People visit XPENG booth at 2025 Spring International Auto Show in Qingdao, Shandong province, China, on March 7, 2025.
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Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng delivered 35,045 vehicles in April, sustaining its record of delivering more than 30,000 vehicles for the sixth consecutive month.
That represents a 273% year-on-year increase in deliveries. The automaker on April 15 announced the launch of its renewed flagship model, the X9, starting from 359,800 yuan ($49,482).
Its competitor Leapmotor surpassed the 40,000-unit mark and delivered 41,039 vehicles in April, close to its 2024 record of 42,517 vehicles delivered in December 2024.
Niodelivered 19,269 vehicles for its main brand in April, more than the 10,219 delivered in March. One of its sub-brands, Onvo, delivered 4,400 vehicles in April, marking a decline from the 4,820 vehicles delivered the previous month.
The other sub-brand under Nio, Firefly, on April 19 officially launched its namesake model, a compact electric car that starts at 119,800 yuan. The carmaker also announced that deliveries started April 29. Based on CNBC’s calculations of publicly available figures, 231 Firefly cars were delivered in April.
Industry giant BYD sold 372,615 passenger vehicles in April, reflecting a 45.09% year-on-year increase. It had also reported 79,086 vehicles sold overseas in April, topping its record of 72,723 in March.
The EV juggernaut unveiled five new car models at the Shanghai Auto Show, an industry exhibition which ran from April 23 to May 2.
Some automakers struggle to boost deliveries
Not all automakers’ delivery volumes grew from the previous month.
Geely-owned Zeekr‘s April deliveries fell to 13,727 units, down from 15,422 the previous month. Deliveries also fell 14.7% year on year, based on CNBC’s calculations of publicly available numbers.
Li Auto delivered 33,939 vehicles in April, down from the 36,674 vehicles delivered the month prior, but still marking a year-on-year growth of 31.6%.
Xiaomi delivered over 28,000 vehicles in April, below its record of more than 29,000 the previous month. That comes after the crash of an SU7 vehicle in China on April 2 that left three dead
In light of the accident, safety concerns “took centerstage” at the Shanghai Auto Show this year, Nomura analysts said in a note dated April 28.
The note added that companies are “moving towards embracing more Lidars onto their models.” Lidar, short for light detection and ranging, can help construct maps of the environment, which can be used in driver-assistance systems in vehicles.
Lisa Su, chair and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), during a Bloomberg Television interview in San Francisco, California, US, on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025.
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AMD stock climbed 11% on Wednesday, continuing a massive run since OpenAI announced plans to buy billions of dollars of AI equipment from the chipmaker earlier this week.
On Monday, the ChatGPT maker entered into an agreement to potentially own 10% of AMD, based on its stock price and partnership milestones.
AMD now has a market cap of $380 billion after climbing 4% on Tuesday and 24% on Monday. Shares are up 43% so far this week, on pace for the best weekly gain since April 2016.
The partnership with OpenAI, which has historically been closely linked with Nvidia, has bolstered investor confidence that AMD will be a viable competitor to Nvidia in AI chips.
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AMD CEO Lisa Su told reporters on Monday that the deal was a “win-win” and that its AI chips were good enough to be used in “at-scale deployments,” or very large data centers like the kind OpenAI and cloud providers build.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday reacted to the deal on CNBC’s Squawk Box, saying it was “surprising.”
“It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising, considering they were so excited about their next-generation product,” Huang said. “I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it. And so anyhow, it’s clever, I guess.”
Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025.
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Google is continuing to put restrictions on remote work, this time with a popular policy called “Work from Anywhere” that was established during the Covid pandemic.
The policy has allowed employees to work from a location outside of their main office for up to four weeks per calendar year. According to internal documents viewed by CNBC, working remotely for even a single day will now count for a full week.
“Whether you log 1 WFA day or 5 WFA days in a given standard work week, 1 WFA week will be deducted from your WFA weekly balance,” according to a document that was circulated over the summer, shortly before the change went into effect.
Google isn’t altering its current hybrid schedule, which was also put in place during the pandemic, allowing employees to work from home two days a week. WFA days are distinct from that policy, giving staffers the flexibility to work remotely, but not at home.
“WFA weeks cannot be used to work from home or nearby,” the document says.
Google didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
Tech companies are increasingly forcing employees to spend more time in the office, with the peak of Covid now about five years in the past. Microsoft said last month that employees will be expected to work in an office three days a week starting next year, switching from a policy that allowed most of them to work from home 50% of the time or more with manager approval. Amazon went further, instructing corporate staffers to spend five days a week in the office.
Google began offering some U.S. full-time employees voluntary buyouts at the beginning of 2025, and has notified remote workers from several units their jobs would be considered for layoffs if they didn’t return to offices to work a hybrid schedule.
According to the latest changes, employees can’t work from a Google office in a separate state or country during their WFA time due to “legal and financial implications of cross border work.” If in a different location, employees may be required to work during the business hours that align with that time zone, the rules state.
The WFA update doesn’t apply to all Google staffers and may exclude data center workers, and those who are required to be in physical offices. Violations of the policy will result in disciplinary action or termination, the document says.
The issue came up at a recent all-hands meeting.
A top-rated question that was submitted on Google’s internal system described the update as “confusing.”
“Why does even one day of WFA count as a whole week, and can we reconsider the restriction on using WFA weeks to work from home?” the question said.
John Casey, Google’s vice president of performance and rewards, said at the meeting that WFA “was meant to meet Googlers where they were during the pandemic,” according to audio obtained by CNBC.
“The policy was always intended to be taken in increments of a week and not be used as a substitute for working from home in a regular hybrid work week,” Casey said.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that his family’s immigration to the U.S. “would not have been possible” with the Trump administration’s current policy.
President Donald Trump announced in September that employers would have to pay a $100,000 fee for each H-1B visa, a temporary worker visa granted to foreign professionals with specialized skills.
Huang, who was born in Taiwan and later moved Thailand, immigrated to the U.S. at nine years old with his brother. His parents joined them around two years later.
“I don’t think that my family would have been able to afford the $100,000 and and so the opportunity for my, my family and for me to be here … would not have been possible,” Huang told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Trump’s sudden price hike was a shock to the tech sector, which relies heavily on foreign talent, especially from India and China.
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Amazon was the top employer for H-1B holders in fiscal year 2025, sponsoring over 10,000 applicants according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Tech juggernauts Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Google were also among the top H-1B employers, with over 4,000 approvals each.
“Immigration is the foundation of the American dream,” Huang said, “this ideal that anyone can come to America and through hard work and some talent, be able to build a better future for yourself.”
Huang added that his own parents came to the U.S. so that his family could “enjoy the opportunities” and “this incredible country.”
The CEO confirmed that Nvidia, which currently sponsors 1,400 visas, would continue covering H-1B fees for immigrant employees. Huang said that he hopes to see some “enhancements” to the policy so that there’s “still some opportunities for serendipity to happen.”
While his own family’s journey would have been blocked by Trump’s immigration policy, Huang said Trump’s changes will still allow the U.S. “to continue to attract the world’s best talent.”
And other tech executives have expressed support for the changes, with Netflix‘s Reed Hastings calling the fee “a great solution” in a post on X.
“It will mean H1-B is used just for very high value jobs, which will mean no lottery needed, and more certainty for those jobs,” Hastings wrote.
In September, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC’s Jon Fortt that he also backed Trump’s changes.
“We need to get the smartest people in the country, and streamlining that process and also sort of outlining financial incentives seems good to me,” Altman said.