Paramount Skydance on Monday launched a hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, following Netflix’s announcement last week that it had reached a deal to buy the HBO owner.

The company is “here to finish what we started,” CEO David Ellison told CNBC, upping the ante with a $30-per-share, all-cash offer compared to Netflix’s $27.75-per-share, cash-and-stock offer for WBD’s streaming and studio assets.

Investors were certainly pleased, sending Paramount shares 9% higher and WBD’s stock up 4.4%.

Another development that traders cheered was U.S. President Donald Trump permitting Nvidia to export its more advanced H200 artificial intelligence chips to “approved customers” in China and other countries — so long as some of that money flows back to the U.S. Nvidia shares rose about 2% in extended trading.

Major U.S. indexes, however, fell overnight, as investors awaited the Federal Reserve’s final rate-setting meeting of the year on Wednesday stateside. Markets are expecting a nearly 90% chance of a quarter-point cut, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Rate-cut hopes have buoyed stocks. “The market action you’ve seen the last one or two weeks is kind of essentially baking in the very high likelihood of a 25 basis point cut,” said Stephen Kolano, chief investment officer at Integrated Partners.

But that means a potential downside is deeper if things don’t go as expected.

“For some very unlikely reason, if they don’t cut, forget it. I think markets are down 2% to 3%,” Kolano added.

In that case, investors will be waiting, impatiently, for the Fed meeting next year — hoping for a more satisfying conclusion.

U.S. stocks slid on Monday. Major indexes closed lower, even though technology stocks, such as Broadcom, Confluent and Oracle, had a good showing. The pan-European Stoxx 600 closed flat, but defense stocks broadly rose.

Paramount Skydance makes hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. The company made a $30-per-share, all cash, tender offer to WBD shareholders, following Netflix’s acquisition deal. Here’s what to expect from Paramount and Netflix as competition intensifies.  

Trump allows Nvidia to sell H200 chip to China. But that’s only if the U.S. gets a 25% sales cut, the White House leader said in a Truth Social post on Monday. Trump added that Chinese President Xi Jinping had “responded positively” to the proposal.

Berkshire Hathaway leadership shuffle. Todd Combs, investment manager and Geico CEO, will be leaving for JPMorgan Chase, while Berkshire will be adding a general counsel and a president overseeing consumer, service and retail units.

[PRO] Ray Dalio’s views on the market. The Bridgewater Associates founder told CNBC that he would bet on AI — but in different way.

China’s trade surplus tops $1 trillion despite Trump’s attempt to contain it. Here’s what that means

China’s trade surplus roared above $1 trillion in November for the first time ever, despite the ongoing global trade war that has resulted in a steep drop in exports to the U.S. In the first 11 months this year, China’s overall exports grew 5.4% compared to the same period in 2024 while imports fell 0.6%.

The rebound in export growth would help mitigate the drag from weak domestic demand, putting the economy on track to deliver the “around 5%” growth target this year, said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

— Anniek Bao and Jeff Cox

The developer of ICEBlock, an app used to track local sightings of ICE agents and other law enforcement authorities, sued the U.S. government on Monday for allegedly infringing his free speech rights.

After Apple removed the app from its store in October, creator Joshua Aaron criticized the Trump administration for pressuring the iPhone maker to ban ICEBlock over fears it could be used to harm U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Attorneys for Aaron wrote in the complaint that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi made clear that the government “used its regulatory power to coerce a private platform to suppress First Amendment-protected expression,” when she said the Department of Justice demanded that Apple remove the app, which was only available on iOS.

The suit claimed Apple cited one of its review guidelines that says apps can’t allow objectionable content that can be used to harm a targeted group. Apple said ICEBlock targets law enforcement officers, according to the suit.

Aaron told CNBC on Monday that his complaint was inspired by the U.S. founding fathers, who held the view that, “The survival of our democratic republic isn’t guaranteed.”

“It requires constant vigilance, active and informed participation of its citizens,” Aaron said. “When we see or think our government is doing something wrong, it’s our duty to hold them accountable. And that is the heart of this lawsuit.”

Aaron said attorneys with law firm Sher Tremonte in New York are representing him on a pro bono basis.

It’s not the first time Apple has made such a move.

In 2019, the company removed an app that Hong Kong protesters used to track police movements during a public dispute over the city’s relationship with China. Apple said at the time that the app was removed because criminals used it to target and ambush police.

Aaron had developed an Android version of his app, but said he couldn’t release it. After Apple’s move to remove ICE Block, Google parent Alphabet also agreed to ban apps that help people track the whereabouts of law enforcement from its app store, he said.

Representatives for Apple and Google didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The DOJ didn’t also didn’t immediately provide a comment.

Aaron launched ICEBlock in April in response to the aggressive crackdown on immigrants by the Trump administration. According to new data obtained by the University of California at Berkeley via the school’s Deportation Data Project, “more than a third of the roughly 220,000 people arrested by ICE officers in the first nine months of the Trump administration had no criminal histories.” Gallup’s polling data released on Nov. 28 found only 37% of US voters approved of the way Trump is handling immigration.

Read the full complaint here:

China’s artificial intelligence device market is already booming, and in the advanced technology race against the U.S., the country’s expertise in hardware could give it an edge.

“The advantage comes from the fundamental root that China is a nation of manufacturing,” Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of 01.AI and chairman of Sinovation Ventures, told CNBC. “Today, the competition is on the software, the models, the agents, the applications. But soon it will move to devices.”

Meta has sold millions of its smart glasses since introducing the specs in 2023, and the Chinese have caught on, with more than 70 Chinese companies creating competing products in the space.

Eyewear from companies such as Inmo and Rokid are sold worldwide. Xiaomi and Alibaba‘s are found only in China and are embedded with the tech giants’ own AI.

Alibaba’s DingTalk, a messaging platform for the workplace, this year released a credit card-sized AI gizmo meant for note-taking on the job.

The DingTalk A1 can record, transcribe, summarize and analyze speech from as far as 8 meters (26 feet) away, about the length of a large boardroom.

The device is similar to the Plaud Note, which is available in the U.S.

The device experimentation in China spans from the practical to the unconventional.

Chinese startup Le Le Gaoshang Education Technology released a “Native Language Star” brand translating gadget aimed at Chinese parents with limited English to teach English to their own children.

The contraption, which is looped around the back of a user’s neck like a travel neck pillow and comes down toward the chest, has a sort of muzzle unit that goes over the mouth and mutes the user’s own voice.

The unit is embedded with Tencent and iFlyTek AI and is billed as a way to turn an English-speaking Chinese parent into a “laowai,” or foreigner. It retails for $420.

Having so many hardware touchpoints helps with adoption and with getting people used to the technology. It’s also a boost for companies to gather a war chest of data compared to other countries, analysts say.

“When you still hear people outside of China talking about what the future of the AI device might be, the market is full of AI devices here already,” tech consultant Tom van Dillen of Greenkern said at his office in Beijing. “This creates this feedback loop again to make the AI even better.”

Yet an edge in hardware is far from a guarantee to win the AI race, especially if China’s AI lacks appeal with global customers due to privacy or other issues, or if it falls well behind its counterparts in the U.S. or elsewhere.

“You really have to be that Apple iPhone to reap the most of the reward,” Lee cautioned, referencing late entrepreneur Steve Jobs’ invention that is often seen as one of the most transformative consumer products ever. “I think the China advantage for building the Apple iPhone for the AI age is that the capabilities are there — engineers and entrepreneurs, and so on. But it will still be a race.”