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. 

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.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Tuesday that he’s working to root out bureaucracy from within the company’s ranks as part of an effort to reset its culture.

Speaking at Amazon’s annual conference for third-party sellers in Seattle, Jassy said the changes are necessary for the company to be able to innovate faster.

“I would say bureaucracy is really anathema to startups and to entrepreneurial organizations,” Jassy said. “As you get larger, it’s really easy to accumulate bureaucracy, a lot of bureaucracy that you may not see.”

A year ago, as part of a mandate requiring corporate employees to work in the office five days a week, Jassy set a goal to flatten organizations across Amazon. He called for the company to increase worker-to-manager ratios by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of this year.

Jassy also announced the creation of a “no bureaucracy email alias” so that employees can flag unnecessary processes or excessive rules within the company.

Amazon has received about 1,500 emails in the past year, and the company has changed about 455 processes based on that feedback, Jassy said.

The changes are linked to Jassy’s broad strategy to overhaul Amazon’s corporate culture and operate like the “world’s largest startup” as it looks to stay competitive.

Jassy, who took the helm from founder Jeff Bezos in 2021, has been on a campaign to slash costs across the company in recent years. Amazon has laid off more than 27,000 employees since 2022, and axed some of its more unprofitable initiatives. Jassy has also urged employees to do more with less at the same time that the company invests heavily in artificial intelligence.

Transforming Amazon into a startup-like environment isn’t an easy task. The company operates sprawling businesses across retail, cloud computing, advertising, and other areas. It’s the U.S. second-largest private employer, with more than 1.5 million employees globally.

“You have to keep remembering your roots and how useful it is to be scrappy,” Jassy said.

WATCH: Jassy on how AI will change the workforce

Online ticket platform StubHub is pricing its IPO at $23.50, CNBC’s Leslie Picker confirmed on Tuesday.

The pricing comes at the midpoint of the expected range that the company gave last week. At $23.50, the pricing gives StubHub a valuation of $8.6 billion. StubHub will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “STUB.”

The San Francisco-based company was co-founded by Eric Baker in 2000, and was acquired by eBay for $310 million seven years later. Baker reacquired StubHub in 2020 for roughly $4 billion through his new company Viagogo, which operates a ticket marketplace in Europe.

StubHub has been trying to go public for the past several years, but delayed its public debut twice. The most recent stall came in April after President Donald Trump‘s “Liberation Day” tariffs roiled markets.

The company filed an updated prospectus in August, effectively restarting the process to go public.

The IPO market has bounced back in recent months after an extended dry spell due to high inflation and rising interest rates. Klarna made its debut on the NYSE last week after the online lender also delayed its IPO in April. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss’ Gemini, stablecoin issuer Circle, Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish and design software company Figma have all soared in their respective debuts.

At the top of the pricing range StubHub offered last week, the company would have been valued at $9.2 billion. StubHub had sought a $16.5 billion valuation before it began the IPO process, CNBC previously reported. 

StubHub said in its updated prospectus that first-quarter revenue increased 10% from a year earlier to $397.6 million. Operating income came in at $26.8 million for the period.

The company’s net loss widened to $35.9 million from $29.7 million a year ago.

WATCH: Some recent IPOs have been ‘frothy’