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Baidu has launched a slew of AI applications after its Ernie chatbot received public approval.

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Chinese tech giant Baidu saw its shares in Hong Kong soar nearly 16% on Wednesday as the company ramps up its artificial intelligence plans and partnerships. 

Shares in the Beijing-based firm, which holds a dominant position in China’s search engine market, had gained nearly 8% overnight in U.S. trading.

The strong stock performance comes after Baidu earlier this week secured an AI-related deal with China Merchants Group, a major state-owned enterprise, focused on transportation, finance, and property development. 

“Both sides plan to focus on applications of large language models, AI agents and ‘digital employees,’ vowing to make scalable and sustainable progress in industrial intelligence based on real-life business scenarios,” according to Baidu’s statement translated by CNBC.

Baidu has been aggressively pursuing its AI business, which includes its popular large language model and AI chatbot Ernie Bot. 

As it seeks to gain an edge in China’s competitive AI space, the company on Tuesday disclosed a 4.4 billion yuan ($56.2 million) offshore bond offering. This follows a $2 billion bond issuance back in March. 

Other Chinese AI players, such as Tencent, have also been raising funds, including via debt sales this year, to support the billions being poured into their AI capabilities. 

Signs of AI strength

At a developer conference last week, Baidu unveiled a series of AI advancements, including the company’s latest reasoning model, Ernie X 1.1.

According to the company, multiple benchmark results showed that its model’s overall performance surpassed that of Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek’s latest reasoning model. CNBC could not independently verify that claim.

To train its AI models, the company has also started using internally designed chips, The Information reported last week, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter.

In addition to providing a new potential business venture, Baidu’s chip drive could help it reduce reliance on AI chips from Nvidia, which has been subject to shifting export controls from Washington.

Gimme Credit Senior Bond Analyst, Saurav Sen, said in a report last week that Baidu’s recent capital allocation revealed that the company is making an “all-in AI pivot.”

Baidu, whose Hong Kong shares have gained nearly 59% this year, reported a drop in second-quarter revenue last month as its core advertising business struggled and returns from AI investments remained limited.

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CNBC Daily Open: Too early to fret about tech pullback?

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CNBC Daily Open: Too early to fret about tech pullback?

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on November 07, 2025 in New York City.

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November is historically the best month for the S&P 500, which gains an average of 1.8% during the period, according to the Stock Trader’s Almanac.

But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.

A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.

“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, Tan Su Shan told CNBC.

Goldman Sachs’ CEO David Solomon also thinks choppy waters might be ahead.

“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.

That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.

After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.

— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.

What you need to know today

Major U.S. index were mixed Friday stateside. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average inched up more than 0.1%, but the Nasdaq Composite closed 0.21% lower. The pan-European Stoxx 600 lost 0.55%. U.S. futures rose Sunday evening stateside.

China consumer prices pick up in October. The consumer price index, released Sunday, showed a 0.2% growth year on year. It beats analysts’ expectations of zero growth and is the first month since June that prices rose.

U.S. government on track to end shutdown. Enough Democratic senators had agreed to vote for a deal that would fund the U.S. government through the end of January, a person familiar with the deal told CNBC.

Another missed jobs report. The ongoing U.S. government shutdown — which is now the longest ever — means the Bureau of Labor Statistics couldn’t release its monthly employment data. Here’s what economists would have expected the report to show.

[PRO] Stocks that could bounce after sell-off. Using CNBC Pro’s stock screener tool, we found several names that are oversold, according to their 14-day relative strength index. This implies they could be due for a recovery in prices.

And finally…

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A global wealth boom is fueling a rise in family office imposters

Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.

An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.

Lee Ying Shan

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Week in review: The Nasdaq’s worst week since April, three trades, and earnings

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Week in review: The Nasdaq's worst week since April, three trades, and earnings

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Too early to bet against AI trade, State Street suggests 

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Too early to bet against AI trade, State Street suggests 

Momentum and private assets: The trends driving ETFs to record inflows

State Street is reiterating its bullish stance on the artificial intelligence trade despite the Nasdaq’s worst week since April.

Chief Business Officer Anna Paglia said momentum stocks still have legs because investors are reluctant to step away from the growth story that’s driven gains all year.

“How would you not want to participate in the growth of AI technology? Everybody has been waiting for the cycle to change from growth to value. I don’t think it’s happening just yet because of the momentum,” Paglia told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” earlier this week. “I don’t think the rebalancing trade is going to happen until we see a signal from the market indicating a slowdown in these big trends.”

Paglia, who has spent 25 years in the exchange-traded funds industry, sees a higher likelihood that the space will cool off early next year.

“There will be much more focus about the diversification,” she said.

Her firm manages several ETFs with exposure to the technology sector, including the SPDR NYSE Technology ETF, which has gained 38% so far this year as of Friday’s close.

The fund, however, pulled back more than 4% over the past week as investors took profits in AI-linked names. The fund’s second top holding as of Friday’s close is Palantir Technologies, according to State Street’s website. Its stock tumbled more than 11% this week after the company’s earnings report on Monday.

Despite the decline, Paglia reaffirmed her bullish tech view in a statement to CNBC later in the week.

Meanwhile, Todd Rosenbluth suggests a rotation is already starting to grip the market. He points to a renewed appetite for health-care stocks.

“The Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund… which has been out of favor for much of the year, started a return to favor in October,” the firm’s head of research said in the same interview. “Health care tends to be a more defensive sector, so we’re watching to see if people continue to gravitate towards that as a way of diversifying away from some of those sectors like technology.”

The Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund, which has been underperforming technology sector this year, is up 5% since Oct. 1. It was also the second-best performing S&P 500 group this week.

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