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Hyunsoo Rim9/24/25

Alibaba surges on AI spending hike, new model launch, and Nvidia partnership

Alibaba jumped over 9% in early trading on Wednesday after the company announced greater investment in AI, a partnership with Nvidia, and a new model.

At Alibaba’s annual flagship technology conference, CEO Eddie Wu said the company plans to expand its AI investment over the next three years beyond the $53 billion announced in February, though a specific uplift wasn’t revealed.

The firm also unveiled the latest version of its “largest and most capable” AI model series, the Qwen3-Max — as other Chinese tech giants like Baidu, Tencent, and ByteDance are doubling down on homegrown solutions to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic amid a wider Chinese push to reduce dependence on Western AI hardware and models.

According to Reuters, Alibaba said that its new model “outperformed rival products including Anthropic’s Claude and DeepSeek-V3.1 in certain metrics,” citing third-party benchmarks like Tau2-Bench.

Adding to the hype was Alibaba’s new partnership with Nvidia: the company said it will integrate the chip giant’s AI development tools into Alibaba Cloud to support “physical AI,” which includes real-word products like robots and driverless cars — just a day after Nvidia announced a $100 billion deal with OpenAI.

Alibaba also announced plans to open its first data centers in Brazil, France, and the Netherlands, while adding new sites in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Dubai in 2026. Last month, the company struck a deal with Unicom — China’s second-largest mobile service provider — to deploy its in-house AI accelerators.

With this morning’s rise, Alibaba’s shares are at their highest level since 2021, up over 110% year to date.

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Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks sink on weak jobs data and soaring oil prices

Stocks struggled after a big negative surprise from the February jobs report. Additionally, the Qatari energy minister warned of a potential spike in oil prices to $150 a barrel within weeks.

GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN - DECEMBER 07: Caleb Williams #18 of the Chicago Bears walks off the field after a loss to the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field on December 07, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo by John Fisher/Getty Images)

Oracle drops after report that it and OpenAI scrapped plans to expand a data center site in Texas

Nvidia helped line up Meta as a new tenant for the location.

Stargate AI data center in Abilene Texas

markets

Max Knoblauch10h

Report: Boeing could unveil 500-jet order from China during Trump’s visit later this month

Shares of Boeing are up nearly 4% on Friday afternoon, following a Bloomberg report that the company could be close to finalizing a deal to sell 500 planes to China.

The deal was first reported in August and would be one of Boeing’s largest ever.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, the deal could be officially unveiled when President Trump travels to China at the end of the month. That trip could be delayed given the war in Iran. The deal, sources say, could still fall apart — similar language to when it was first reported on more than six months ago.

Boeing has been on the outside of the Chinese market, in terms of new orders, since 2019 amid escalating US-China trade tensions.

Boeing Close to 500-Jet Order With Trump-Xi Summit

Boeing Close to 500-Jet Order With Trump-Xi Summit

According to Bloomberg’s sources, the deal could be officially unveiled when President Trump travels to China at the end of the month. That trip could be delayed given the war in Iran. The deal, sources say, could still fall apart — similar language to when it was first reported on more than six months ago.

Boeing has been on the outside of the Chinese market, in terms of new orders, since 2019 amid escalating US-China trade tensions.

markets

Matt Phillips12h

Why software shares are withstanding the war jitters

The outbreak of the war in Iran has clearly rattled investors and created a few clear winners — mostly energy stocks — and losers — consumer staples, airlines, and, well, more or else everything else.

But there is one interesting outlier to that Manichaean market dynamic.

Software shares — often the same companies that the market was giving up for dead just a few weeks ago due to overexpectations of an AI-driven disruption — have been holding up remarkably well.

These companies, including Intuit, ServiceNow, Datadog, Snowflake, IBM, Workday, and Oracle, have actually had a pretty decent run since the war started with a combined US-Israeli attack on Iran last weekend.

A new note from RBC Capital’s Rishi Jaluria suggests this isn’t just a fluke. Looking at the performance of software stocks during periods of geopolitical stress and market volatility over the last 10 and 25 years, his team found that software shares appear fairly well insulated when these broader shocks hit. RBC wrote:

“The defensive nature of SaaS models and the mission-critical nature of many core software systems at the enterprise level (e.g., in the absence of mass layoffs that may create seat-based headwinds, geopolitical uncertainty and/or market volatility typically will not cause an enterprise CIO to consider ripping out their ERP, CRM, Cyber systems, etc.”

I briefly got Jaluria on the phone yesterday, and he explained a bit more about why he thinks investors might see software as a decent place to hide out from the current chaos.

“With everything in the Middle East, you have to think about not just oil and gas input prices but also supply chains,” he said. “With software, you’re not really thinking about that.”

In other words, there is no equivalent of a closure of the Strait of Hormuz that software investors have to worry about.

Others suggested that the near-term profitability of these giant software companies — aside from concerns about potential long-term disruption from AI — may look different in the face of the economic uncertainty that seems to be growing with the war, especially after a sell-off that has left them relatively attractively valued.

Mark Moerdler, who covers software stocks for Bernstein Research, says that while the AI worries are clearly real, software companies continue to be highly productive cash cows.

“Everyone is afraid that AI is a massive disruptor, and all these articles you read talk about AI as massive disruptor or the world is ending or whatever,” he said. “You don’t see it in the fundamental numbers of the companies I cover. They are delivering GAAP profits, free cash flow, and they’re good investment ideas.”

Jet fuel refining margins are surging to 20-year highs amid Iran war, threatening airlines

According to a Deutsche Bank note on Friday, airlines haven’t seen this phenomenon since the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Airlines Face Rapidly Rising Fuel Costs

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