Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaking with CNBC on Nov. 15th, 2023.
CNBC
Microsoft is not focused on China as a domestic market, though the company has notable Chinese customers with operations outside the world’s second most-populous country, CEO Satya Nadella said on Wednesday.
“We are mostly focused on the global market ex-China,” Nadella told CNBC’s Jon Fortt during Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Seattle. “A lot of the Chinese multinationals operating outside of China are our bigger AI customers, perhaps.”
Microsoft provides artificial intelligence services to electric vehicle maker Li Auto and consumer electronics company Xiaomi, among others.
Nadella’s remarks come as business leaders gather in San Francisco alongside U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping. The world’s two biggest economies have a fraught business relationship, particularly when it comes to technologies like networking equipment, semiconductors and internet services. In October the U.S. Commerce Department said it would impose additional export restrictions on AI chips for China.
Microsoft has a more visible presence in China than some of its peers. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps don’t officially work in China, nor does Google’s search engine. Amazon closed its online marketplace in China in 2019.
According to Microsoft’s web page about its presence in China, the company has operated there since 1992, including through its largest research and development center outside the U.S. The Bing search engine has been accessible in China since 2009.
For a few months this year, following the launch of an AI chatbot in Bing, it became the top desktop search engine in China. However, Beijing-based Baidu has since reclaimed leadership, according to StatCounter data. Earlier this week, Microsoft’s advertising division announced a partnership with Baidu.
Still, Nadella acknowledged on Wednesday that the U.S. government has important restrictions to follow when it comes to doing business in China.
“It’s clear that the United States has a particular set of policy decisions that they’re making on what it means to both have trade and competition and national security,” Nadella said. “Obviously, we are subject to what the USG decides” and will be compliant, he added.
Just over half of Microsoft’s sales in the third quarter came from clients in the U.S. The U.S government uses Microsoft Azure cloud services and Microsoft 365 productivity apps.
While Microsoft doesn’t rely on China for much revenue, the company has depended on the country for manufacturing, in part for its Surface PCs.
“At least for us, today, the majority of our business is in the United States and in Europe and in the rest of Asia, and so we don’t see this as a major, major issue for us, quite frankly, other than any disruption to supply chain,” Nadella said.
Microsoft has recently encountered some challenges in China.
In August, LinkedIn stopped operating its InCareer app for professional users in mainland China, citing “fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate.” The move came two years after Microsoft announced plans to shut down a localized version of its main app for users in China.
Last year, China reportedly told its government agencies and government-backed companies to turn in PCs from foreign countries and replace them with machines made domestically and running local operating systems. That came after Microsoft developed a special version of its Windows 10 operating system for the Chinese government.
Employees move semiconductor testers on the assembly line of the Advantest Corp. plant in Ora, Japan on Aug. 10, 2012.
Tomohiro Ohsumi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Asian tech and chip-related stocks fell Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump made it clear that tariffs on Mexico and Canada would go into effect as planned.
Trump also said he would impose an additional 10% tariff on imports from China, having already levied 10% duties that came into effect in February.
Asian tech stocks were also pressured by the near 9% fall in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares overnight.
Japanese semiconductor equipment maker Advantest plunged as much as 9%, to its lowest level since last October, while Chipmaker Renesas Electronics lost 6.35%.
Tech investor SoftBank Group dropped 6.25%. The company’s CEO Masayoshi Son plans to borrow $16 billion to invest in artificial intelligence, according to a news report that came out over the weekend.
Over in South Korea, shares in SK Hynix lost as much as 3.26%, while Samsung Electronics bucked the trend to rise nearly 1% following the launch of its Galaxy A series smartphones with AI-powered features.
Chinese AI-linked stocks also fell with Alibaba and Kingsoft Cloud down as much as 2.23% and 8.46% respectively.
Meanwhile, shopping platform Meituan lost 0.62%, electronic vehicle maker BYD plunged 6.60%, Xpeng traded 1.97% lower and Li Auto lost 2.68%.
Chinese tech major Tencent‘s shares were trading 0.91% higher in Hong Kong.
Nvidia’s headquarters on Feb. 26, 2025, in Santa Clara, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Malaysia said it will take “necessary action” against Malaysian companies if they are found to be involved in a fraud case linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips from Singapore to China.
That comes after Singapore Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam reportedly said on Monday that the servers in the fraud case may have contained Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips which were then sent to Malaysia.
On Feb. 27, Singapore charged three men with fraud, with local broadcaster CNA saying it understood the cases are linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips.
“The question is whether Malaysia was a final destination or from Malaysia, it went to somewhere else, which we do not know for certain at this point,” Shanmugam told reporters.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Malaysia’s minister for investment, trade and industry said the country has no information that data center companies operating in Malaysia are “not using the chips that they are supposed to be using.”
He said such servers are imported by data center companies such as Microsoft, AWS and Google.
Singapore’s Shanmugam had said Nvidia’s chips were embedded in servers supplied by Dell and Supermicro to Singapore-based companies, before they went to Malaysia. He added that “there may have been false representation on the final destination of the servers.”
When asked if Malaysia knew where the servers were now, Zafrul replied, “we don’t know,” adding that Malaysian authorities are discussing with the data center companies and checking if they have gone to the right parties.
“Right now, there’s no such cases in Malaysia to date, and we are investigating if they are. We’ll definitely discuss this with Singapore and well, the companies would then have to be held accountable by the relevant authorities,” he added.
CNA also reported two Singaporeans were charged with criminal conspiracy to commit fraud on a supplier of servers.
Citing charge sheets, CNA said they allegedly made false representations in 2024 that the items would not be transferred to a person other than the “authorized ultimate consignee of end users.”
The charges also come after Reuters reported in late January that the U.S. Commerce Department is looking into whether Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has been using U.S. chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China.
Citing a person familiar with the matter, Reuters said “organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of countries including Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.”
Zafrul told CNBC that Malaysia will be checking the chips’ destination, but added, “what I can say today [is] the chips are not meant to be in Malaysia in the first place. So the question is, why is it going out of Singapore?”
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.