Xiaomi’s first EV, the SU7, is on display at a Xiaomi Automotive delivery center on March 25, 2024 in Hefei, Anhui Province of China. Chinese tech company Xiaomi’s first electric vehicle, the SU7, will be formally launched on March 28.
Ruan Xuefeng | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun on Monday teased the price of the Chinese firm’s first electric vehicle ahead of its official launch this week.
“The goal of the Xiaomi SU7 is to be the best looking, best driving, and most intelligent sedan under 500,000 yuan ($69,328),” Lei said in a post on Chinese social media service Weibo.
It is the first time Xiaomi has confirmed the upper end of the price range. On Thursday, Xiaomi will officially launch the SU7 electric vehicle and begin taking orders.
The car is on display across Xiaomi stores in China in 29 cities, according to another Weibo post by Lei. He said that test drives will begin on Thursday.
Xiaomi Group President Weibing Lu told CNBC previously that the company is targeting the premium segment of the electric car market.
That would pit it against the likes of Tesla in China. For comparison, Tesla’s Model S sedan starts at 698,900 yuan while the Model 3 starts at 245,900 yuan.
Xiaomi will also be competing against a slew of domestic players including giant BYD, Nio, Xpeng and Li Auto, many of which are also targeting the premium end of the EV market.
Xiaomi is best-known as a smartphone and consumer electronics company. But in 2021, the company announced plans to enter the EV race. Three years later it is facing a very different electric car market in China — one that is potentially facing a slowdown and where competition is cut-throat.
Pricing will be key for Xiaomi in such a competitive market and one where the company has no prior history. The big bet on EVs from Xiaomi is not lost on CEO Lei.
“Three years ago, I announced that Xiaomi was going to enter the EV market. This is my final new venture — I am putting my reputation on the line to fight for a vision I deeply believed in,” Lei said in a post on X.
The logo of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin can be seen on a coin in front of a Bitcoin chart.
Silas Stein | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Bitcoin hit a fresh record on Wednesday afternoon as an Nvidia-led rally in equities helped push the price of the cryptocurrency higher into the stock market close.
The price of bitcoin was last up 1.9%, trading at $110,947.49, according to Coin Metrics. Just before 4:00 p.m. ET, it hit a high of $112,052.24, surpassing its May 22 record of $111,999.
The flagship cryptocurrency has been trading in a tight range for several weeks despite billions of dollars flowing into bitcoin exchange traded funds. Bitcoin purchases by public companies outpaced ETF inflows in the second quarter. Still, bitcoin is up just 2% in the past month.
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Bitcoin climbs above $112,000
On Wednesday, tech stocks rallied as Nvidia became the first company to briefly touch $4 trillion in market capitalization. In the same session, investors appeared to shrug off the latest tariff developments from President Donald Trump. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite notched a record close.
While institutions broadly have embraced bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative, it is still a risk asset that rises and falls alongside stocks depending on what’s driving investor sentiment. When the market is in risk-on mode and investors buy growth-oriented assets like tech stocks, bitcoin and crypto tend to rally with them.
Investors have been expecting bitcoin to reach new records in the second half of the year as corporate treasuries accelerate their bitcoin buying sprees and Congress gets closer to passing crypto legislation.
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Perplexity AI on Wednesday launched a new artificial intelligence-powered web browser called Comet in the startup’s latest effort to compete in the consumer internet market against companies like Google and Microsoft.
Comet will allow users to connect with enterprise applications like Slack and ask complex questions via voice and text, according to a brief demo video Perplexity released on Wednesday.
The browser is available to Perplexity Max subscribers, and the company said invite-only access will roll out to a waitlist over the summer. Perplexity Max costs users $200 per month.
“We built Comet to let the internet do what it has been begging to do: to amplify our intelligence,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
Perplexity is best known for its AI-powered search engine that gives users simple answers to questions and links out to the original source material on the web. After the company was accused of plagiarizing content from media outlets, it launched a revenue-sharing model with publishers last year.
In May, Perplexity was in late-stage talks to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation, a source familiar confirmed to CNBC. The startup was also approached by Meta earlier this year about a potential acquisition, but the companies did not finalize a deal.
“We will continue to launch new features and functionality for Comet, improve experiences based on your feedback, and focus relentlessly–as we always have–on building accurate and trustworthy AI that fuels human curiosity,” Perplexity said Wednesday.
A worker sorts packages on Amazon Prime Day in New York on July 8, 2025.
Klaus Galiano | Bloomberg | Getty Images
U.S. online sales jumped 9.9% year over year to $7.9 billion on Tuesday, the kickoff of Amazon‘s Prime Day megasale, according to Adobe Analytics.
At that level, it marks the “single biggest e-commerce day so far this year,” Adobe said. It also eclipsed total online spending during Thanksgiving last year, when sales on the holiday reached $6.1 billion.
Amazon’s Prime Day bargain blitz began on Tuesday and lasts through Friday. The event, first launched in 2015 as a way to hook new Prime members, has pushed other retailers to launch counterprogramming.
Home and outdoor goods showed signs of strong demand during the first day of Amazon’s discount event, said Kashif Zafar, CEO of Xnurta, an advertising platform that serves more than 20,000 online businesses.
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Other historically well-performing categories such as beauty and household essentials saw softer demand early on, but could see demand pick up as Prime Day continues, he added.
“Early Prime Day numbers might look soft compared to last year’s surge, but it’s too early to call the event a miss,” Zafar said in an email. “With four days instead of two, we’re seeing a different rhythm, consumers are spreading out their purchases.”
Adobe expects online sales to reach $23.8 billion across all retailers during the 96-hour event, a level that’s “equivalent to two Black Fridays.”
U.S. online shoppers spent $14.2 billion during the 48-hour Prime Day event last year, according to Adobe.
This year’s Prime Day is landing at an uncertain time for retailers and consumers as they grapple with the fallout of President Donald Trump‘s unpredictable tariff policies.
U.S. consumer confidence worsened in June after improving in May as Americans remained concerned about the tariffs’ effect on the economy and prices, according to the Conference Board.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last month the company hasn’t seen prices “appreciably go up” on its site as a result of tariffs.
Some third-party sellers previously told CNBC they were considering raising or had already raised the price of some of their products manufactured in China as the cost of tariffs became burdensome.