Xavier Niel's Not Ready to Throw in the Towel on AI
While most of 57-year-old Niel's $8.8 billion net worth is derived from his telco business Iliad SA and real-estate firm Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield SE, according to Bloomberg analysis, he's become a voracious backer of buzzy startups from H to Poolside to AI unicorn Mistral. He's built temples to entrepreneurship in Paris from incubator Station F to free coding school 42. And he's ramping up spending, from a €3 billion ($3.1 billion) investment in AI infrastructure at Iliad to financing nonprofit AI lab Kyutai alongside Eric Schmidt and shipping mogul Rodolphe Saade.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Chinese Stock Index Rises to Decade High as Investors Dump Bonds
(Bloomberg) -- A gauge of Shanghai-listed stocks closed at its highest level in a decade, as cash-rich local investors plow into a market that has surged amid easing trade tensions with the US. The Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index jumped 0.9% to close at 3,728 on Monday, its strongest finish since August 2015, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. That cements a 20% turnaround since an April selloff, when US President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs roiled global markets. Trump extended a tariff truce with China last week. The US-Canadian Road Safety Gap Is Getting Wider A Photographer's Pipe Dream: Capturing New York's Vast Water System Festivals and Parades Are Canceled Amid US Immigration Anxiety A London Apartment Tower With Echoes of Victorian Rail and Ancient Rome Princeton Plans New Budget Cuts as Pressure From Trump Builds The rally reflects a rising sense of optimism among small investors, flush with near record-high savings and increasingly rotating out of bonds. Those investors were scarred a decade ago, when a precipitous stock market crash led Beijing to unleash state-backed funds to prop up share prices and left a bitter memory for many investors. There have been false dawns since then, but over the past decade Chinese stocks onshore have badly underperformed benchmarks of shares in the US, Asia and even Europe, long considered a global laggard for equity investors. Fund managers in China are now hoping that the current rally has enough behind it — ranging from hopes about artificial intelligence to government moves to bolster growth — to stand the test of time. 'We're confident that this rally has legs,' said Wang Huan, a fund manager at Shanghai Zige Investment Management Co. Ltd, pointing to sources of optimism including abundant liquidity, government moves to stem price wars and hopes that China's economy is bottoming out. China's stock market has been helped by investors shifting their investments from fixed income, as they scale back expectations of monetary easing and respond to Beijing's decision to restart taxes on interest payments made on government bonds or those of financial institutions. China's 10-year bond yield was up four basis points at 1.78% on Monday, while 30-year yields were around six basis points higher at 2.11%. The country's 30-year bond futures suffered their biggest drop since March. The latest monetary policy report from China's central bank showed policymakers are in no rush to aggressively ease. The Shanghai Composite remains a long way from the heady days of 2015, when a leverage-induced buying spree pushed the index as high as 5,166 before the bubble burst. The all-time high was set in October 2007. Trade Tensions Ease The buzz in China's share market is a stark change from just a few months ago, when fears that the world's two largest economies were entering a prolonged — and painful — trade war rattled markets around the world. The rally is part of a global rise in share prices: Stocks in the US and Indonesia set new highs last week, helping push an MSCI index of global equities to a record. The recovery in China's stock market has led to a frenzy of trading activity. Turnover on mainland exchanges was more than 2.7 trillion yuan ($376 billion) on Monday, the second highest turnover ever following an Oct. 8 peak, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. That followed mainland Chinese traders buying a record HK$35.9 billion ($4.6 billion) worth of stocks in Hong Kong on Friday, as the risk-on mood in mainland equities spilled over across the border. There has also been a surge in loans for stock purchases, a sign that investors are taking on leverage to join the rally. The amount of margin debt taken out to buy stocks climbed to the highest level since 2015 last week, and is now about 10% away from hitting an all-time high. Other policy tweaks have helped direct investors to local stocks. China strengthened its oversight of taxes on overseas stock trading gains, and said it will subsidize interest payments on eligible personal consumer loans. The Shanghai index's 11% gain this year has beaten the CSI 300 Index, another closely watched onshore gauge which is up around 8%. A bigger weighting of high-performing bank stocks in the Shanghai Composite has helped drive the outperformance, in large part due to buying by insurance funds. --With assistance from Julia Zhong. (Updates stock and bond prices. Adds details of latest central bank policy report.) What Declining Cardboard Box Sales Tell Us About the US Economy Americans Are Getting Priced Out of Homeownership at Record Rates Living With 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch Bessent on Tariffs, Deficits and Embracing Trump's Economic Plan How Syrian Immigrants Are Boosting Germany's Economy ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
Equal-Weight S&P Is Best Broadening Play Vs. Russell 2000 'Rabbit Hole': HSBC
HSBC Chief Multi-Asset Strategist Max Kettner says high-frequency data coming out of the US points to a better earnings picture, supporting the case for a broader equities investment strategy beyond the Magnificent Seven stocks. "You still want to stick to quality, but go the equal-weight S&P," Kettner tells Bloomberg Television. "Don't go down the Russell [2000]. Don't go down that rabbit hole." (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
US Long-End Yields Skewed to Rise: 3-Minute MLIV
Anna Edwards, Guy Johnson, Kriti Gupta and Mark Cudmore break down today's key themes for analysts and investors on "Bloomberg: The Opening Trade." For up to the minute market intelligence and insight, click MLIV . (Source: Bloomberg)
