The ambitious spending plans of artificial intelligence developers coupled with rapid user adoption indicate the global rally in their stocks will persist despite bubble concerns, fund managers at Fidelity International and Allianz Global Investors said. The recent downturn in global semiconductor stocks, ahead of Nvidia’s closely watched earnings later this week, was likely to be temporary, according to Joseph Zhang, portfolio manager at Fidelity International. Unless AI capital spending or...

Microsoft and Nvidia plan to invest in Anthropic under a new tie-up that includes a US$30 billion commitment by the Claude maker to use Microsoft’s cloud services, the latest high-profile deal binding together major players in the artificial intelligence industry. Nvidia would commit up to US$10 billion to Anthropic and Microsoft up to US$5 billion, the companies said on Tuesday, without sharing more details. A person familiar with the matter said both companies had committed to investing in...

Alphabet’s Google debuted an updated version of its artificial intelligence model, Gemini, that executives said represented a “massive jump” in reasoning and coding ability. The new model, Gemini 3, will be available immediately across all of Google’s major products, including search, and can answer questions with interactive graphics. Gemini 3, like its predecessor, could process text, images and other media as well as solve complex science and maths problems, the company said. It had...

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers from Xpeng to Chery Automobile, leveraging their technological and manufacturing strength, are intensifying efforts to build humanoid robots as they position themselves as potential game-changers amid Beijing’s ambitions to gain an upper hand over the US in the hi-tech sector. Guangzhou-based Xpeng said it envisioned sales of 1 million units by 2030 after its next-generation humanoid robot Iron won praise from Tesla CEO Elon Musk early this month. He...

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms defeated a US attempt to unwind its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp on Tuesday when a federal judge ruled the company did not hold a social media monopoly. The ruling gives Big Tech its first decisive win against the antitrust crackdown started in US President Donald Trump’s first term, and is a major setback for the Federal Trade Commission, which is pursuing a separate antitrust case against Amazon.com. The agency sought to force Meta to...

Chinese internet search giant Baidu on Tuesday reported a 50 per cent increase in artificial intelligence-related revenue in the three months ended September from a year ago, which was the bright spot to an otherwise lacklustre financial quarter. The Beijing-based company’s third-quarter revenue declined 7 per cent year on year to 31.2 billion yuan (US$4.4 billion), owing to sluggish demand in its advertising business, while its net loss hit 11.2 billion yuan on asset writedowns. While its core...

Huawei Technologies is set to launch its latest flagship smartphone, the Mate 80 series, and a new foldable handset next Tuesday, as industry speculation swirls over the use of its next-generation Kirin 9030 processor in these devices. The Shenzhen-based telecommunications equipment maker on Monday said its new Mate series – including the basic Mate 80, Mate 80 Pro, Mate 80 Pro Max and Mate 80 RS models – would be available for pre-order, but pricing and technical specifications were not...