Tianqi Lithium Returns to Loss on Prolonged Battery-Metal Rout
The Chinese lithium giant posted a net loss of 7.9 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) in 2024 citing weaker prices and impairment dude to changes in constructions plans, according to a filing to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
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The Hill
11 minutes ago
- The Hill
China may have more engineers, but it still lacks a culture of innovation
China announced last month a $100 billion push into artificial intelligence, intensifying what is already a fierce race for global tech dominance. Policymakers in Washington are watching with concern, and rightly so. China graduates more than 1.38 million engineers each year, about seven times more than does the U.S. The numbers sound alarming and suggest we're falling behind. But that's not the full story. While engineering degrees are critical, they don't guarantee technological leadership. What really drives innovation is not how many people you train, but how you train them. And here, China faces a deeper, cultural problem that raw output can't solve. The Chinese education system is highly structured and built for scale. But it's also rigid, top-down and deeply rooted in deference to authority. In most classrooms, memorization takes precedence over questioning and the teacher's word is rarely challenged. Correcting a professor's mistake could cause them to 'lose face,' a cultural breach that most students won't risk. This environment produces excellent test-takers but not risk-takers. It produces technical workers who are strong on facts but weak on critical thinking. They can follow a formula, but they struggle to break new ground. This is a key reason China, despite its massive engineering workforce, has yet to deliver the kind of world-changing breakthroughs we've seen from the U.S., from the microprocessor to the iPhone to mRNA vaccines. These innovations didn't come from rote learning. They came from interdisciplinary research, unorthodox thinking and cultures that reward questioning everything. Even when it comes to research output, China's surge in published papers masks a more complex reality. While China now leads the world in scientific publishing volume, scholars like Ming Xia have pointed out that much of this work lacks the originality, rigor and theoretical depth typical of Western scholarship. Plagiarism and fabrication remain persistent problems, even at top institutions. At Tsinghua University, one professor felt compelled to reassure students that if they wrote something publishable, he wouldn't steal it and submit it under his own name. The root issue is systemic. Many Chinese academics were trained in the same system they now uphold, one that prizes metrics and obedience over ideas and inquiry. As a result, scholarship often becomes descriptive, not theoretical. It explains what exists but rarely asks why it matters or how to build something new from it. Contrast that with American higher education. Our universities aren't perfect — they can be chaotic, expensive and uneven, but they're designed to cultivate thinkers, not just technicians. Students are encouraged to disagree with their professors, to explore across disciplines and to challenge the conventional wisdom. The freedom to question isn't a side effect of our system. It's the whole point. Yes, China has closed gaps in recent years by acquiring Western technology through joint ventures, forced transfers and even cyber espionage. But copying isn't creating. Without a culture that fosters original thought, China may scale existing tech but it won't lead the next wave of innovation. That doesn't mean the U.S. can relax. We need to double down on what works, investing in universities, supporting fundamental research and attracting the best minds from around the world. At the same time, we must protect critical technologies and intellectual property from exploitation. Still, we should remember what gives America an edge: a culture that values curiosity, dissent and the freedom to think differently. That's the foundation of every breakthrough we've ever made. In the long run, engineering dominance isn't just about how many degrees a country prints. It's about whether those engineers are trained to challenge the status quo and imagine something better. If the U.S. keeps leaning into its strengths of diversity, openness and academic freedom, we won't just keep pace with China. We will continue to lead.
CNBC
15 minutes ago
- CNBC
No stock in history has had more influence over the S&P 500 than Nvidia. What could go wrong?
The boom in artificial intelligence since late 2022 has made Nvidia's market value the largest in the S & P 500. But some on Wall Street are skeptical now that its dominance will continue. Nvidia's market capitalization — its stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding — ended Monday at roughly $4.5 trillion, equal to about 8% of the S & P 500. That's the "biggest weight in the S & P 500 of any individual stock," in data going back to 1981 , according to Apollo Global Management's chief economist, Torsten Slok. This comes on the heels of Nvidia shares seeing massive gains, having soared 239% in 2023, more than 171% in 2024 and 36% in 2025, through Monday's close. In the past three months alone, as the market fought its way back from April's brief tariff despair, Nvidia is 56% higher. Nearly nine out of every 10 analysts who cover Jensen Huang's company on Wall Street rate it a buy, and Nvidia now sells for 59 times its trailing 12-month earnings, according to FactSet data. "There's a reason the stock is up here, which is Nvidia continues to provide most of the most critical equipment for AI and the demand for AI usage," said D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria, one of the more bearish voices on Nvidia. "So, inferencing continues to rise as the models become ever so potent." NVDA 3M mountain NVDA, 3-month But there are two areas that could go wrong for Nvidia, according to Luria, who rates Nvidia a neutral and whose $135 price target implies that the stock will slide about 26% over the next year. One red flag is China. "The back and forth between the U.S. government, the Chinese government and Nvidia is a risk to a very big part of Nvidia's market," Luria continued. "They only report low-double-digit sales into China. It's safe to assume that a lot of their other sales are indirectly to China, either to Chinese companies domiciled otherwise, or sales to resellers that ultimately arrive in China. So, it's a big part of their sales that is at risk from either further action by [the] U.S. or by further restrictions from China." This past weekend, the Financial Times reported that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices both agreed to give the U.S. government 15% share of revenues from chips sold in China in exchange for export licenses. Wells Fargo said Nvidia can grow more than 20% as a result of the agreement, which Luria described as uncertain at the same time as it "probably bodes well for their ability to sell the B30 [chips] either later this year or at some point next year. " Beyond the lack of clarity surrounding Nvidia's presence in the Chinese market, another bottleneck also poses a threat to the company's breakneck growth. "What most of their big customers are now talking about is that the chips aren't the bottleneck – it's the ability to have a data center on the power grid with HVAC equipment ready for chips that's holding them back," Luria added. That has already started to affect the company, the D.A. Davidson analyst pointed out. "The growth in electricity usage by data centers is so significant that we're going to start running into power limitations and electricity limitations. So, Nvidia's ability to grow may start being gated by factors that are out of their control," he added. Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at One Point BFG Wealth Partners, told CNBC that, as the market leader, Nvidia may eventually face another challenge as a result of the AI boom: increasing competition. For instance, Amazon Web Services has been making efforts to rival Nvidia when it comes to AI infrastructure , saying earlier this year that it's looking to reduce training costs associated with AI and provide an alternative to Nvidia's GPUs. "While they are riding an incredible and massive CapEx spending wave on the GenAI model [and] data center buildout, selling semis is still a very competitive and cyclical business," Boockvar said. "Nvidia's around 75% gross [profit] margin is not a long-term sustainable level, especially as their current biggest customers are all looking to be eventual competitors."
New York Post
41 minutes ago
- New York Post
Perplexity AI makes wild $34.5B all-cash offer for Google Chrome browser
Perplexity AI said it has made a $34.5 billion unsolicited all-cash offer for Alphabet's Chrome browser, a low but bold bid that would need financing well above the startup's own valuation. Run by Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity is no stranger to headline-grabbing offers — it made a similar one for TikTok US in January, offering to merge with the popular short-video app to resolve US concerns about TikTok's Chinese ownership. Buying Chrome would allow the startup to tap the browser's more than three billion users for an edge in the AI search race as regulatory pressure threatens Google's grip on the industry. Advertisement 3 Buying Chrome would allow Perplexity to tap the browser's more than three billion users for an edge in the AI search race as regulatory pressure threatens Google's grip on the industry. Bloomberg Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The company has not offered Chrome for sale and plans to appeal a US court ruling last year that found it held an unlawful monopoly in online search. The Justice Department has sought a Chrome divestiture as part of the case's remedies. Advertisement Perplexity did not disclose on Tuesday how it plans to fund the offer. The three-year-old company has raised around $1 billion in funding so far from investors including Nvidia and Japan's SoftBank. It was last valued at $14 billion. Multiple funds have offered to finance the deal in full, a person familiar with the matter said, without naming the funds. Advertisement As a new generation of users turns to chatbots such as ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers, web browsers are regaining prominence as vital gateways to search traffic and prized user data, making them central to Big Tech's AI ambitions. Perplexity already has an AI browser, Comet, that can perform certain tasks on a user's behalf and acquiring Chrome would give it the heft to better compete against bigger rivals such as OpenAI. 3 Perplexity, headed by CEO Aravind Srinivas, has offered to buy TikTok. Getty Images for Gold House The ChatGPT parent has also expressed interest in buying Chrome and is working on its own AI browser. Advertisement Perplexity's bid pledges to keep the underlying browser code called Chromium open source, invest $3 billion over two years and make no changes to Chrome's default search engine, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters. The company said the offer, with no equity component, would preserve user choice and ease future competition concerns. Analysts have said Google would be unlikely to sell Chrome and would likely engage in a long legal fight to prevent that outcome, given it is crucial to the company's AI push as it rolls out features including AI-generated search summaries, known as Overviews, to help defend its search market share. 3 Perplexity's bid pledges to keep the underlying browser code called Chromium open source, invest $3 billion over two years and make no changes to Chrome's default search engine, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters. REUTERS A federal judge is expected to issue a ruling on remedies in the Google search antitrust case sometime this month. Perplexity's bid is also below the at least $50 billion value that rival search engine DuckDuckGo's CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, suggested Chrome may command if Google was forced to sell it. Besides OpenAI and Perplexity, Yahoo and private-equity firm Apollo Global Management have also expressed interest in Chrome. Two subsidiaries of News Corp, parent of The Post, have sued Perplexity.
