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Chinese smartphone company Honor has released devices that fold up to be nearly as thin as an iPhone.

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BARCELONA — Honor on Sunday pledged $10 billion in artificial intelligence investments over the next five years and announced a deepening partnership with Google, as the Chinese smartphone maker looks to bolster its market share overseas.

The investment plan, revealed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, is designed to reposition the firm from a smartphone player into an “AI device ecosystem company,” according to Honor.

The Chinese company is somewhat of an upstart in the smartphone world, after spinning off from Huawei in 2020 when the tech giant was hit with U.S. sanctions. Since then, Honor has looked to expand outside of China and push into the higher-end part of the market where Apple and Samsung play.

The company has made some headway by releasing some innovative devices, including foldable phones, but it still remains a small player globally. Its smartphone market share outside of China stood at 2.3% in 2024 versus 1.7% in 2023, according to IDC data.

An Honor spokesperson told CNBC the money would go toward putting AI into hardware as well as next generation AI agents, which are often described as more advanced virtual assistants.

Another part of the investment will go toward creating a “platform for a wide range of AI devices.”

“This is not limited to our own devices, but also AI devices from different partners, so the different kinds of AI devices can talk to each other, and consumers can have more choices and seamless experiences,” the Honor spokesperson said.

A small portion of the investment will also be used to “prepare for the AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) era.”

AGI generally refers to AI that is smarter than humans.

Closer Google ties

On Sunday, Honor demonstrated a proof of concept “AI agent”. One example involved a user asking the agent to book a restaurant with specific requirements, such as the type of preferred cuisine and the distance from the user. The agent went ahead and made a reservation. Honor said it is working with Google and chip designer Qualcomm on developing its AI agent, but did not give a timeline for its release.

Meanwhile, Honor is also using the technology behind Google Gemini, the U.S. firm’s AI system, for the AI features on its latest devices.

Meanwhile on Sunday, Honor announced that it would commit to seven years of employing the Android operating system and security updates for its Magic series of flagship smartphones — becoming just one of very few vendors to pledge this. Google’s own Pixel devices and Samsung’s S series of flagship smartphones are the only other devices to offer similar support.

Android is the operating system created by Google. While the seven year support is not directly related to Google, it highlights Honor’s commitment to the operating system.

While there are many Android smartphone players, not all of them have as close a tie to Google as do Samsung, the biggest Android user in the world, and Xiaomi, the second largest. Honor is now joining that list.

“Honor’s deeper partnership with Google is very significant,” Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC. “To date, it has felt as though Google was keeping Chinese smartphone makers at arm’s length when it came to the most advanced aspects of Gemini AI, but this appears to put the Honor on par with Samsung Galaxy and Google’s own Pixel products which is quite a coup.”

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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

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

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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:

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