Apple has confirmed that it has removed two popular gay dating apps from its Chinese iOS Store, following an order from Beijing’s main internet regulator and censorship authority.

It comes following reports of the apps — Blued and Finka — suddenly disappearing from the iOS App Store over the weekend. 

In a statement shared with CNBC, Apple confirmed that it was behind the action and defended the company’s position, stating that it must follow the laws of the countries where it operates.

“Based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China, we have removed these two apps from the China storefront only,” the company said, though they clarified that the apps had already been unavailable in other countries.

However, a “lite” version of the Blued app is still available for download on the China App Store, CNBC confirmed Tuesday.

The Wire had been the first to report that Apple had made the move at Beijing’s order.

The disappearance of Blued and Finka is the latest example of China’s crackdown on app stores in recent years.

Grindr, a popular gay dating app from the U.S., was removed from the iOS store in 2022, days after the Cyberspace Administration of China began a crackdown on content it considered illegal and inappropriate. 

Later in 2023, Beijing announced new policies requiring all apps serving local users to register with the government and receive licenses. That move had resulted in a wave of foreign apps being removed from iOS. 

The following years have also seen regulators continue to appeal directly to companies like Apple to remove certain apps due to issues with their content. 

In April 2024, Apple removed Meta’s WhatsApp and Threads from iOS following an order from the CAC, citing national security concerns.

Apple has proven a willingness to comply with these requests in China, which represents its largest oversea market outside the U.S.

The takedown of Blued and Finka also likely reflects increasing crackdowns and censorship of the LGBTQ community in China. In recent years, the government has shuttered major advocacy groups, including the Beijing LGBT Center. 

While homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997, same-sex marriage remains unrecognized. 

— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.

Investors piled back into artificial intelligence names on Monday stateside. Shares of Nvidia jumped 5.8%, Broadcom advanced 2.6% and Microsoft climbed 1.9% to end its eight-day losing streak, its longest consecutive decline since 2011.

Market watchers are hoping that another historically long streak — the U.S. government shutdown — could soon be snapped as well. The U.S. Senate has voted in favor for a deal to reopen the government, though it still has to pass through the House and then be signed into law by President Donald Trump (who has already given it his approval).

That’s not to say worries about AI’s high valuations have gone away completely.

CoreWeave on Monday reported its third-quarter earnings. It rents out Nvidia cards to AI-related firms, such as Google and Microsoft, a business model that ties it intimately to the AI trade. The company’s revenue swelled 134% year on year, but it still reported a net loss and gave lower-than-expected guidance for this year.

The general shape of those figures — high revenue and high losses — broadly reminds one of OpenAI, the industry-leading, money-bleeding startup that kickstarted the AI frenzy. Though it would of course be a stretch to equate the two companies and the factors driving their finances.

Still, Mark Haefele, CIO of UBS’s global wealth management, thinks “AI-related stocks should drive equity markets.” With the U.S. government shutdown in sight to end (hopefully this doesn’t jinx it), that’s another obstacle surpassed for markets.

Russia is late to the party, but it’s still preparing to enter the rare earths fray

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week ordered his officials to complete a road map by Dec.1 “for the long-term development of the extraction and production of rare and rare earth metals.”

Moscow has fallen behind peers like China when it comes to the exploitation of its deposits of rare earth elements. While lagging behind the big players, Russia is still estimated to possess the fifth largest known reserves of rare earths, totaling 3.8 million tonnes, the United States Geological Survey stated. That’s above the U.S. which is seen with 1.9 million tonnes.

— Holly Ellyatt

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank said Tuesday it has sold its entire stake in U.S. chipmaker Nvidia for $5.83 billion.

The firm said in its earnings statement that it sold 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October. It also disclosed that it sold part of its T-Mobile stake for $9.17 billion.

The announcement came after SoftBank posted a $19 billion gain on its Vision Fund in its fiscal second quarter, helped by investments in ChatGPT maker OpenAI and electronic payment services firm PayPay.

The Vision Fund has been aggressively pushing into artificial intelligence, investing and acquiring firms throughout the AI value chain from chips to large language models and robotics.

While the Nvidia exit may come as a surprise to some investors, it’s not the first time SoftBank has cashed out of the American AI chip darling.

SoftBank’s Vision Fund was an early backer of Nvidia, reportedly amassing a $4 billion stake in 2017 before selling all of its holdings in January 2019.

Despite its latest sale, SoftBank’s business interests remain heavily intertwined with Nvidia’s.

That Tokyo-based company is involved in a number of AI ventures that rely on Nvidia’s technology, including the $500 billion Stargate project for data centers in the U.S.

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