says

William de Gale, portfolio manager at BlueBox Asset Management, said he did not invest in ARM.

“In the end, we decided that we were too worried about corporate governance with SoftBank still controlling the company with a questionable record for asset allocation,” de Gale told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Friday.

“So we wanted to watch from the sidelines for a bit to watch how the company operates as an independent business.”

Still, there was huge demand for shares, with several reports this week ahead of the initial public offering suggesting the listing was multiple times oversubscribed.

Arm, whose chip architecture is in 99% of the world’s smartphones, managed to get strategic investors including Apple and Nvidia to buy shares in the listing.

A lot of focus this week has been on some of the risk around the company including its exposure to China and rising competition from a rival semiconductor architecture, backed by some of Arm’s biggest customers.

For it’s part, Arm CEO Rene Haas told CNBC on Thursday that the company’s China business is “doing well” with strong potential in data center and automotive applications.

Arm’s strength has typically been in smartphones and other consumer electronics. But the company is now looking to new areas including artificial intelligence to grow its business.

“We diversified our business. We’ve got significant growth in the cloud data center and in automotive,” Hass said.

Arm's valuation is one of the risk points for many investors, analyst says

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Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

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Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

Alibaba‘s Hong Kong-listed shares surged on Wednesday to reach their highest point since 2021 after the company said it will invest more in artificial intelligence and rolled out new AI products and updates. 

Shares of the company jumped over 6%, while its total gains year to date rose above 107%. 

The tech giant plans to increase spending on AI models and infrastructure development, on top of the 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years it announced in February, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu said Wednesday at Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship technology conference.

“We are vigorously advancing a three-year, 380 billion [yuan] AI infrastructure initiative with plans to sustain and further increase our investment according to our strategic vision in anticipation of the [artificial superintelligence] era,” Wu said. 

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Alibaba shares surge after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

So-called ‘artificial superintelligence’ refers to AI that would hypothetically surpass the power and intelligence of the human brain, with the hypothetical benchmark becoming a growing focus of major AI companies. 

Alibaba also officially unveiled the latest version of its Qwen large language models — the Qwen3-Max — on Wednesday, along with a series of other updates to its suite of AI product offerings. 

Wu highlighted that Alibaba Cloud is strategically positioned as a “full-stack AI service provider,” delivering the computing power required for training and deploying large AI models on the cloud through its own data centers.

“The cumulative investment in global AI in the next five years will exceed $4 trillion, and this is the largest investment in computing power and research and development in history,” he added.

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty $500 billion valuation in capital raise

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty 0 billion valuation in capital raise

Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.

Dado Ruvic | Array

Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, is planning to raise as much as $20 billion in a deal that could put the crypto company’s value on par with OpenAI, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The crypto company is looking to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in exchange for a roughly 3% stake through a private placement, the report said, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. The transaction would involve new equity rather than existing investors selling their stakes, the people told the news service.

The report said that one person close to the matter warned that the talks are in an early stage, which means that the eventual details, including the size of the offering, could change.

However, the deal could ultimately value Tether at around $500 billion, according to the report. That would mean the crypto giant’s valuation would rival some of the world’s biggest private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. OpenAI’s fundraising round earlier this year valued the tech company at $300 billion.

Tether, which was once accused of being a criminal’s “go-to cryptocurrency,” has been furthering its plans to return to the U.S. in recent months, given President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance. The company earlier this month named a CEO for its U.S. business and launched a new token for businesses and institutions in the U.S. called USAT, which will be regulated in the U.S. under the GENIUS Act.

Stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) is pegged to the U.S. dollar with a market cap that recently surpassed $172 billion. In second place is Tether rival Circle’s USDC stablecoin, which is worth about $74 billion.

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.

The stock rose in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
  • Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected

Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.

The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.

Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.

“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.

Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.

Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.

However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.

WATCH: AI-led bull market set to continue, says Wells Fargo’s Ohsung Kwon

AI-led bull market set to continue, says Wells Fargo's Ohsung Kwon

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