YICHANG, CHINA – OCTOBER 29, 2023 – Customers experience Mi 14 series phones at a Xiaomi store in Yichang, Hubei province, China, Oct 29, 2023. (Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese smartphone and consumer electronics company Xiaomi claimed record sales across platforms during the Singles Day shopping festival.
From Oct. 23 to the end of day on Nov. 11, Xiaomi said it sold more than 22.4 billion yuan ($3.11 billion) worth of products on platforms such as Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo and Douyin.
Xiaomi shares were briefly up more than 2% in Hong Kong trade late Monday morning. Locally traded shares of Alibaba and JD.com gave up earlier gains.
For a second-straight year, the two online shopping giants declined to share total figures for the Singles Day shopping festival.
JD only said transaction and order volume reached record highs. Alibaba said that gross merchandise value, order numbers and participating merchants grew from a year ago. GMV measures sales over time.
Lululemon, a relatively new brand to the China market, saw transaction volume on JD increase 260% during the shopping festival from a year ago, the Chinese retailer said.
Alibaba did not share much detail on sales by product or brand for the entire shopping festival period.
Xiaomi claimed its newly released Xiaomi 14 smartphone was the top-seller on Alibaba’s Tmall from Nov. 4 to 11. The company also claimed first place in different categories of Chinese brands’ smartphone sales across other online shopping platforms.
“Much better-than-expected Mi14 sales creates earnings accretion and potential valuation re-rating ahead,” HSBC analysts wrote in a Nov. 6 report.
“We raise our smartphone shipment forecasts for Xiaomi by 7% in 2023e to c150m units and by 6% in 2024e to 160m units,” the analysts said.
Low expectations
Over the past decade, Singles Day has expanded from a one-day shopping festival into a multi-week period of shopping promotions across different online platforms in China.
In 2022, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Alibaba had said its Singles Day sales were “in line” with the prior year, which had recorded the equivalent of $84.54 billion GMV at the time.
Uncertainty about future income has weighed on retail sales in China over the last few years.
Ahead of this year’s shopping festival, a survey by Bain and Company found that 77% of consumers in China did not plan to increase spending.
Livestreaming sales
Livestreaming and short videos on platforms such as Alibaba’s Taobao and ByteDance’s Douyin remained a growing sales channel.
GMV from livestreaming rose by 19% during the shopping festival this year, according to estimates from data company Syntun and Morningstar senior equity analyst Chelsey Tam.
Tmall accounted for the bulk of sales, or 60%, in a category that Syntun called “comprehensive e-commerce platforms,” Tam said in a note.
JD accounted for 28%, while Pinduoduo had a 7% share, the report said.
Kuaishou, a short video and livestreaming app, said orders grew by nearly 50% during the Singles Day shopping period.
More details on Singles Day results and Chinese consumer trends could come out during corporate earnings calls later this week. JD.com is due to report quarterly results Wednesday evening, while Alibaba is set to release earnings Thursday evening Beijing time.
Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and chief executive officer of 23andme Inc., during the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Friday, March 10, 2023.
Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images
23andMe‘s special committee of independent directors on Monday rejected CEO Anne Wojcicki’s proposal to take the distressed genetic testing company private.
Wojcicki submitted a proposal to the committee on Sunday, offering to acquire all of the company’s outstanding shares for 41 cents each, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The stock plunged 33% on Monday to close at $1.47, down more than 99% from its peak in 2021.
Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital submitted a prior bid in February to take the company private for $2.53 per share. Days later, New Mountain told Wojcicki it was no longer interested in participating in a potential acquisition and would discontinue discussions, the filing said.
23andMe’s special committee said that Wojcicki’s proposal represented an 84% decrease from the prior offer and determined not to go forward, according to a release on Monday.
“The Special Committee has reviewed Ms. Wojcicki’s acquisition proposal in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, and has unanimously determined to reject the proposal,” the directors said.
23andMe didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Following a turbulent 2024, 23andMe announced plans in January to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination.
Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.
The Huawei booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
BARCELONA — Huawei is dipping its toes back into the international smartphone market, but analysts warn the lingering effects of U.S. sanctions is likely to hamper the Chinese company’s ability to compete with leaders Apple and Samsung.
Over the past few months, Huawei has launched two key devices outside of China. The first in December was the Mate X6, a foldable smartphone, followed by the Mate XT, Huawei’s 3,499 euros ($3,660) trifold phone.
Huawei was looking to stand out from the crowd of similar-looking smartphones at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, the world’s biggest telecoms trade show. The Chinese firm had a large stand showing off its wares, including the Mate XT.
These expensive devices and Huawei’s presence at a global tech show, underscore the tech giant’s targeted approach, attempting to maintain its brand image as an innovative company while selling high-end smartphones.
“Huawei is still very cautious and conservative with what it believes it can achieve outside China with its smartphone business,” Runar Bjørhovde, an analyst at Canalys told CNBC.
“Bringing Mate XT and X6 abroad is no sign that it will make an international comeback with its smartphone business in the next years. Both of these are priced exceptionally and is instead to maintain its desired brand perception of being a cutting-edge innovator with smartphones and still sell devices to its most wealthy super-fans.”
Signage shows the Huawei Mate X6 at Huawei’s booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, 2025.
While Huawei has scaled back some of the glitzier aspects of its attendance, its stand remains very large as it shows off other parts of its business, in particular its telecommunications equipment which helped turn it into one of the world’s biggest tech companies.
In the consumer space, Huawei has maintained some presence outside of China with devices such as smartwatches but its smartphone business remains very limited. The firm is using 2025’s MWC to show off the Mate XT, the first of its kind device with a screen that folds twice.
However, its success in China is unlikely to be replicated with the biggest challenge being Huawei’s lack of access to Google’s Android software, analysts said.
“I don’t think they will be able to return to international markets without the full Google services,” Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at International Data Corporation, told CNBC.
A Huawei Technologies Mate XT smartphone arranged in Hong Kong on Sep. 24, 2024.
Lam Yik | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“They haven’t managed to grow market share in the international markets,” he said.
Google’s Android operating system is run by 80% of the world’s smartphones, according to Counterpoint Research. Outside of China, Android device users rely on the Google Play Store, which is Google’s app store, as well as the various apps from the Chrome browser to Gmail.
While Huawei has its own operating system called HarmonyOS, it still does not have the ability to offer Google apps, which the majority of users rely on.
“Expanding the smartphone business outside China will be a huge challenge,” Canalys’ Bjørhovde said.
“Not only because Harmony barely has any active users outside China, limiting its user feedback and app availability, but also because it needs the right device portfolio, operations team, marketing resources, etc. This will take years to rebuild, even with strong success in other device categories.”
CoreWeave, a provider of cloud-based Nvidia processors to companies including Meta and Microsoft, is headed for the public market.
In its IPO prospectus on Monday, CoreWeave said revenue in 2024 soared more than 700% to $1.92 billion. The company recorded a net loss of $863.4 million. In 2024, around 77% of revenue came from two customers, with 62% the total flowing from Microsoft. CoreWeave had over $15 billion in contracts that had not been fulfilled.
In the fourth quarter, it generated $747.4 million of revenue, with a gross margin, or the revenue left after accounting for the cost of goods sold, of about 76%. The company recorded operating income of $112.7 million, but a net loss of $51.4 million, due to interest expenses. Debt at the end of the year approached $8 billion.
CoreWeave filed to trade on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol “CRWV.”
Originally known as Atlantic Crypto, the company got its start in 2017 by offering infrastructure for mining the ethereum cryptocurrency. After digital currency prices fell, the company bought up additional graphics processing units (GPUs) and changed its name to CoreWeave, with an increasing focus on graphics rendering and artificial intelligence.
“We quickly started getting inundated with introductions to businesses dependent upon GPU acceleration with a common pain point: legacy cloud providers make it extremely difficult to scale because they offer a limited variety of compute options at monopolistic prices,” co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator wrote in a 2021 blog post.
Intrator controls about 38% of the company’s voting power before the offering. Hedge fund Magnetar controls 7%, while Nvidia has 1%, the filing showed.
At the end of 2024, CoreWeave’s fleet included over 250,000 Nvidia GPUs, with a majority using the previous-generation Hopper architecture, according to the filing. Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs were in full production as November. Last year, Elon Musk startup xAI quickly wired up a data center cluster in Tennessee housing 100,000 Nvidia GPUs.
Running data centers full of GPUs requires considerable energy. CoreWeave had 360 megawatts in active power, and a total of 1.3 gigawatts had been contracted, the filing said.
CoreWeave will be attempting to enter the public market during a historically slow stretch for tech offerings.
When cloud software vendor ServiceTitan hit the market in December, it market the first significant venture-backed tech IPO since Rubrik’s debut in April. A month before that, Reddit started trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
There haven’t been many other tech IPOs of note in the U.S. since late 2021, when rising interest rates and soaring inflation pushed investors out of risky assets.
Within the AI infrastructure market, one other name of interest is Cerebras. The chipmaker filed to go public in September, but the process slowed down due to a review by the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS.
CoreWeave gained popularity after OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, because the company could quickly provide GPUs to businesses in need. Microsoft, whose Azure cloud unit has supplied computing power to OpenAI, started working with CoreWeave in 2023 to meet OpenAI demand.
“What happened In November of ’22, like, that was just a bolt from the blue, right?” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on a podcast released in November with investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley. “So therefore, we had to catch up. So we said, Hey, we’re not going to in fact worry about too much inefficiency.”
Nadella described the GPU cloud leasing as a one-time event, saying Microsoft was no longer short on chips. But on a more recent podcast, the Microsoft chief said the company builds and rents heavily and will still be leasing in 2027 and 2028.
In addition to being CoreWeave’s top client, Microsoft is also a competitor, along with Amazon, Google, Oracle, and some smaller providers such as Crusoe and Lambda.
Nvidia relies on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. for GPU fabrication, and military conflict involving China and Taiwan could pose issues for CoreWeave, the company said in Monday’s filing.