Connect with us

Published

on

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer Award 2020 on Dec. 1, 2020 in Berlin, Germany.

Britta Pedersen | Getty Images

Shares of Tesla rose sharply in U.S. premarket trading on Monday after the electric car maker passes a significant milestone to roll out its full self-driving technology in China.

The company’s share price spiked more than 10% just after 7:30 a.m. ET, as investors reacted to news surrounding Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s visit to China.

Tesla on Sunday said that local Chinese authorities removed restrictions on its cars after passing the country’s data security requirements.

The move raised expectations that Tesla’s driver-assistance software Full Self Driving (FSD) would soon be available in the country, which is the largest market for electric vehicles.

While Tesla’s electric cars are some of the most popular vehicles in China, they have reportedly been banned from some government-related properties due to data security concerns.

Separately, the Biden administration earlier this year announced a probe into whether imported cars from China pose national security risks due to their ability to potentially collect sensitive data.

FSD is an upgrade to Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistant. Tesla has offered its FSD technology in China for years, but with a restricted feature set that limits it to operations, such as automated lane changing.

Data security concerns have been a key obstacle preventing Tesla from achieving a full rollout of the system in China.

Tesla also reportedly scored a deal with Baidu that would give Musk’s firm access to the Chinese internet giant’s mapping and navigation technology for Tesla’s FSD feature.

The agreement would allow Tesla to tap into Baidu’s mapping service license, which is a requirement for intelligence driving systems to operate on public roads in China, Reuters reported, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

CNBC was unable to independently verify the report. Tesla and Baidu were not immediately available for comment.

With the license, which foreign companies can only clinch in partnership with local Chinese firms, Tesla will be allowed to legally operate FSD on Chinese roads, and its fleets will be able to gather data about traffic, road signs and routes.

The breakthrough for Tesla toward bringing its FSD self-driving technology to China marks a key win for the firm at a time when it is facing hefty competition in the Chinese market. Local rivals such as Warren Buffett-backed electric vehicle maker BYD, Nio, and Xpeng have ramped up their competition with Tesla in recent years.

BYD was temporarily the largest electric vehicle maker globally, producing more than 3 million new energy vehicles in 2023. The firm recently lost its crown as world’s largest EV maker, after a 43% plunge in sales in the first quarter.

– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report

Continue Reading

Technology

U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

Published

on

By

U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday. 

“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement

The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China. 

The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.

Continue Reading

Technology

Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

Published

on

By

Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.

Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.

S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.

Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.

Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.

While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.

DoorDash was the latest tech company to join during the last rebalancing in March. Cloud software vendor Workday was added in December, and that was preceded earlier in 2024 with the additions of Palantir, Dell, CrowdStrike, GoDaddy and Super Micro Computer.

Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.

New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

CNBC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Continue Reading

Technology

Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

Published

on

By

Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

A representation of cryptocurrency Ethereum is placed on a PC motherboard in this illustration taken on June 16, 2023.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Stocks tied to the price of ether, better known as ETH, were higher on Wednesday, reflecting renewed enthusiasm for the crypto asset amid a surge of interest in stablecoins and tokenization.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a bitcoin miner that announced plans this week to make ETH its primary treasury reserve asset, jumped about 20%. It’s gained more than 1,000% since the announcement. Betting platform SharpLink Gaming, which has also initiated an ETH treasury strategy, added more than 11%. Bit Digital, which last week exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans, jumped more than 6%.

“We’re finally at the point where real use cases are emerging, and stablecoins have been the first version of that at scale but they’re going to open the door to a much bigger story around tokenizing other assets and using digital assets in new ways,” Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens.

On Tuesday, as bitcoin ETFs snapped a 15-day streak of inflows, ether ETFs saw $40 million in inflows led by BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust. ETH ETFs came back to life in June after much concern that they were becoming zombie funds.

The price of the coin itself was last higher by 5%, according to Coin Metrics, though it’s still down 24% this year.

Ethereum has been struggling with an identity crisis fueled by uncertainty about the network’s value proposition, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Market volatility, driven by geopolitical uncertainty this year, has not helped.

The Ethereum network’s smart contracts capability makes it a prominent platform for the tokenization of traditional assets, which includes U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee this week called Ethereum “the backbone and architecture” of stablecoins. Both Tether (USDT) and Circle‘s USD Coin (USDC) are issued on the network.

Fundstrat's Tom Lee on being named chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies

BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund (known as BUIDL, which stands for USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) also launched on Ethereum last year before expanding to other blockchain networks.

Tokenization is the process of issuing digital representations on a blockchain network of publicly traded securities, real world assets or any other form of value. Holders of tokenized assets don’t have outright ownership of the assets themselves.

The latest wave of interest in ETH-related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood this week that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, after a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle’s IPO and the Senate passage of its proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.

Ether, which turns 10 years old at the end of July, is sitting about 75% off its all-time high.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

Continue Reading

Trending