China Tells Tech Firms to Prep Nvidia H200 Orders; Intel Tumbles After Earnings; Tesla Rallies

On this episode of Stock Movers:
- Chinese officials have told the country’s largest tech firms including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. they can prepare orders for Nvidia’s (NVDA) H200 AI chips, suggesting Beijing is close to formally approving imports of components essential to running artificial intelligence. Regulators have recently granted in-principle approval for Alibaba, Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd. to move to the next stage of preparations for purchases, people familiar with the matter said. The companies are now cleared to discuss specifics such as the amounts they would require, the people said, asking to remain unidentified discussing private talks.
- Intel (INTC) shares plunged about 13% in premarket trading after Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan gave a lackluster forecast and warned that the chipmaker was struggling with manufacturing problems.First-quarter projections for revenue and earnings both fell well short of Wall Street estimates. And a conference call with analysts, where Tan said it would take “time and resolve” to turn around the company, sent the shares down further. Production snags have hampered the comeback bid, a disappointment for investors who anticipated more of a boost from new products.“We are on the multiyear journey,” the CEO said.
- Tesla (TSLA) will probably sell its Optimus robots to the public by the end of next year, according to Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who’s said the carmaker’s fortunes will be increasingly dependent on humanoid machines. The company is already using some of the robots to do simple tasks in its factory, Musk said Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He predicted Optimus would be “doing more complex tasks” by the end of 2026. Sales to the public will begin when Tesla is “confident that it’s very high reliability, very high safety, and the range of functionality is also very high,” Musk said.

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