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U.S. chip export ban is 'great news,' says Chinese tech investor

A partner at a Chinese semiconductor investment fund has welcomed the U.S. government’s ban of certain advanced chip types to be exported to China, describing the move as “great news” which may stimulate a domestic ecosystem.  

Chloe Wang, a partner and vice-president at the Guangzhou-headquartered Yang Cheng Fund, said: “We received the very great news this morning, and I didn’t feel surprised about the U.S. [which] continued to ban the H100 and 800 exports to China,” Wang told CNBC’s East Tech West conference in the Nansha district of Guangzhou, China, on Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is set to prevent the sale of some advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, it announced on Tuesday, over concerns they could be used for military development purposes. This will restrict the export of chipmaker Nvidia‘s A800 and H800 chips, officials said.

Nvidia’s H100 chip, used by AI firms in the U.S., was banned for sale in earlier U.S. government restrictions.

Wang said the fund invests in semiconductor companies, including those in the AI training and autonomous vehicle sectors. One AI chip company Yang Cheng has invested in will launch its initial public offering this year, while a Shanghai-based AI chip firm is valued at more than $3 billion, Wang added, though she didn’t name the firms.

“We believe those kind of upstream chipmakers — they will drive, or they will play the leading role in China, and they will create their own ecosystem,” Wang added. “And maybe we can, not too much rely on the Cuda system,” she said, referencing Nvidia’s AI software.

“I still feel quite confident about the Chinese entrepreneurs as well as the consumer base market,” she added.

A worker holds a circuit board.

Owngarden | Moment | Getty Images

Wang said there are around 1,500 companies in China that are involved in the design of integrated circuits (IC) and a “shortage” of companies in the AI chip training sector, with around 20 start-ups in the space.

China wants to increase its computing power by 50% by 2025, according to a plan by several Chinese ministries announced in October. Doing so is seen as a key way of developing AI, which needs advanced semiconductors to process vast amounts of data.

The U.S. government ban is designed to prevent China’s access to advanced semiconductors “because they could be used for military uses and modernization,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters Tuesday. They’re not intended to hurt Chinese economic growth, U.S. officials added.  

In recent months attention has turned back onto Chinese tech giant Huawei. Its latest smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro, has a chip that appears to support 5G, despite U.S. sanctions that have sought to cut the company off from the technology.

The chip, made by China’s SMIC, has sparked concern in Washington and raised questions about how it was possible. There’s also scrutiny on whether the process being used to make these new chips is efficient enough on a large scale to sustain a Huawei comeback.

CNBC’s Kif Leswing and Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.

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Google scraps diversity ‘aspirations,’ citing role as federal contractor

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Google scraps diversity 'aspirations,' citing role as federal contractor

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks with Emily Chang during the APEC CEO Summit at Moscone Center West in San Francisco on Nov. 16, 2023.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Google is scrapping its diversity goals, becoming the latest tech giant to alter its approach to hiring and promotions following the election of President Donald Trump.

In its annual report published on Wednesday, Alphabet excluded language from prior years stating that, “we are committed to making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve.”

Fiona Cicconi, Alphabet’s chief people officer, told employees in a memo that the company has to make changes due to new requirements.

“Because we are a federal contractor, our teams are also evaluating changes to our programs required to comply with recent court decisions and U.S. Executive Orders on this topic,” Cicconi wrote in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. “We’ll continue to invest in states across the U.S. — and in many countries globally — but in the future we will no longer have aspirational goals.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the memo.

Cicconi noted that in 2020, the company set aspirational hiring goals and focused on growing offices outside California and New York to improve representation.

One of Trump’s first acts as president after taking office in January was to sign an executive order ending the government’s DEI programs and putting federal officials overseeing those initiatives on leave. And following a midair collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter above Washington, D.C., last week, Trump blasted former President Joe Biden and DEI policies claiming they “could have been” to blame for the deadliest plane crash in the U.S. since 2001.

Tech companies have shown an eagerness to appease the new administration following a rocky four years during Trump’s first tenure in the White House.

Amazon said earlier in January that it was halting some of its diversity and inclusion initiatives, and Meta announced plans to end a number of internal programs designed to increase the company’s hiring of diverse candidates. Beyond the tech industry, companies including Target, Walmart and McDonald’s have made similar changes.

Google’s commitments for 2025 had included increasing the number of people from underrepresented groups in leadership by 30% and more than doubling the number of Black workers at non-senior levels.

The company began making cuts to its DEI programs in 2023, CNBC reported at the time, getting rid of staffers who were in charge of recruiting underrepresented groups and letting go of DEI leaders who worked with Chief Diversity Officer Melonie Parker.

Parker, who took on her current role in 2019, will work closely on evaluating programs and trainings and update “those that raise risk, or that aren’t as impactful as we’d hoped,” Cicconi wrote in her memo.

She added that the Google’s employee resource groups will remain as will the company’s work with colleges and universities.

A Google spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that the company is “committed to creating a workplace where all our employees can succeed and have equal opportunities, and over the last year we’ve been reviewing our programs designed to help us get there.”

WATCH: Trump blasts Biden, DEI efforts after D.C. plane crash

Trump blasts Biden, DEI efforts after D.C. plane crash

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Temu steers users to ‘local’ products after Trump shuts tax loophole

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Temu steers users to 'local' products after Trump shuts tax loophole

A package from Temu is seen in front of a screen with the Temu logo. (Photo by Nikos Pekiaridis/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Chinese online retailer Temu has been surfacing more products on its app that can be shipped from warehouses in the U.S. following President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke a popular tax loophole.

The nearly century-old exception, known as de minimis, has been used by many e-commerce companies to send goods worth less than $800 into the U.S. duty-free. Trump on Saturday suspended the exemption as part of new tariffs that include an additional 10% tax on Chinese goods.

De minimis has helped propel Temu and Shein’s explosive growth in the U.S. by allowing the companies to bypass taxes on low-value shipments, and sustain their rock-bottom prices on everything from shoes and clothes to furniture and electronics.

With the tariff exemption gone, Temu has significantly ramped up its promotion of sellers who have inventory in U.S. warehouses, rather than items that are shipped direct from China. A scan of listings in Temu’s “Lightning deals” section shows that it’s almost entirely dominated by products with a green “local” badge.

By promoting local inventory, Temu’s products not only arrive faster to shoppers’ doorsteps, but the company also reduces its reliance on sellers who ship direct from China. Even though the products are stored in U.S. warehouses, many local listings state that the items are sold by businesses based in China.

Representatives from Temu didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Temu is surfacing more products shipped from local warehouses in its app in the wake of a popular trade loophole’s suspension.

Temu’s promotion of U.S.-based products also puts it in more direct competition with Amazon, eBay and Walmart, which have also signed up sellers in China who ship goods overseas to their warehouses. Amazon last year took notice of Temu and Shein’s dramatic growth in the U.S. when it launched its own budget storefront, called Haul.

Temu, which is owned by Chinese online retailer PDD Holdings, began onboarding sellers with inventory in U.S. warehouses in March. By July, roughly 20% of Temu’s U.S. sales came from those sellers, not merchants based in China, according to e-commerce market research firm Marketplace Pulse.

Temu, Shein and other Chinese e-commerce companies are trying to minimize the level of disruption to their services as they face new, more stringent customs requirements. They were thrown into further chaos on Tuesday night when the U.S. Postal Service abruptly announced it was suspending inbound packages from China and Hong Kong “until further notice.”

Less than 12 hours later, the USPS reversed its decision, and resumed accepting packages from those regions. The agency also said it would work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to “implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”

The uncertainty has created volatility for PDD’s stock price which fell 6% on Monday, rose 8% on Tuesday and fell more than 3% on Wednesday.

Critics of the de minimis provision say it’s provided an unfair advantage to Chinese e-commerce companies, and created an influx of packages that are “subject to minimal documentation and inspection,” raising concerns around counterfeit and unsafe goods.

Others have advocated for the de minimis exemption to remain in place, saying its removal would burden customs officials and lead to higher government costs.

“At some point there’s going to be 3 million of these goods piling up a day and customs can do their best, but they’re not equipped,” said Hugo Pakula, CEO of supply chain compliance company Tru Identity. “They have to do 10x more screenings this week than last week.”

CBP has said it processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis shipments in 2024. A 2023 report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found that Temu and Shein are “likely responsible” for more than 30% of de minimis shipments into the U.S.

Shein has also been courting U.S. buyers and sellers. The company opened distribution centers in states including Illinois and California in 2022, and a supply chain hub in Seattle last year. The company said the Seattle hub would enable it to “localize and support speedier delivery times for American consumers.”

WATCH: Amazon Haul takes on Temu

Behind Amazon's quiet launch of Haul, competing with Temu in ultra low-price items from China

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AMD shares drop 7% on disappointing data center revenue

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AMD shares drop 7% on disappointing data center revenue

Lisa Su, chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., during the AMD Advancing AI event in San Jose, California, on Dec. 6, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Advanced Micro Devices shares fell 7% on Wednesday after the chipmaker under-delivered on Wall Street’s estimates for its important data center business.

Shares traded at a 52-week low and were on pace for their worst session since October.

AMD reported better-than-expected results on the top and bottom lines, but it also reported data center sales of $3.86 billion. That reflected 69% growth from a year ago but fell short of the $4.14 billion in sales expected by analysts polled by LSEG.

The key unit, responsible for selling advanced chips for data centers, has benefited in recent years from growing demand for its graphics processing units, as megacap technology companies race to develop advanced artificial intelligence tools.

Data center revenue grew 94% for the full year to $12.6 billion, with $5 billion of those sales stemming from AMD’s AI-focused Instinct GPUs. The company is the second-largest producer for gaming after Nvidia, which has triumphed as the market leader in AI chips and ballooned in value to a nearly $3 trillion market value.

“We believe this places AMD on a steep long-term growth trajectory, led by the rapid scaling of our data center AI franchise from more than $5 billion of revenue in 2024 to tens of billions of dollars of annual revenue over the coming years,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said on the earnings call with analysts.

Several Wall Street firms trimmed their price targets on shares amid the disappointing data center results and expectations for a weak first half. Citi downgraded shares to neutral from a buy rating, while JPMorgan its target to $130 from $180. Bank of America’s Vivek Arya said the company has yet to “articulate how it can carve an important niche” relative to Nvidia.

Morgan Stanley highlighted AI expectations as the most significant pressure point, saying that “visibility likely needs to improve for the stock to find its footing.”

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