TikTok Owner ByteDance Is Tech Darling Again With $400 Billion-Plus Valuation
At least three of Bytedance Ltd. 's major investors have marked up the TikTok-owner's valuation to more than $400 billion, a sharp rebound for a Chinese social video leader that has been threatened with a US shutdown.
SoftBank Group Corp. 's Vision Fund revalued the company to north of $400 billion in December, factoring in potential for its artificial-intelligence business Doubao, according to people familiar with the matter. Investing giants Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. have also marked up ByteDance, valuing it at above $410 billion and $450 billion, respectively, according to Bloomberg calculations based on November filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Yahoo
24 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US-China trade talks to resume for a second day
By Kate Holton and Alistair Smout LONDON (Reuters) -Top U.S. and Chinese officials will resume trade talks for a second day in London on Tuesday, hoping to secure a breakthrough over export controls for goods such as rare earths that have threatened a global supply chain shock and slower economic growth. Investors are hoping that the two superpowers can improve ties after the relief sparked by a preliminary trade deal agreed in Geneva last month gave way to fresh doubts after Washington accused Beijing of blocking exports that are critical to sectors including autos, aerospace, semiconductors and defence. The talks come at a crucial time for both economies, with customs data showing that China's exports to the U.S. plunged 34.5% in May, the sharpest drop since February 2020, when the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic upended global trade. While the impact on U.S. inflation and the jobs market has so far been muted, the dollar remains under pressure from U.S. policymaking. The two sides met at the ornate Lancaster House in the British capital on Monday to discuss disagreements around the Geneva deal, and are due to resume talks early on Tuesday before both sides are expected to issue updates. The U.S. side is led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, while the Chinese contingent is helmed by Vice Premier He Lifeng. The inclusion of Lutnick, whose agency oversees export controls for the U.S., is one indication of how central rare earths have become. China holds a near-monopoly on rare earth magnets, a crucial component in electric vehicle motors. Lutnick did not attend the Geneva talks at which the countries struck a 90-day deal to roll back some of the triple-digit tariffs they had placed on each other. Trump's often erratic policymaking on tariffs has roiled global markets, sparked congestion and confusion in major ports, and cost companies tens of billions of dollars in lost sales and higher costs. The second round of meetings between the two sides comes four days after Trump and Xi spoke by phone, their first direct interaction since Trump's January 20 inauguration. Following the call Trump said Xi had agreed to resume shipments to the U.S. of rare earths minerals and magnets, and Reuters reported that China has granted temporary export licenses to rare-earth suppliers of the top three U.S. automakers. But tensions remain high over the export controls, after factories around the world started to fret that they would not have enough of the materials they need to keep operating. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
iFLYTEK Wins CNCF End User Case Study Contest for Scalable AI Infrastructure Breakthroughs with Volcano
Company to present large-scale Kubernetes model training success at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China 2025 HONG KONG, June 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced iFLYTEK as the winner of the CNCF End User Case Study Contest. Selected for its impactful implementation of Volcano, iFLYTEK will present its success scaling large AI model training at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China 2025, 10–11 June in Hong Kong. iFLYTEK, a Chinese tech firm focused on speech and language AI, faced scaling issues as its workloads grew. Inefficient scheduling left GPUs underused, workflows became harder to manage, and teams competed for resources. These challenges slowed progress and strained infrastructure. With Volcano, iFLYTEK adopted elastic scheduling, DAG-based workflows, and multi-tenant isolation, resulting in simplified operations and improved resource usage. "Before Volcano, coordinating training under large-scale GPU clusters across teams meant constant firefighting, from resource bottlenecks and job failures to debugging tangled training pipelines," said DongJiang, senior platform architect, iFLYTEK. "Volcano gave us the flexibility and control to scale AI training reliably and efficiently. We're honored to have our work recognized by CNCF, and we're excited to share our journey with the broader community at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China." Volcano is a cloud native batch system built on Kubernetes, designed for high-performance workloads such as AI/ML training, big data processing, and scientific computing. It offers advanced scheduling capabilities such as job orchestration, resource fairness, and queue management, which are essential for managing large-scale, distributed tasks efficiently. Accepted into the CNCF Sandbox in 2020 and promoted to Incubating maturity level in 2022, Volcano has become a foundational tool for organizations running compute-intensive workloads. As AI demand increased, iFLYTEK turned to Volcano to support the growing complexity and scale of their training infrastructure. The engineering team was looking for a way to more efficiently allocate resources, manage complex multi-stage training workflows, and minimize job disruptions; all while ensuring fair access for different teams. With Volcano, they are now able to streamline operations, better utilize GPUs, and stabilize long-running jobs: 40% increase in GPU utilization, cutting infrastructure costs and reducing idle compute. 70% faster recovery from job failures, ensuring uninterrupted training processes. 50% acceleration in hyperparameter search, enabling faster iteration and innovation. "iFLYTEK's case study shows how open source can solve complex, high-stakes challenges at scale," said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of CNCF. "By using Volcano to boost GPU efficiency and streamline training workflows, they've cut costs, sped up development, and built a more reliable AI platform on top of Kubernetes, which is essential for any organization striving to lead in AI." As AI workloads grow more complex and resource-intensive, iFLYTEK's experience shows how cloud native tools like Volcano can help teams simplify operations and improve scalability. Their upcoming KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China presentation will share practical insights on managing distributed training more effectively in Kubernetes environments. For more information and the full event schedule, including iFLYTEK's session "Scaling Large Model Training in Kubernetes Clusters with Volcano" on 11 June, visit: Additional Resources CNCF Newsletter CNCF Twitter CNCF Website Learn About CNCF Membership Learn About the CNCF End User Community About Cloud Native Computing FoundationCloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open source software stack in public, private, and hybrid clouds. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. CNCF brings together the industry's top developers, end users, and vendors and runs the largest open source developer conferences in the world. Supported by more than 800 members, including the world's largest cloud computing and software companies, as well as over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Media ContactKaitlin ThornhillThe Linux Foundationpr@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Cloud Native Computing Foundation
CNBC
33 minutes ago
- CNBC
CNBC Daily Open: If U.S.-China talks go well, analysts think the S&P 500 could hit new high
Trade negotiators from the U.S. and China have met in London, and talks are expected to continue Tuesday, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC's Megan Casella. At the top of the agenda for America appears to be a relaxation of China's rare earths export curbs, according to a CNBC interview with U.S. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. If China's actions late last week — when it seemingly gave Western automakers concessions regarding those minerals — are any indication, Beijing could be willing to accede to the U.S. request. But the world's second-biggest economy would demand reciprocity. On June 2, Beijing bristled at Washington's tighter grip on exports of chip design software to China. But it appears that Washington is also in a conciliatory mood. "Our expectation is that … immediately after the handshake, any export controls from the U.S. will be eased," Hassett said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." If the U.S.-China talks go well, there's a chance the S&P 500, only around 2% off its February high as of Tuesday morning Singapore time, could reach a new peak, noted the JPMorgan trading desk. That'd be something to cheer, of course. But it's slightly upsetting to realize that the S&P could have continued scaling heights from February, or at least broken its closing high much earlier in the year, if not for truculent trade policy from the White House — which, as is evident from the meeting between U.S. and China, governments now are still trying to undo. U.S.-China talks set to go into Day 2U.S. President Donald Trump's top trade officials met Chinese counterparts in London on Monday for talks aimed at resolving their trade dispute — particularly with regard to mineral exports. Discussions are set to continue Tuesday. Late last week, in an apparent olive branch, China seemed to offer U.S. and European auto giants something of a reprieve regarding its exports of rare earth elements. Stocks in the U.S. rose marginallyU.S. stocks edged up Monday. The S&P 500 added 0.09%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was mostly flat, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.31%. Europe's Stoxx 600 index dipped 0.07%. Shares of chip designer Alphawave jumped 20% on a takeover by U.S. semiconductor giant Qualcomm, while Spectris soared 60% after confirming it is in talks over a takeover deal with private equity group Advent International. A new 'Liquid Glass' look for Apple's iOSApple held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday. At the event, the company announced a redesign to its iOS system called "Liquid Glass," a virtual glass look that was inspired by the Vision Pro; real-time translation to calls, texts and FaceTime; new gaming, video and enterprise features for its augmented reality device Vision Pro; a new version of its Mac operating system, named Tahoe. UK in a 'Goldilocks' moment: Nvidia CEO "The U.K. is in a Goldilocks circumstance," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Monday on a panel with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Investment Minister Poppy Gustafsson. "You can't do machine learning without a machine — and so the ability to build these AI supercomputers here in the U.K. will naturally attract more startups," Huang said, though he added that the country lacks homegrown AI infrastructure. [PRO] New record for S&P soon?The S&P 500 ticked higher on Monday and continues to chip away at the gap to a new record high. The broad-based index is just 2% below its record close set in February. Several events in the days ahead could prove to be the catalyst that vaults it over the top, according to the JPMorgan trading desk. 'Bitcoin Family' hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings Didi Taihuttu, patriarch of the so-called Bitcoin Family, said he overhauled the family's entire security setup after a wave of high-profile kidnappings targeting cryptocurrency executives. The Taihuttus — who sold everything they owned in 2017, from their house to their shoes, to go all in on bitcoin when it was trading around $900 — have long lived on the outer edge of crypto ideology. They travel full-time with their three daughters and remain entirely unbanked. Over the past eight months, he said, the family ditched hardware wallets in favor of a hybrid system: Part analog, part digital, with seed phrases encrypted, split and stored either through blockchain-based encryption services or hidden across four continents.
