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A Meituan food delivery courier rides an electric scooter in Chongqing, China, on March 29, 2025.

Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

In China’s fiercely competitive market, the latest price war is playing out in the growing “instant commerce” sector, where companies are launching massive subsidies and other incentives to get consumers to spend.

The ‘instant commerce’ sector is backed by massive networks of scooter drivers that quickly transport everything from food and drink to fast fashion and gadgets.

The space is mostly occupied by three main players, including the established e-commerce heavyweights JD.com and Alibaba, as well as delivery platform Meituan, which has historically focused heavily on food delivery. 

Competition between these companies has intensified this year, with all three expanding their delivery networks and pledging billions in subsidies to merchants and consumers. 

The result — insanely fast and cheap offers. Perusing through JD.com’s delivery platform on Friday, CNBC found coffee as cheap as 10.9 yuan, or $1.50, including delivery fees. Meituan was offering a 13 yuan set of steamed buns and a 26.8 yuan McDonald’s breakfast set.

However, despite the benefits for Chinese consumers, the price war has also weighed heavily on investors and the earnings outlook. Meituan and JD.com, for example, have seen their shares fall by about 22% and 10%, respectively, this year, according to LSEG data. 

How did we get here? 

A delivery rider wearing a JD Logistics uniform adjusts his helmet while sitting on an electric scooter beside a Meituan delivery box, with several other delivery workers nearby, on May 26, 2025, in Chongqing, China.

Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Then, in April, Meitaun launched its own challenge to JD.com with a new 24/7 “flash shopping” platform that included categories like groceries, alcohol, and electronics and promised deliveries within 30 minutes. 

Tensions grew as the companies engaged in direct competition. Eventually, both companies accused each other of using anti-competitive practices to block riders from accepting orders on rival platforms. It was around that time when JD began hiring more full-time drivers, and founder Richard Liu was photographed delivering food orders in Beijing in a viral publicity stunt. 

That month also saw JD.com announce a first round of subsidies worth 10 billion yuan, which went towards a food delivery discount program.

Subsidies and massive discounts are commonplace in China’s competitive tech sector, and a cause for concern for Beijing.

China’s top market regulator summoned JD.com, Meituan, and Alibaba’s Ele.me in May, urging them to follow the law and compete fairly. Retail groups also voiced concerns about JD.com’s subsidy program and the knock-on effects of plummeting prices. However, the pushback had little effect on slowing the price war. 

On Tuesday, JD.com announced yet another 10 billion-yuan investment under its “Double Hundred Plan,” intended to provide targeted support to merchants on the platform.

It came after Alibaba’s Taobao Instant Commerce announced on Saturday a subsidy program valued at 50 billion yuan (about $7 billion), to be distributed over the next year. It added that it had reached 200 million orders per day shortly after.

The same day, discounts and coupons offered on Meituan had seen prices of a cup of coffee drop to as low as 2 yuan ($0.28), according to local media

As a result, the company said that it received a record 120 million orders that Saturday — so much that it suffered a temporary breakdown of its servers in certain areas. 

While all the companies have boasted about increases in their instant commerce user bases in recent months, it remains unclear how much the price war will impact their earnings. 

Meituan reported that its profits for the first quarter of 2025 were 10.2 billion yuan, up about 63% year over year. However, it warned that the following quarter would likely be impacted by increased competition in instant retail. 

In May, JD.com reported that its operating profit rose by 31.4% year over year to 11.7 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2025. However, economists polled by LSEG expect second-quarter profits to fall on both a yearly and quarterly basis.

JD’s push into food delivery may have generated a loss of more than 10 billion yuan in the second quarter, according to Nomura’s analysis published Thursday. The analysts estimate JD has gained about 10% of the instant delivery market with 20 million orders a day.

Looking ahead, “we think JD may have to re-examine its ambition,” the analysts said. They pointed out that in light of Alibaba’s ramped-up spending on subsidies, JD might have to burn through all the profits generated by its core retail business — for several quarters — if it wants to compete with the two market incumbents.

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CoreWeave inks $6.5 billion deal with OpenAI

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CoreWeave inks .5 billion deal with OpenAI

Michael Intrator, co-founder and chief executive officer of CoreWeave Inc., during an interview on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

CoreWeave on Thursday announced a $6.5 billion deal with OpenAI, expanding its current agreement with the artificial intelligence startup behind ChatGPT.

The new agreement brings the AI cloud infrastructure provider’s total contracts with OpenAI to $22.5 billion.

“This milestone affirms the trust that world-leading innovators have in CoreWeave’s ability to power the most demanding inference and training workloads at an unmatched pace,” CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said in a statement.

In March, CoreWeave announced an $11.9-billion agreement with OpenAI to provide AI datacenters and technology over five years. Intrator told CNBC in May that the companies expanded the agreement by $4 billion.

CoreWeave, which went public in March, makes money by renting out data centers packed with numerous Nvidia graphics processing units. The company is backed by Nvidia and makes a significant chunk of its revenue from Microsoft, which is a key investor in OpenAI.

At the time of its prospectus, CoreWeave said it operated 32 datacenters powered over 250,000 Nvidia GPUs.

Earlier this month, CoreWeave’s share price popped after the company disclosed a $6.3 billion order from Nvidia.

WATCH: CoreWeave CEO: Building AI infrastructure will require trillions in public-private investment

CoreWeave CEO: Building AI infrastructure will require trillions in public-private investment

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Databricks commits to $100 million in OpenAI spending as high-valued startups team up in AI

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Databricks commits to 0 million in OpenAI spending as high-valued startups team up in AI

Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi.

Databricks

OpenAI and Databricks are two of the most highly valued tech startups on the planet. Now they’re working together.

Databricks, a data analytics software vendor, said Thursday that it has committed to spending $100 million over multiple years with OpenAI. Databricks is making it easier for customers to connect their data stored in its cloud service with GPT-5, announced in August, and other OpenAI models.

OpenAI, which was recently valued by private investors at $500 billion, has become a household name in the years since the launch of its ChatGPT in late 2022. In partnering with Databricks, valued at more than $100 billion in its latest funding round, OpenAI has landed its first formal integration with a business-focused product vendor, said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s operating chief, in a news conference Wednesday.

Lightcap said the company’s “aspiration is a multiple” of the $100 million spending commitment in terms of revenue the agreement will generate.

Databricks has formed similar partnerships with Google and with Anthropic. But OpenAI is leading the way with more than 700 million people using its ChatGPT assistant, powered by GPT-5, every week.

The company was making enterprise more of a focus even before the Databricks deal. Microsoft has been bringing OpenAI models into businesses, governments and schools. And OpenAI has been building up its own sales function.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said the partnership will simplify the process for its customers when it comes to accessing OpenAI’s models, which they’ve already been using in large numbers.

Until now, if a Databricks customer wanted to tap a proprietary OpenAI model to help analyze internal data, it would have required extensive configuration, as well as legal and security sign-off.

“The key difference here is that any database customer automatically now, just by clicking in the UI, can start using this product,” Ghodsi said, referring to the user interface. Ghodsi said the price is similar to what it would cost if the user went directly to OpenAI.

Greg Ulrich, Mastercard‘s chief AI and data officer, said he’s optimistic about the integration.

“It enables opportunity for research and targeted experimentation, using AI to solve new problems, bringing value to customers, enhancing employee productivity, in an environment that we trust, that we know,” Ulrich said.

It’s an increasingly competitive space.

Databricks rival Snowflake, which has a market cap of $75 billion, announced an expansion of its Microsoft partnership in February, enabling the use of OpenAI models. Oracle, which has a $300 billion cloud contract from OpenAI, said two weeks ago that in October it will launch a service for running Google, OpenAI and xAI models on data stored in its database software.

Databricks said earlier this month that it now generates more than $4 billion in annualized revenue, growing over 50% year over year, with $1 billion coming from AI products. The company’s $100 billion valuation was announced alongside a $1 billion funding round.

OpenAI and Databricks ranked No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list.

WATCH: Databricks CEO: ‘Agentic’ AI era will disrupt the whole database industry

Databricks CEO: 'Agentic' AI era will disrupt the whole database industry

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European Commission launches antitrust probe into software giant SAP

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European Commission launches antitrust probe into software giant SAP

Thomas Lohnes | Getty Images

The European Commission launched an antitrust probe into German software behemoth SAP on Thursday, citing concerns about the company’s practices in software support services.

According to the Commission, the investigation will assess “whether SAP may have distorted competition in the aftermarket for maintenance and support services related to an on-premises type of software, licensed by SAP, used for the management of companies’ business operations.”

SAP, in a statement on Thursday, said it believed its policies and actions were fully compliant with EU competition rules.

“However, we take the issues raised seriously and we are working closely with the EU Commission to resolve them,” a spokesperson said. “We do not anticipate the engagement with the European Commission to result in material impacts on our financial performance.”

SAP is one of Europe’s most valuable companies, with a market cap of almost 282 billion euros ($331 billion). Shares of the firm moved lower on Thursday, losing 2% by 12:45 p.m. in London (7:45 a.m. ET).

The EU probe relates to a piece of SAP software called Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP.

ERP is widely used by large corporations to manage their everyday finance and accounting needs. SAP is a major player in the space — but it isn’t alone. The company competes with the likes of Microsoft and Oracle, which offer their own ERP products.

Specifically, the European Commission said it was addressing the so-called “on-prem” version of SAP ERP. On-prem refers to software that is hosted on a company’s own servers, as opposed the cloud where it can be remotely accessed via SAP data centers.

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Much of SAP’s business still comes from its on-prem IT services. However, the company has for years been attempting to shift more of its focus to the cloud — particularly as it faces competition from technology giants like Microsoft and Amazon, which dominate the market for public cloud services.

The latest EU antitrust probe is noteworthy as it doesn’t involve Big Tech.

Much of the bloc’s work on competition policy has focused on the market power of U.S. technology giants. This has led to criticisms from both the tech sector and politicians in the U.S., who say American tech firms are being unfairly targeted. On Wednesday, Apple urged a repeal of the Digital Markets Act, the EU’s landmark digital competition law, saying it was “leading to a worse experience for Apple users in the EU.”

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