Under CEO Tim Cook, Apple has put a large focus on health applications through the Apple Watch and related services.
A smart ring is a type of wearable device full of sensors that can give the wearer information about things like their health, activity and sleep. They are lightweight and have a long battery life which fans say make them ideal for wearing all day, including when sleeping, versus a smartwatch that may be less comfortable and so removed more often.
With a few text or image prompts, businesses can use Accio to find wholesale products — including analysis on their popularity with consumers and projected profit, according to demos viewed by CNBC.
Examples shown included helping a sports entrepreneur to build a line of pickleball products. At the end of the search, the tool lists a number of procurement options for the business to discuss directly with each supplier.
The tech uses generative AI from Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen large language model, Zhang said, declining to confirm whether the product integrates AI from other companies.
An LLM is an artificial intelligence model trained on large amounts of data. A model supports generative AI applications, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, which generates human-like responses to user prompts. To be sure, several businesses are still in the experimentation phase with AI and many firms are yet to find a way of monetizing the technology.
As someone who has never liked the look of smartwatches, I was excited to try out the Oura Ring 4 and use it to track my sleep. The wearable was so comfortable, I often forgot I had it on.
That's at least in part due to the device's new sensors, which are significantly smaller than those of its predecessor. The third-generation Oura has sensors that are raised and feel like little bumps, while those on the Ring 4 are basically flat, giving it a smooth interior like any other ring.
Accio uses data from 50 million businesses on Alibaba International's platform, and publicly available industry information, Zhang said. He said the tool incorporates 1 billion product listings and documents covering industries across more than 100 markets from Alibaba.com, the company's business-to-business platform which sells to companies outside China.
Businesses based in Europe and North America are the largest group of buyers, the company said.
I purposely wore the ring on my right index finger. I still write a lot of my stories by hand (old school, I know), so I wanted to see if it would bother me while holding a pen or pencil. It didn't. The ring is also designed to be worn 24/7 and is water resistant, and it didn't give me any trouble when I washed my hands or showered with it.
Another highlight was the Oura app. The company began rolling out a redesign of the app to all its users earlier this month, and I thought the layout of the app was very intuitive. Data from the smart rings is presented in three tabs called Today, Vitals and My Health.
Alibaba's international arm in October announced an updated version of an AI translation tool to help merchants reach customers in other countries. The company claimed the tech's translation capabilities beat that of Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
The international business has grown rapidly in recent years, but Alibaba's main revenue driver remains its domestic e-commerce platforms Taobao and Tmall. In August 2023, management told investors that "the Taobao app has the greatest potential to become a one stop smart portal for life and consumption enabled by AI."
The Today tab highlights information based on the time of day, and it includes shortcuts where I could quickly view the latest readings for things such as my sleep, activity, heart rate, stress or my readiness for the day. These at-a-glance metrics are easy to digest and helpful to look at when I had a quick minute throughout the day.
I also enjoyed looking at my reading at a more granular level in the Vitals tab. There's a lot to learn and decipher. Oura shows you nearly 20 different data points about your sleep alone. Even so, the company does a nice job breaking down all of these concepts in simple language. I wasn't familiar with the term latency, for example, but the app taught me that it's the amount of time it takes to fall asleep.
During the weeks-long Singles Day shopping festival that wrapped up Monday, more than half of over 500 merchants selling on Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba and JD.com used a generative AI-enabled tool, according to a survey by Bain & Company.
Those features include AI for customer service and generating content. The survey found 56% of respondents said AI tools had "high positive impact" on improving productivity.
The My Health tab gives users access to longer-term insights such as heart health, sleep health and resilience, a metric that measures your ability to recover from stress over time. These metrics are calibrated once Oura has recorded several weeks' worth of data, so I was unable to explore this feature in depth for this review.
Before the review, I was concerned about whether Oura's metrics would negatively affect my mood. For instance, if Oura tells me that I slept poorly, would I feel less prepared to take on my day?
Masayoshi Son's tech conglomerate, has seen its share of controversial high-value investments in recent years in companies that have either collapsed or sharply marked down their valuations. It is now repositioning itself at the epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, where players like Nvidia are reaping in the rewards of meteoric demand for chips and data center GPUs.
"That's just shifted 180 degrees," Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management, told CNBC. "We're now in a positive regulatory environment, we now have tailwinds from that, and that comes in the case of a market that was already in a bull market … that's going to push us higher."
I was pleasantly surprised by how the company approached this framing. I never felt like I was being reprimanded for getting a bad night's sleep, feeling stressed or missing a workout. Instead, Oura gave me tips about small changes I could make to feel better throughout the day, such as taking a few minutes for a break or meditation.
I also liked that the exercise goal in the app varied based on my readings. If there was a day where I was particularly tired or stressed, Oura lowered my activity goal. This helped me feel a sense of accomplishment even when I wasn't at my very best.
Across the crypto market, coins that have soared in the past week hit the brakes on Tuesday, including memecoin Shiba Inu, which was down 4% after it soared 57% in the past week.
Dogecoin was an outlier, however. It's been one of the biggest winners, up more than 135% since Nov. 5, likely due to its connection with Elon Musk, who helped get Trump elected. It was last higher by 14%.
On its website, Oura says users can prevent scratches by wearing the ring on their nondominant hand, keeping it separated from other rings and taking it off in high-friction scenarios such as weight lifting.
Despite this warning, I was surprised by how quickly the Ring 4 showed signs of wear, especially given its price tag. And no, scratches are not covered by Oura's warranty policy.
Another let down was the ring's battery life. It didn't last as long as Oura said it would.
In the stock market, Coinbase and MicroStrategy retreated by about 6% each in premarket trading. In regular trading on Monday, Coinbase surged 19% to trade above $300 for the first time since 2021 and about 6% from its high from that year.
Traders and analysts agree the past week's rally is only beginning.
The company touts eight days of battery life, but I was usually prompted to charge my ring after about five or six days. The company said battery life depends on users' ring size, feature configuration, app settings, usage and other factors, so it varies from person to person.
Five to six days is still better than an Apple Watch, which usually needs daily charging, but I definitely wasn't getting the eight days I was expecting.
"It does seem like there's an air gap between the previous [bitcoin] all-time highs around $72,000 and $100,000," Hougan said. "It's hard exactly to see what would force sellers to come into this market and halt the momentum before we get to that level. Of course, there are no guarantees. You could see pullbacks, but we're in a new crypto market cycle. … I do think that we are right to be bullish and the bias is still on the upside."
In Google's case, the company is required under the DMA to share data that would be useful for training a search model.
Why build a European search index?
Currently, alternative search engines like Ecosia, Qwant and DuckDuckGo don't develop their own back-end infrastructure. The new venture will see them build their own search index from scratch, however, amassing results from a mix of different search engines. Ecosia last year switched to a mix of Google and Bing search results.
My last gripe was purely aesthetic. I have small hands, so I thought the Ring 4 looked a little clunky in comparison to the jewelry I normally wear. My friends said they didn't notice this, but the Ring 4 is not a style I would typically reach for, though admittedly, I've gotten more used to it with time.
Ecosia and Qwant say their new search index will be "privacy-first," using technologies from Qwant that were redesigned in 2023. Both companies will use the search index themselves but the tech will also be made available to other independent search engines and tech firms.
The launch comes as alternative search providers like Ecosia and Qwant are being forced to grapple with higher prices from Microsoft to access its Bing Search API (application programming interface), a piece of software that lets developers access the tech giant's backend search infrastructure.
An early investor in Yahoo! and Alibaba, Son now calls Nvidia, the $3.57 trillion U.S. titan, "undervalued" and forecasts the advent of AI that is 10,000 times smarter than humans within 10 years — amid late-September media reports that SoftBank will be investing $500 million into key artificial intelligence player OpenAI's latest funding round.
Net sales for the SoftBank Group as a whole added 6% to 1.77 trillion yen.
You don't have to pay for the company's monthly subscription if you don't want to, but without it, you'll only be able to access your daily sleep, readiness and activity scores, according to Oura's website. I really enjoyed being able to track my stress levels, so for that feature alone, I would get the membership. If you want that kind of information, be prepared to make a monthly $5 commitment before getting hitched to an Oura Ring 4.
"We are European companies and we need to build technology that makes sure no third-party decision — for instance, Microsoft's decision to increase costs to access their search API — could jeopardize our business," Olivier Abecassis, CEO of Qwant, told CNBC.
"It is nothing against the U.S. or U.S. companies. It is all about the sovereignty of our business and companies," he added. Abecassis will also serve as CEO of the new venture, which hasn't yet raised funding from external investors.
The group's print benefitted from investment gains of 1.28 trillion yen on shares of Chinese retail giant Alibaba and of 566.2 billion yen on stock of T-Mobile.
Tokyo-listed shares of SoftBank are up roughly 50% in the year to date, as of Tuesday morning. The company posted its latest quarterly earnings after the close of the Japanese bourse.
Overall, the new Oura smart ring is easy to wear and use, and it's a great option if you're looking for a low-maintenance way to track your health. I've been recommending it to family and friends, and I wouldn't be surprised if I do end up purchasing one for myself someday.
Europeans are "very dependent on the United States for our technology," Kroll said in an interview last week ahead of the launch. The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president could escalate geopolitical tensions, he added — and this could be a problem for Europe's reliance on U.S. technology.
He pointed to the disruption to European energy supplies after Russia cut off gas to Europe following its invasion of Ukraine, saying this should serve as a warning for what can happen when an entire continent becomes too dependent on a single country for a key resource.
Meanwhile, a slew of new search engines, such as Perplexity, have also entered the market, offering their own generative-AI-based alternatives to Google.
Google has fought back with its own generative AI search product, integrating its Gemini large language model into search results.
Now, Musk is trying to make sure he cashes in on his investments.
After the election last week, Musk briefly joined Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, NBC News reported. Other outlets, including The New York Times and ABC, have reported that Musk has been weighing in on staffing decisions for the next administration, and he's spent a lot of time since the election at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Brendan Carr, who is likely to be Trump's choice to run the Federal Communications Commission, is seen as a longstanding Musk ally.
The company faces pressure from activist investor Elliott Management, which built a roughly $2 billion stake in SoftBank and pushed for a $15 billion share buyback, CNBC reported in June. The group announced in August that it would repurchase 6.8% of shares available in the company, amounting to 500 billion yen ($3.25 billion). On Tuesday, it said it had repurchased a cumulative 153.8 billion yen in shares by the end of the second quarter.
Musk ran a straw poll on X for his 200-million plus followers asking who should be Senate majority leader, and he's personally endorsed Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott for the position. He also reposted a comment from Trump about the need for the majority leader to support recess appointments for his nominees so they don't need Senate confirmation.
"Without recess appointments, it will take two years or more to confirm the new administration!" Musk wrote.
Japanese companies contended with high fluctuations over the summer quarter, amid a rapid strengthening of the yen and a dramatic sell-off of risk assets in August. Domestic markets have calmed relative to the summer turmoil, as Japan navigates its transition away from its ultra-low-rate policy — but analysts at Barclays note that the country's economic horizon is not yet stable.
"Crucially, this volatility is likely to continue. Wage growth, particularly in the service sector, is progressing in line with the BOJ's expectations, leading many to anticipate another interest rate hike in December 2024 or January 2025," they wrote on Nov. 8.
Musk has long sought to reduce regulatory authority so that he can eliminate impediments to his sprawling business empire, which includes Tesla and X, as well as defense contractor SpaceX, artificial intelligence startup xAI, brain computer interface company Neuralink and tunneling venture Boring Co.
Those companies are currently embroiled in a range of probes and lawsuits from federal agencies pertaining to matters including alleged securities law violations, workplace safety, labor and civil rights violations, violations of federal environmental laws, consumer fraud and vehicle safety defects.
The move comes after Misra withdrew from his executive positions at SoftBank Group in August 2022, when he stepped back from his roles as corporate officer and executive vice president of the parent company. The former Deutsche Bank executive launched One Investment Management, a $6.8 billion fund backed by Abu Dhabi, in 2022.
Misra will no longer have an official role at SoftBank, the company said.
Given the executive branch's outsized control over federal regulatory bodies, Musk can look forward to regulators and intelligence agencies winding down some or all of the 19 known ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits against Tesla, SpaceX and X.
During his ten-year tenure at SoftBank, Misra’s Vision Fund also became known for several troubled investments including WeWork, dog-walking app Wag and Greensill Capital, while he also clashed with senior colleagues including Nikesh Arora and Marcelo Claure, both of whom eventually left the firm.
"He's got the golden touch right now and has the ear," said Deepwater Asset Management's Gene Munster, a longtime Tesla bull, in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.
In addition to Tesla, SpaceX is also a "clear beneficiary" of a Trump presidency, Munster said. He added that xAI could be rewarded as the new administration considers AI regulations.
He got to chatting with a vintage clothes shop manager. Used-clothing wholesalers, the manager told him, serve as funnels for sourcing clothing, providing many second-hand stores with stock. These wholesalers were offline, so the retailers tended to travel to source goods from the wholesalers in person, picking through racks, going “heads down, bums up,” in the words of Arora, Fleek’s CEO.
That practice became impossible with travel restrictions, yet what this retailer had noticed was that a handful of the wholesalers had started showing off their goods on Instagram, and they were negotiating ad-hoc over video calls.
"I'm stretched to try to find out how this could play out negative for Elon," Munster said.
Musk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk owns 411.06 million Tesla shares, as of the latest filings, and about 304 million performance-based options. In January, Judge Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Chancery Court voided Musk's historic pay package from 2018 that included the options, calling it "unfathomable" in part because Musk controlled the board. Shareholders then voted in June to retroactively ratify the package. McCormick has said a final ruling on whether to restore Musk's compensation will come soon.
That gave Arora and Agarwal, a software engineer who previously worked at Google, their inspiration. They would build a marketplace to make it easier for any wholesaler to sell online, and for any retailer to buy that way. Make the experience consistent for everyone on both sides of the table and take a cut on the payment for providing the service.
Fleek’s commission, Agarwal said, depends on the amount and quality of goods being sold: its cut comes out of the payments that buyers are paying to the wholesalers.
Musk and Ellison aren't the only two billionaire tech executives to see a post-election windfall.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has added about $4.5 billion to his net worth since Trump's victory. Coinbase shares soared 20% on Monday, bringing their gains since Tuesday to 67%.
And then, as they started to look into who these offline wholesalers actually were, it felt like fate.
“It turned out that the sub-continent is one of the biggest exporters and importers of used clothes,” Arora said. “Sanket and I both grew up in India. We speak the language. That really helped us connect with these wholesalers.”
The crypto exchange was a major contributor to pro-crypto candidates up and down the ballot, largely through a PAC called Fairshake. Most of its preferred candidates were victorious, setting the stage for the likelihood of a more favorable regulatory environment for the industry.
That's a win for Tesla as well. At the end of the third quarter, the company reported "digital assets" with a fair value of $729 million. Cryptocurrencies have rallied since the election, with bitcoin jumping about 29% to a record of over $88,000 on Monday.
IAC said there's no specific timeline for when the spinoff would take place, but if it decides to move forward with the plan, a transaction is expected to happen by the end of the company's second quarter. Media platform Dotdash Meredith and MGM Resorts "would comprise the core of IAC" in the event of an Angi spinoff, Levin said.
From basic necessity to virtuous circles and vintage vibes
It wasn’t that long ago that second-hand clothing was mainly the domain of lower-income consumers: charity shops and donation points were mainstays for collecting those items and redistributing them to those who needed them near and far… sometimes very far. The whole process of intake and selling was quite analog.
"With the considerable progress made and developments on the horizon, we have real upside in the business," Levin wrote. "Angi's economic foundation continues to strengthen, and we suspect that Angi's best shot at realizing that upside to the benefit of our shareholders may be as a standalone company."
Over the years, the concept has had a major makeover, particularly in more developed economies, where second-hand clothing — sometimes loftily referred to as “vintage” — has come into its own. Besides those who can’t spend a lot or just want to save money, there are shoppers who can afford to buy new clothes, but they opt for second-hand to assert their individuality in a sea of mass-market goods. Or they are buying used to tap into the circular economy and virtuously reduce waste.
For those of us on the lookout for a diamond-in-the-rough bargain, prices may not be much different than new, and in many cases, much higher. And the number of places selling used clothes has ballooned. Charity shops now compete with more curated second-hand stores, and even major chains like Urban Outfitters and high-end high-street boutiques are leaning into the vintage vibe.
Levin went on to say that Angi is "healthy, profitable and on a path to resume revenue growth." The company's revenue declined 16% year over year to $296.7 million during the third quarter, which Angi attributed to lower sales and marketing spend, which led to a decrease in service requests and lower acquisition of new professionals. Analysts were looking for revenue of $297 million, according to LSEG.
Angi saw earnings of 7 cents per share, compared with consensus expectations for zero cents per share, according to LSEG.
Under CEO Tim Cook, Apple has put a large focus on health applications through the Apple Watch and related services.
A smart ring is a type of wearable device full of sensors that can give the wearer information about things like their health, activity and sleep. They are lightweight and have a long battery life which fans say make them ideal for wearing all day, including when sleeping, versus a smartwatch that may be less comfortable and so removed more often.
With a few text or image prompts, businesses can use Accio to find wholesale products — including analysis on their popularity with consumers and projected profit, according to demos viewed by CNBC.
Examples shown included helping a sports entrepreneur to build a line of pickleball products. At the end of the search, the tool lists a number of procurement options for the business to discuss directly with each supplier.
"Apple is very much a focused company. They're like: 'We've put our bet on the watch. We're gonna make the watch our platform,'" Hale said.
Oura recently launched its next-generation Oura Ring 4 as competition in the wearable sector ramps up.
The tech uses generative AI from Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen large language model, Zhang said, declining to confirm whether the product integrates AI from other companies.
An LLM is an artificial intelligence model trained on large amounts of data. A model supports generative AI applications, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, which generates human-like responses to user prompts. To be sure, several businesses are still in the experimentation phase with AI and many firms are yet to find a way of monetizing the technology.
As someone who has never liked the look of smartwatches, I was excited to try out the Oura Ring 4 and use it to track my sleep. The wearable was so comfortable, I often forgot I had it on.
That's at least in part due to the device's new sensors, which are significantly smaller than those of its predecessor. The third-generation Oura has sensors that are raised and feel like little bumps, while those on the Ring 4 are basically flat, giving it a smooth interior like any other ring.
Accio uses data from 50 million businesses on Alibaba International's platform, and publicly available industry information, Zhang said. He said the tool incorporates 1 billion product listings and documents covering industries across more than 100 markets from Alibaba.com, the company's business-to-business platform which sells to companies outside China.
Businesses based in Europe and North America are the largest group of buyers, the company said.
I purposely wore the ring on my right index finger. I still write a lot of my stories by hand (old school, I know), so I wanted to see if it would bother me while holding a pen or pencil. It didn't. The ring is also designed to be worn 24/7 and is water resistant, and it didn't give me any trouble when I washed my hands or showered with it.
Another highlight was the Oura app. The company began rolling out a redesign of the app to all its users earlier this month, and I thought the layout of the app was very intuitive. Data from the smart rings is presented in three tabs called Today, Vitals and My Health.
Alibaba's international arm in October announced an updated version of an AI translation tool to help merchants reach customers in other countries. The company claimed the tech's translation capabilities beat that of Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
The international business has grown rapidly in recent years, but Alibaba's main revenue driver remains its domestic e-commerce platforms Taobao and Tmall. In August 2023, management told investors that "the Taobao app has the greatest potential to become a one stop smart portal for life and consumption enabled by AI."
The Today tab highlights information based on the time of day, and it includes shortcuts where I could quickly view the latest readings for things such as my sleep, activity, heart rate, stress or my readiness for the day. These at-a-glance metrics are easy to digest and helpful to look at when I had a quick minute throughout the day.
I also enjoyed looking at my reading at a more granular level in the Vitals tab. There's a lot to learn and decipher. Oura shows you nearly 20 different data points about your sleep alone. Even so, the company does a nice job breaking down all of these concepts in simple language. I wasn't familiar with the term latency, for example, but the app taught me that it's the amount of time it takes to fall asleep.
During the weeks-long Singles Day shopping festival that wrapped up Monday, more than half of over 500 merchants selling on Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba and JD.com used a generative AI-enabled tool, according to a survey by Bain & Company.
Those features include AI for customer service and generating content. The survey found 56% of respondents said AI tools had "high positive impact" on improving productivity.
The My Health tab gives users access to longer-term insights such as heart health, sleep health and resilience, a metric that measures your ability to recover from stress over time. These metrics are calibrated once Oura has recorded several weeks' worth of data, so I was unable to explore this feature in depth for this review.
Before the review, I was concerned about whether Oura's metrics would negatively affect my mood. For instance, if Oura tells me that I slept poorly, would I feel less prepared to take on my day?
Masayoshi Son's tech conglomerate, has seen its share of controversial high-value investments in recent years in companies that have either collapsed or sharply marked down their valuations. It is now repositioning itself at the epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, where players like Nvidia are reaping in the rewards of meteoric demand for chips and data center GPUs.
"That's just shifted 180 degrees," Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management, told CNBC. "We're now in a positive regulatory environment, we now have tailwinds from that, and that comes in the case of a market that was already in a bull market … that's going to push us higher."
I was pleasantly surprised by how the company approached this framing. I never felt like I was being reprimanded for getting a bad night's sleep, feeling stressed or missing a workout. Instead, Oura gave me tips about small changes I could make to feel better throughout the day, such as taking a few minutes for a break or meditation.
I also liked that the exercise goal in the app varied based on my readings. If there was a day where I was particularly tired or stressed, Oura lowered my activity goal. This helped me feel a sense of accomplishment even when I wasn't at my very best.
Across the crypto market, coins that have soared in the past week hit the brakes on Tuesday, including memecoin Shiba Inu, which was down 4% after it soared 57% in the past week.
Dogecoin was an outlier, however. It's been one of the biggest winners, up more than 135% since Nov. 5, likely due to its connection with Elon Musk, who helped get Trump elected. It was last higher by 14%.
On its website, Oura says users can prevent scratches by wearing the ring on their nondominant hand, keeping it separated from other rings and taking it off in high-friction scenarios such as weight lifting.
Despite this warning, I was surprised by how quickly the Ring 4 showed signs of wear, especially given its price tag. And no, scratches are not covered by Oura's warranty policy.
Another let down was the ring's battery life. It didn't last as long as Oura said it would.
In the stock market, Coinbase and MicroStrategy retreated by about 6% each in premarket trading. In regular trading on Monday, Coinbase surged 19% to trade above $300 for the first time since 2021 and about 6% from its high from that year.
Traders and analysts agree the past week's rally is only beginning.
The company touts eight days of battery life, but I was usually prompted to charge my ring after about five or six days. The company said battery life depends on users' ring size, feature configuration, app settings, usage and other factors, so it varies from person to person.
Five to six days is still better than an Apple Watch, which usually needs daily charging, but I definitely wasn't getting the eight days I was expecting.
"It does seem like there's an air gap between the previous [bitcoin] all-time highs around $72,000 and $100,000," Hougan said. "It's hard exactly to see what would force sellers to come into this market and halt the momentum before we get to that level. Of course, there are no guarantees. You could see pullbacks, but we're in a new crypto market cycle. … I do think that we are right to be bullish and the bias is still on the upside."
In Google's case, the company is required under the DMA to share data that would be useful for training a search model.
Why build a European search index?
Currently, alternative search engines like Ecosia, Qwant and DuckDuckGo don't develop their own back-end infrastructure. The new venture will see them build their own search index from scratch, however, amassing results from a mix of different search engines. Ecosia last year switched to a mix of Google and Bing search results.
My last gripe was purely aesthetic. I have small hands, so I thought the Ring 4 looked a little clunky in comparison to the jewelry I normally wear. My friends said they didn't notice this, but the Ring 4 is not a style I would typically reach for, though admittedly, I've gotten more used to it with time.
Ecosia and Qwant say their new search index will be "privacy-first," using technologies from Qwant that were redesigned in 2023. Both companies will use the search index themselves but the tech will also be made available to other independent search engines and tech firms.
The launch comes as alternative search providers like Ecosia and Qwant are being forced to grapple with higher prices from Microsoft to access its Bing Search API (application programming interface), a piece of software that lets developers access the tech giant's backend search infrastructure.
An early investor in Yahoo! and Alibaba, Son now calls Nvidia, the $3.57 trillion U.S. titan, "undervalued" and forecasts the advent of AI that is 10,000 times smarter than humans within 10 years — amid late-September media reports that SoftBank will be investing $500 million into key artificial intelligence player OpenAI's latest funding round.
Net sales for the SoftBank Group as a whole added 6% to 1.77 trillion yen.
You don't have to pay for the company's monthly subscription if you don't want to, but without it, you'll only be able to access your daily sleep, readiness and activity scores, according to Oura's website. I really enjoyed being able to track my stress levels, so for that feature alone, I would get the membership. If you want that kind of information, be prepared to make a monthly $5 commitment before getting hitched to an Oura Ring 4.
"We are European companies and we need to build technology that makes sure no third-party decision — for instance, Microsoft's decision to increase costs to access their search API — could jeopardize our business," Olivier Abecassis, CEO of Qwant, told CNBC.
"It is nothing against the U.S. or U.S. companies. It is all about the sovereignty of our business and companies," he added. Abecassis will also serve as CEO of the new venture, which hasn't yet raised funding from external investors.
The group's print benefitted from investment gains of 1.28 trillion yen on shares of Chinese retail giant Alibaba and of 566.2 billion yen on stock of T-Mobile.
Tokyo-listed shares of SoftBank are up roughly 50% in the year to date, as of Tuesday morning. The company posted its latest quarterly earnings after the close of the Japanese bourse.
Overall, the new Oura smart ring is easy to wear and use, and it's a great option if you're looking for a low-maintenance way to track your health. I've been recommending it to family and friends, and I wouldn't be surprised if I do end up purchasing one for myself someday.
Europeans are "very dependent on the United States for our technology," Kroll said in an interview last week ahead of the launch. The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president could escalate geopolitical tensions, he added — and this could be a problem for Europe's reliance on U.S. technology.
He pointed to the disruption to European energy supplies after Russia cut off gas to Europe following its invasion of Ukraine, saying this should serve as a warning for what can happen when an entire continent becomes too dependent on a single country for a key resource.
Meanwhile, a slew of new search engines, such as Perplexity, have also entered the market, offering their own generative-AI-based alternatives to Google.
Google has fought back with its own generative AI search product, integrating its Gemini large language model into search results.
Now, Musk is trying to make sure he cashes in on his investments.
After the election last week, Musk briefly joined Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, NBC News reported. Other outlets, including The New York Times and ABC, have reported that Musk has been weighing in on staffing decisions for the next administration, and he's spent a lot of time since the election at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Brendan Carr, who is likely to be Trump's choice to run the Federal Communications Commission, is seen as a longstanding Musk ally.
The company faces pressure from activist investor Elliott Management, which built a roughly $2 billion stake in SoftBank and pushed for a $15 billion share buyback, CNBC reported in June. The group announced in August that it would repurchase 6.8% of shares available in the company, amounting to 500 billion yen ($3.25 billion). On Tuesday, it said it had repurchased a cumulative 153.8 billion yen in shares by the end of the second quarter.
Musk ran a straw poll on X for his 200-million plus followers asking who should be Senate majority leader, and he's personally endorsed Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott for the position. He also reposted a comment from Trump about the need for the majority leader to support recess appointments for his nominees so they don't need Senate confirmation.
"Without recess appointments, it will take two years or more to confirm the new administration!" Musk wrote.
Japanese companies contended with high fluctuations over the summer quarter, amid a rapid strengthening of the yen and a dramatic sell-off of risk assets in August. Domestic markets have calmed relative to the summer turmoil, as Japan navigates its transition away from its ultra-low-rate policy — but analysts at Barclays note that the country's economic horizon is not yet stable.
"Crucially, this volatility is likely to continue. Wage growth, particularly in the service sector, is progressing in line with the BOJ's expectations, leading many to anticipate another interest rate hike in December 2024 or January 2025," they wrote on Nov. 8.
Musk has long sought to reduce regulatory authority so that he can eliminate impediments to his sprawling business empire, which includes Tesla and X, as well as defense contractor SpaceX, artificial intelligence startup xAI, brain computer interface company Neuralink and tunneling venture Boring Co.
Those companies are currently embroiled in a range of probes and lawsuits from federal agencies pertaining to matters including alleged securities law violations, workplace safety, labor and civil rights violations, violations of federal environmental laws, consumer fraud and vehicle safety defects.
The move comes after Misra withdrew from his executive positions at SoftBank Group in August 2022, when he stepped back from his roles as corporate officer and executive vice president of the parent company. The former Deutsche Bank executive launched One Investment Management, a $6.8 billion fund backed by Abu Dhabi, in 2022.
Misra will no longer have an official role at SoftBank, the company said.
Given the executive branch's outsized control over federal regulatory bodies, Musk can look forward to regulators and intelligence agencies winding down some or all of the 19 known ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits against Tesla, SpaceX and X.
During his ten-year tenure at SoftBank, Misra’s Vision Fund also became known for several troubled investments including WeWork, dog-walking app Wag and Greensill Capital, while he also clashed with senior colleagues including Nikesh Arora and Marcelo Claure, both of whom eventually left the firm.
"He's got the golden touch right now and has the ear," said Deepwater Asset Management's Gene Munster, a longtime Tesla bull, in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.
In addition to Tesla, SpaceX is also a "clear beneficiary" of a Trump presidency, Munster said. He added that xAI could be rewarded as the new administration considers AI regulations.
He got to chatting with a vintage clothes shop manager. Used-clothing wholesalers, the manager told him, serve as funnels for sourcing clothing, providing many second-hand stores with stock. These wholesalers were offline, so the retailers tended to travel to source goods from the wholesalers in person, picking through racks, going “heads down, bums up,” in the words of Arora, Fleek’s CEO.
That practice became impossible with travel restrictions, yet what this retailer had noticed was that a handful of the wholesalers had started showing off their goods on Instagram, and they were negotiating ad-hoc over video calls.
"I'm stretched to try to find out how this could play out negative for Elon," Munster said.
Musk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk owns 411.06 million Tesla shares, as of the latest filings, and about 304 million performance-based options. In January, Judge Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Chancery Court voided Musk's historic pay package from 2018 that included the options, calling it "unfathomable" in part because Musk controlled the board. Shareholders then voted in June to retroactively ratify the package. McCormick has said a final ruling on whether to restore Musk's compensation will come soon.
That gave Arora and Agarwal, a software engineer who previously worked at Google, their inspiration. They would build a marketplace to make it easier for any wholesaler to sell online, and for any retailer to buy that way. Make the experience consistent for everyone on both sides of the table and take a cut on the payment for providing the service.
Fleek’s commission, Agarwal said, depends on the amount and quality of goods being sold: its cut comes out of the payments that buyers are paying to the wholesalers.
Musk and Ellison aren't the only two billionaire tech executives to see a post-election windfall.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has added about $4.5 billion to his net worth since Trump's victory. Coinbase shares soared 20% on Monday, bringing their gains since Tuesday to 67%.
And then, as they started to look into who these offline wholesalers actually were, it felt like fate.
“It turned out that the sub-continent is one of the biggest exporters and importers of used clothes,” Arora said. “Sanket and I both grew up in India. We speak the language. That really helped us connect with these wholesalers.”
The crypto exchange was a major contributor to pro-crypto candidates up and down the ballot, largely through a PAC called Fairshake. Most of its preferred candidates were victorious, setting the stage for the likelihood of a more favorable regulatory environment for the industry.
That's a win for Tesla as well. At the end of the third quarter, the company reported "digital assets" with a fair value of $729 million. Cryptocurrencies have rallied since the election, with bitcoin jumping about 29% to a record of over $88,000 on Monday.
IAC said there's no specific timeline for when the spinoff would take place, but if it decides to move forward with the plan, a transaction is expected to happen by the end of the company's second quarter. Media platform Dotdash Meredith and MGM Resorts "would comprise the core of IAC" in the event of an Angi spinoff, Levin said.
From basic necessity to virtuous circles and vintage vibes
It wasn’t that long ago that second-hand clothing was mainly the domain of lower-income consumers: charity shops and donation points were mainstays for collecting those items and redistributing them to those who needed them near and far… sometimes very far. The whole process of intake and selling was quite analog.
"With the considerable progress made and developments on the horizon, we have real upside in the business," Levin wrote. "Angi's economic foundation continues to strengthen, and we suspect that Angi's best shot at realizing that upside to the benefit of our shareholders may be as a standalone company."
Over the years, the concept has had a major makeover, particularly in more developed economies, where second-hand clothing — sometimes loftily referred to as “vintage” — has come into its own. Besides those who can’t spend a lot or just want to save money, there are shoppers who can afford to buy new clothes, but they opt for second-hand to assert their individuality in a sea of mass-market goods. Or they are buying used to tap into the circular economy and virtuously reduce waste.
For those of us on the lookout for a diamond-in-the-rough bargain, prices may not be much different than new, and in many cases, much higher. And the number of places selling used clothes has ballooned. Charity shops now compete with more curated second-hand stores, and even major chains like Urban Outfitters and high-end high-street boutiques are leaning into the vintage vibe.
Levin went on to say that Angi is "healthy, profitable and on a path to resume revenue growth." The company's revenue declined 16% year over year to $296.7 million during the third quarter, which Angi attributed to lower sales and marketing spend, which led to a decrease in service requests and lower acquisition of new professionals. Analysts were looking for revenue of $297 million, according to LSEG.
Angi saw earnings of 7 cents per share, compared with consensus expectations for zero cents per share, according to LSEG.