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Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.

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China is calling out the U.S. for “discriminatory restrictions” in its use of export controls in the chip industry, after the Trump administration accused the world’s second-largest economy of violating a preliminary trade deal between the two countries.

“Recently, China has repeatedly raised concerns with the U.S. regarding its abuse of export control measures in the semiconductor sector and other related practices,” China U.S. embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told NBC News.

It’s the latest escalation in the simmering trade war between the U.S. and China, particularly as it pertains to artificial intelligence and the infrastructure needed to develop the most advanced technologies.

China’s response comes after President Donald Trump said early Friday in a social media post that China had violated a trade agreement. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC in an interview that the “Chinese are slow rolling its compliance.”

On May 12, the U.S. and China agreed to a 90-day suspension on most tariffs imposed by either side. That agreement followed an economic and trade meeting between the two countries in Geneva, Switzerland.

“China once again urges the U.S. to immediately correct its erroneous actions, cease discriminatory restrictions against China and jointly uphold the consensus reached at the high-level talks in Geneva,” the embassy spokesperson said.

The statement didn’t specify any actions taken by the U.S. Earlier this month, China said the U.S. was “abusing” export controls after the U.S. banned American companies from importing or even using Huawei’s AI chips.

The U.S. has limited exports of some chips and chip technology to China as part of a national defense strategy dating back to the first Trump administration.

In 2019, President Trump cut off Huawei’s access to U.S. technology, which forced it to essentially exit the smartphone business for a few years before it could develop its own chips without use of U.S intellectual property or infrastructure. In 2022, the Biden administration first moved to cut off Chinese access to the fastest AI chips made by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.

The restrictions have intensified of late, and earlier this week, chip software makers, including Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems, said they had received letters from the U.S. Commerce Department telling them to stop selling to China.

Nvidia, which makes the most advanced semiconductors for AI applications, has vocally opposed the U.S. export controls, saying that they would merely force China to develop its own chip ecosystem instead of building around U.S. standards.

Nvidia was told earlier this year that it could no longer sell its H20 chip to China, a restriction that the company said this week would cause it to miss out on about $8 billion in sales in the current quarter. The H20 chip was specifically designed by Nvidia to comply with 2022 restrictions, but the Trump administration said in April that the company needed an export license. Nvidia said it was left with $4.5 billion in inventory it couldn’t reuse.

“The U.S. has based its policy on the assumption that China cannot make AI chips,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told investors on the company’s earnings call. “That assumption was always questionable, and now it’s clearly wrong.”

The Trump administration did rescind an expansive chip export control rule that was implemented by the Biden administration called the “AI diffusion rule,” which would have placed export caps on most countries. A new and simpler rule is expected in the coming months.

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Snap stock surges 13% after announcing Perplexity AI deal, reporting strong revenue

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Snap stock surges 13% after announcing Perplexity AI deal, reporting strong revenue

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Snap stock surged 13% on Thursday after announcing a $400 million deal with Perplexity AI and releasing its third-quarter financial results.

The company said that it will be integrating Perplexity’s artificial intelligence-powered search engine directly into the Snapchat app.

As part of the agreement, Perplexity is set to pay the social media platform $400 million over one year “through a combination of cash and equity,” according to Snap’s letter to investors.

The social media company expects to start seeing revenue from the deal in 2026.

“Snap’s strategic partnership with Perplexity AI represents a meaningful step toward building out alternative revenue streams, as similar to Pinterest, large advertisers in the US seem to be pulling back from advertising on the platform,” Deutsche’s Benjamin Black said in a note Thursday.

Snap posted solid third-quarter results, reporting revenue of $1.51 billion, which beat LSEG estimates of $1.49 billion.

The company’s daily active users increased 8% year over year to 477 million, surpassing StreetAccount’s projection of 476 million.

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Duolingo stock plunges 27% on light guidance as company prioritizes user growth

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Duolingo stock plunges 27% on light guidance as company prioritizes user growth

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Duolingo‘s stock cratered 27% on lighter-than-expected guidance as the language learning platform zeroed in on user growth in lieu of near-term monetization.

“We have made a slight shift over the last quarter in how we invest, and we’re investing a lot more in long-term things because we see that as such a big opportunity ahead of us,” CEO and co-founder Luis von Ahn told CNBC’s Jon Fortt.

For the current quarter, Duolingo expects bookings to range between $329.5 million and $335.5 million, falling short of a $344.3 million estimate from FactSet. Adjusted EBITDA was forecasted to range between $75.4 million and $78.8 million, versus the $80.5 million expected.

Duolingo grew paid subscribers to 11.5 million and topped the 11.38 million expected by StreetAccount. But daily and monthly active users came up short at 50.5 million and 135.3 million, respectively. Analysts polled by StreetAccount had forecasted 51.2 million daily and 137.4 million monthly users.

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Over the last several months, Duolingo has implemented a slew of new artificial intelligence tools, including an interactive video call feature to try and lure more paying subscribers. The company has also rolled out more language courses in record time with the help of AI.

“There are experiments that put monetization and user growth at odds, and part of my job has been, always, arbitrating between these two,” von Ahn told CNBC.

Over the last few months, he said the company has been “really shifting that trade off to be much more towards user growth.”

Duolingo’s revenues grew 41% during the quarter to $272 million, surpassing the $260 million estimate from analysts polled by LSEG. Total bookings jumped 33% year over year to about $282 million and also beat estimates.

Net income grew to $292.2 million, or $5.95 per share, up from $23.4 million, or 49 cents per share in the year-ago period. The company said net income was helped by a one-time tax income benefit of $222.7 million.

Duolingo also boosted its full-year revenue guidance to between $1.0275 billion and $1.0315 billion. That’s up from its previous guidance of $1.01 billion to $1.02 billion.

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Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Reynolds-backed password manager tops $400 million in ARR on AI tail winds

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Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Reynolds-backed password manager tops 0 million in ARR on AI tail winds

Ryan Reynolds (L), Scarlett Johansson (C), and Matthew McConaughy

Reuters

Cybersecurity startup 1Password, by Ryan Reynolds, Matthew McConaughey and Scarlett Johansson, has topped more than $400 million in annual recurring revenue, the company said Thursday.

“We believe we’re at a pretty significant inflection point in our journey,” CEO David Faugno told CNBC. “We’re set up for this next wave of disruption, which I think is an even bigger opportunity for us.”

Faugno said he expects the company to surpass a billion dollars in ARR over the next “several years,” benefiting from a shift in the threat landscape due to artificial intelligence and more complex protection needs.

In 2023, 1Password announced that it had surpassed $250 million in ARR.

AI innovation has accelerated demand for better cybersecurity tools to counteract sophisticated and complex cyberattacks. Big deals from Palo Alto Networks and Alphabet, and initial public offerings from Netskope and SailPoint have also put the sector in the spotlight.

Toronto-based 1Password was founded in 2005 and counts IBM, Perplexity AI, Salesforce and the Golden State Warriors among its customers, and it’s also signed a multiyear deal with Formula 1 team Oracle Red Bull Racing. The company says it secures more than 1.3 billion human and machine credentials and works with 180,000 business customers.

Additionally, 1Password on Thursday announced it is bringing on former ChargePoint and Barracuda Networks executive Michael Hughes. Former Qualtrics and SAP executive John Torrey will join as chief business officer.

Faugno said both executives complement the company’s strategy to lure larger enterprise customers.

Over the last year, 1Password has undergone a major C-suite shake-up.

Longtime leader Jeff Shiner, who ran 1Password for 13 years, transitioned into executive chair of the board in July. Faugno, who had been promoted to co-CEO a few months earlier, took over the role solely at that time. Faugno joined 1Password in 2023 as president and operating chief.

To date, 1Password has raised about $950 million and is valued at $6.8 billion, according to Pitchbook data. Other investors include actor Justin Timberlake, comedian Trevor Noah, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz and investment firm Iconiq, according to Pitchbook.

Faugno told CNBC that the company is weighing a possible IPO in 2026 or 2027, but isn’t “rushing out to go public.” He said 1Password remains focused on providing the best tools for its customers.

“We control our own destiny,” he said. “From a profitability perspective, we have investors that are playing the long game with us.”

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