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TikTok owner ByteDance has launched a women’s fashion website called If Yooou. Pinduoduo launched an e-commerce site in the U.S. called Temu. The two companies are the latest Chinese tech giants to look to crack the international e-commerce market domianted by Amazon.

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Pinduoduo and TikTok owner ByteDance launched e-commerce websites overseas in the last few months, as they aim to take a crack at selling Chinese products to foreign buyers.

The move sets the two Chinese technology firms up on a collision path with Amazon as they expand internationally.

Pinduoduo, one of China’s biggest e-commerce companies, launched a U.S. shopping site called Temu last month, which sold products in categories from fashion to sports and electronics.

Weeks later, ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered owner of short video app TikTok, launched a fashion website named If Yooou. It is currently shipping to the U.K., Spain, Italy, Germany and France.

Both firms are looking to replicate the success of Shein, the Chinese fast fashion brand that is reportedly now worth $100 billion and has found a large customer base in the U.S. and elsewhere.

ByteDance and Pinduoduo are also relying on cross-border e-commerce — selling Chinese goods to overseas consumers. The U.S. and European markets also present an opportunity for growth.

The push abroad comes at a time where tech giants in China are looking for new avenues of growth as the domestic economy continues to face challenges as a result of Beijing’s strict Covid control policies and deteriorating global macroeconomic environment.

Why China's cracking down on tech — and what's next

“I think ByteDance and [Pinduoduo] are seizing an opportunity to apply their unique social commerce innovations” to overseas markets, Jacob Cooke, CEO of WPIC, an e-commerce tech and marketing firm that helps foreign brands sell in China, told CNBC.

Pinduoduo declined to comment for this story, while ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.

Pinduoduo and ByteDance e-commerce strategy

Cross-border e-commerce strategies of Pinduoduo, also known as PDD, and ByteDance will be different given their different strengths.

In China, PDD has grown rapidly by building direct links with suppliers and offering big discounts. That could help when it comes to sourcing products to sell in the U.S. and selling them at low prices.

ByteDance, meanwhile, runs TikTok — one of the world’s most popular social media apps.

ByteDance’s algorithms for understanding consumers on Tiktok, “plus the potential to leverage the TikTok ecosystem for commerce, are massive advantages,” Cooke said.

The Chinese firm is not new to e-commerce abroad. In the U.K., it has a shopping feature in TikTok where brands and influencers make videos on products and users can buy those products via the app.

But it hasn’t found success yet.

[Pinduoduo and ByteDance] face low brand recognition and need to build user trust.

Jacob Cooke

CEO of WPIC

Dmonstudio, a women’s fashion site that ByteDance previously launched, shut down after just a few months in operation. And Fanno, another e-commerce site from ByteDance, hasn’t had much traction.

So-called livestream shopping is very popular in China and certain countries in Asia, but it hasn’t really taken off in Europe or the U.S. The Financial Times reported in July that TikTok has abandoned plans to expand its livestream e-commerce strategy in Europe and the U.S.

That could be a reason ByteDance has persisted with an e-commerce shopping website to accompany its TikTok shopping strategy.

ByteDance and Pinduodudo are newer Chinese firms looking to take on international markets. Alibaba and JD.com, China’s two largest e-commerce firms, have been expanding overseas in the last few years.

Amazon challenge?

Read more about China from CNBC Pro

One reason is that consumer behavior outside of China tends to favor Amazon’s model, according to Cooke. Customers usually go to Amazon to find specific products or brands that they have already decided to buy, he said.

In contrast, Chinese platforms like Alibaba’s Tmall and JD.com “function more like virtual shopping malls where people are browsing and participating in a digital social experience.”

Pinduoduo and ByteDance “can eat away at Amazon’s share of certain sectors as Shein has done, but ultimately they won’t jeopardize Amazon’s stranglehold on the U.S. e-commerce market,” Cooke said.

“They face low brand recognition and need to build user trust.”

How China's Shein became more valuable than H&M and Zara combined

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Instagram will award top creators with a gold ring. But no cash

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Instagram will award top creators with a gold ring. But no cash

Anadolu | Getty Images

Instagram announced on Monday the launch of a new “Rings” award that will give 25 creators a literal gold ring and a matching badge on their profile, but no cash.

Winners will be chosen by a panel including Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, filmmaker Spike Lee, designer Marc Jacobs and YouTuber Marques Brownlee.

The move comes as Meta-owned Instagram has wound down its creator bonus program and brand deals are slowing across the industry, raising the question of why one of the world’s richest companies is offering jewelry and profile features instead of direct payouts.

“It’s more about a special visibility and sort of incentive for people to work towards a really cool elevated recognition,” Brownlee told CNBC.

He said he nominated creators whose work showed the most effort and risk-taking, not simply those with the biggest followings.

Winners can also change their profile backdrop color and customize the “like” button.

Read more CNBC tech news

Meta ended its Reels Play bonus program, which was a key source of income for many creators, on Instagram and Facebook in 2023. At the time, some vented online that losing the payments left them struggling.

“As stupid as it sounds, in this economy it was a blessing for my household to have the extra money coming in,” wrote a user on Reddit.

Mosseri said in June 2024 that the company is considering changes to creator compensation, but no new plan has been announced.

Rivals YouTube and TikTok have their own creator revenue share programs.

YouTube paid out over $100 billion to creators over the last four years, the company reported in September.

Creators saw a dramatic drop in brand deals in 2024, falling 52%, according to a survey from Kajabi.

In January, Meta was offering deals to creators to promote Instagram on TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, CNBC reported. However, an Instagram spokesperson said these deals had ended.

Against that backdrop, Instagram’s new gold rings stand out as a symbolic gesture rather than direct financial support in an increasingly challenging creator economy.

“This could be looked at as an incentive to make more Instagram stuff, or really just an incentive to make the best possible thing you can and hopefully get recognized for it,” Brownlee said. “No matter where you’re doing it, it feels good to know that it resonates with people, this is inspiring people, or this is impressing people.”

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Cerebras CEO explains IPO withdrawal, says it still intends to go public

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Cerebras CEO explains IPO withdrawal, says it still intends to go public

Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman speaks to the media at the Colovore office in Santa Clara, Calif., on March 12, 2024.

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Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman admitted that his artificial intelligence chipmaker made a mistake last week when it didn’t immediately explain its decision to withdraw its registration for an IPO.

In a LinkedIn post late Sunday, Feldman wrote that the company still wants to go public but has changed significantly since its initial filing a year ago. The company wants to revise parts of its prospectus before selling shares to the public.

“Given that the business has improved in meaningful ways we decided to withdraw so that we can re-file with updated financials, strategy information including our approach to this the [sic] rapidly changing AI landscape,” Feldman wrote.

Days before filing its withdrawal notice on Friday, Cerebras announced a $1.1 billion funding round at a valuation of $ 8.1 billion. Some of the investors in the new round, including Tiger Global and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, weren’t named in the 2024 filing, he added.

“We made this call because it’s in the best interest of our investors, partners, and team — and it will allow potential investors to better understand the value of the business when we enter the public markets,” Feldman wrote, without providing a timeline for a new filing.

In its prospectus, Cerebras characterized itself as a company that produces large-scale chips for training and running AI models. This year the company has added cloud business as it operates data centers that can handle incoming requests from AI models.

What’s remained is Cerebras’ insistence that its hardware outperforms graphics processing units (GPUs), a market that Nvidia dominates but where Advanced Micro Devices is trying to play catchup. AMD said on Monday that OpenAI committed to setting up to 6 gigawatts’ worth of the company’s AI processors and could end up owning 10% of the chipmaker.

WATCH: Cerebras CEO: Here’s why our chips are a more efficient alternative to Nvidia

Cerebras CEO: Here's why our chips are a more efficient alternative to Nvidia

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Anthropic lands its biggest enterprise deployment ever with Deloitte deal

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Anthropic lands its biggest enterprise deployment ever with Deloitte deal

Samuel Boivin | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Deloitte on Monday announced a deal to bring Anthropic’s artificial intelligence assistant Claude to its more than 470,000 employees around the globe. 

The rollout will be Anthropic’s largest enterprise deployment ever, building on a partnership the two companies first unveiled last year.

Deloitte, which offers consulting, tax and audit services, is one of the 300,000 business customers Anthropic has amassed in the four years since the startup’s founding. 

“We are both investing a significant amount in this partnership, whether that’s financial or whether it is just simply the engineering resource that we’re going to put into this as well,” Paul Smith, Anthropic’s chief commercial officer, told CNBC in an interview.  

The companies declined to disclose the financial details of the deal.

Deloitte will build out and deploy different Claude “personas” for different groups of employees, ranging from accountants to software developers, over the next several months. Staffers can also get support from specialists within Deloitte’s Claude Center of Excellence, which is designed to help teams deploy and benefit from the technology more quickly.

Read more CNBC tech news

Ideally, exposing Deloitte employees to AI will help them reap the personal benefits like productivity gains, while also inspiring them to think about how the technology could be used to transform other industries and sectors, said Ranjit Bawa, Deloitte’s U.S. chief strategy and technology officer.

“Our clients obviously want to know: ‘Are you using it as well?’ So we can advise them better, we can be more credible,” Bawa said. “That’s why we said we got to start with ourselves as we continue to have our clients reimagine their future.”

Deloitte’s Claude deployment, which will take place across more than 150 countries, comes as Anthropic has been working to beef up its global presence.

The startup said in September that it would triple its international workforce this year, and brought on a new executive, Chris Ciauri, to spearhead that expansion.

That same month, Anthropic announced its latest AI model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and that it closed a $13 billion funding round at a $183 billion post-money valuation. The Amazon-backed startup has had to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google for customers.

“We’re still pretty busy,” Smith said. “But it’s good busy.”

WATCH: Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its latest AI model

Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its latest AI model

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