"To see the DeepSeek new model, it's super impressive in terms of both how they have really effectively done an open-source model that does this inference-time compute, and is super-compute efficient," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday. "We should take the developments out of China very, very seriously."
DeepSeek also had to navigate the strict semiconductor restrictions that the U.S. government has imposed on China, cutting the country off from access to the most powerful chips, like Nvidia's H100s. The latest advancements suggest DeepSeek either found a way to work around the rules, or that the export controls were not the chokehold Washington intended.
"They can take a really good, big model and use a process called distillation," said Benchmark General Partner Chetan Puttagunta. "Basically you use a very large model to help your small model get smart at the thing you want it to get smart at. That's actually very cost-efficient."
Little is known about the lab and its founder, Liang WenFeng. DeepSeek was was born of a Chinese hedge fund called High-Flyer Quant that manages about $8 billion in assets, according to media reports.
But DeepSeek isn't the only Chinese company making inroads.
Leading AI researcher Kai-Fu Lee has said his startup 01.ai was trained using only $3 million. TikTok parent company ByteDance on Wednesday released an update to its model that claims to outperform OpenAI's o1 in a key benchmark test.
"Necessity is the mother of invention," said Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. "Because they had to figure out work-arounds, they actually ended up building something a lot more efficient."
"We'll be working with Treasury and the other regulators to figure out how we can offer that in a safe way," Pick said.
Trump has nominated multiple crypto advocates to critical positions across his administration. They include Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was a commissioner under President George W. Bush. Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is Trump's pick for secretary of Commerce, and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent was tapped to lead Treasury.
If confirmed, Bessent would oversee the IRS and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which both play key roles in shaping tax and compliance policies for crypto transactions and setting guidelines for crypto adoption in the U.S.
Pick says Morgan Stanley will be working with federal regulators to determine whether it's possible to deepen the bank's ties to the cryptocurrency markets. His firm has been more aggressive than its Wall Street peers.
In 2021, Morgan Stanley became the first big U.S. bank to offer its wealthy clients access to bitcoin funds. Last August, it was the first major Wall Street player to let its financial advisors start pitching clients on some of the bitcoin exchange-traded funds that launched early last year. So far, wealth management businesses have only facilitated trades if customers requested exposure to the new spot crypto funds.
Pick suggested that the more bitcoin seeps into the mainstream, the more it's viewed as a legitimate part of the financial system.
"The longer it trades, perception becomes reality," he said.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan echoed a willingness to embrace crypto, specifically as a payment option, if the regulatory environment shifts under the new administration. Speaking in Davos, Moynihan emphasized that clear guidelines could unlock broader adoption.
"If the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business with, you'll find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of it," Moynihan said in an interview on Tuesday with CNBC.
Moynihan, who runs the second-biggest bank by assets in the U.S., noted that crypto could become "just another form of payment," like Visa, Mastercard or Apple Pay. However, he steered clear of discussing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as investments or stores of value, calling it "a separate question."
Another major roadblock to Wall Street's adoption of cryptocurrencies is an accounting rule, issued by the SEC in 2022, that requires banks to classify cryptocurrencies as liabilities on their balance sheets. The rule subjects those assets to strict capital requirements, significantly raising the financial and regulatory risks of offering crypto custody services.
Efforts to overturn the rule, known as SAB 121, gained bipartisan support in Congress last year. But then-President Joe Biden vetoed the proposed legislation, leaving the rule intact and further discouraging banks from adopting digital assets. Banks have been largely forbidden from expanding their crypto offerings beyond derivatives trading and offering ETFs to wealth management clients.
"At the moment, from a regulatory perspective, we can't own" bitcoin, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC in an interview in Davos this week. He said the bank would revisit the issue if the rules changed.
With the pro-crypto Trump administration now in power, there is renewed optimism that SAB 121 could be repealed or revised, allowing banks to custody crypto assets without such burdensome capital requirements.
Bitcoin hit a record of nearly $110,000 on Monday ahead of Trump's inauguration leading broader gains in the crypto market. As of late Thursday, it was trading at around $104,000.
"Elon Musk continues to be front and center as a potential bidder for TikTok which likely includes some tech partners/outside investors to get a deal done," Wedbush said in a research note on Wednesday.
"Musk would be hand picked by Beijing and his ironclad relationship with Trump would make this a very logical choice in our view," the note added.
Nat Schindler, an analyst at Scotiabank, also noted that Musk's acquisition of Twitter has demonstrated his interest in global social media platforms. However, he also sees some potential obstacles for the tech tycoon.
"Musk is under fire already for owning X and the perception that he is using it to promote certain political ideas, and any involvement in TikTok could draw additional fire and potentially antitrust scrutiny," Schindler said.
Trump has also said he'd "like" to see Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison purchase the platform.
Ellison, a longtime Trump supporter, stood beside the President at a press conference on his AI infrastructure investment plans on Tuesday, where Trump was asked questions about a potential TikTok deal.
"What I'm thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it, and give half to the United States of America. Half and we'll give you the permit," Trump said before turning to Ellison to ask if the deal sounded reasonable.
"Sounds like a good deal to me Mr. President," Ellison replied.
Ellison and his company are currently at the center of the TikTok dilemma, operating as a cloud infrastructure provider for ByteDance in the U.S.
Given its existing relationship with Tiktok, Oracle and is "directly invested in Tiktok's success in the region," Scotiabank's Schindler said.
Ellison had bid for Tiktok, along with Walmart, back in 2020 when Trump first pushed for a ban on the platform. Neither company responded to CNBC's request for comment.
Trump had approved of the Walmart-Oracle deal in principle, which would've seen the tech and retail giants partner to take over the video-sharing app in the U.S., avoiding a shutdown. However, the Trump administration's attempt to ban TikTok in the U.S. fell through in the face of legal challenges.
Ellison later joined a group of investors that helped Elon Musk buy social media platform Twitter, now known as X, in 2022.
"[We believe] Oracle/Ellison could play a pivotal role in any deal given their key technology partnership with TikTok and his appearance at the White House with Project Stargate," Wedbush said.
Wedbush added that it expects a slew of TikTok bids to come over the coming weeks from a host of players with Musk and Ellison leading the pack.
Big players, serious money
In addition to Musk and Ellison, experts flagged several other parties likely to be interested in a potential deal for TikTok, adding that the barriers to entry were high.
Given the financial stakes of a TikTok deal, it's unlikely that some rogue investor is going to swoop in and buy the platform on the cheap, Paul Triolo of Albright Stone Group told CNBC.
"While an up-to-date valuation on TikTok is difficult to come up with, it is likely to the order of $40-80 billion, meaning whoever decides to jump in has to be ready with some serious money," he said.
He added that potential suitors are likely to include some of America's largest social media and technology players, such as Meta and Google, in addition to Musk's X.
Meta and Google didn't immediately respond to a CNBC inquiry.
Sarah Kreps, the director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, however, warned that players such as Meta, Google and Musk getting a substantial stake in TikTok could raise antitrust questions.
Scotiabank analyst Nat Schindler noted that there were also a number of other players, including existing investors BlackRock, Coatue, and General Atlantic, who own a large chunk of TikTok's parent company. According to him, some of these investors are likely to participate in any sale of the U.S. platform by investing in the new entity.
"Other large VCs, hedge funds, and asset managers from Tiger to Fidelity would also likely show interest in a fast growing global platform with such a huge viewer base," said Schindler, adding that finding investors to own a part of Tiktok won't be a problem.
Recently, some people on Chinese social media have expressed frustration, claiming that doctoral degrees in China are becoming increasingly undervalued, to the point where they are as common as "street goods.
MrBeast
The fervor surrounding a purchase of TikTok U.S. has also seen some unconventional players enter the fray.
Social media superstar MrBeast — real name Jimmy Donaldson — who has more than 100 million TikTok followers has posted several videos in which he indicated serious interest in buying the platform, claiming he has had talks with billionaires.
In one video, the internet personality claimed he had an official offer ready, jesting that he might be the new TikTok CEO.
Media reports have also mentioned Donaldson and a group of investors preparing to make a bid for TikTok.
On Thursday, Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesperson for Donaldson, told CNBC that "Several potential buyers are in ongoing discussions with Jimmy, but he has no exclusive agreements with any of them."
'The People's Bid for TikTok'
Led by Project Liberty Founder Frank McCourt and involving Canadian businessman and TV personality Kevin O'Leary, "The People's Bid for TikTok," has made a $20 billion cash offer to buy TikTok.
O'Leary told CNBC last year that he wanted to buy the platform at a discount as any possible deal won't include TikTok's original algorithm. The organization said it already has a replacement for the algorithm to use for TikTok U.S.
Following Trump's comments on a 50% stake in the platform, both McCourt and O'Leary told CNBC this week that they were interested in a TikTok deal and were hoping to work with Trump to make it happen.
McCourt has also told CNBC that he wants TikTok to run a decentralized social networking protocol, or DSNP, overseen by the Project Liberty Institute, a nonprofit founded by the billionaire.
Bidding interest aside, a number of legal and tech experts have told CNBC that Trump's executive order to delay the TikTok ban contradicts the Supreme Court's earlier ruling to uphold the PAFACA and could face legal opposition.
O'Leary also told CNBC on Monday that a TikTok deal could not happen under the current law, after the Supreme Court upheld an impending ban on TikTok under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, or PAFACA, on Sunday.
Beijing and its pending negotiations with Trump regarding trade with the U.S. is also expected to play a determining factor in whether the Chinese government would allow ByteDance to make a divestiture.
"In this game of high stakes poker between the Trump Administration and Beijing it's clear TikTok is a big chip on the table," Wedush said
!summarize #aaronglenn #nfl #nyjets
"To see the DeepSeek new model, it's super impressive in terms of both how they have really effectively done an open-source model that does this inference-time compute, and is super-compute efficient," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday. "We should take the developments out of China very, very seriously."
DeepSeek also had to navigate the strict semiconductor restrictions that the U.S. government has imposed on China, cutting the country off from access to the most powerful chips, like Nvidia's H100s. The latest advancements suggest DeepSeek either found a way to work around the rules, or that the export controls were not the chokehold Washington intended.
!summarize #investing #retail #warrenbuffett
!summarize #petealonso #nymets #freeagency
"They can take a really good, big model and use a process called distillation," said Benchmark General Partner Chetan Puttagunta. "Basically you use a very large model to help your small model get smart at the thing you want it to get smart at. That's actually very cost-efficient."
Little is known about the lab and its founder, Liang WenFeng. DeepSeek was was born of a Chinese hedge fund called High-Flyer Quant that manages about $8 billion in assets, according to media reports.
But DeepSeek isn't the only Chinese company making inroads.
!summarize #newtgingrich #trump
Leading AI researcher Kai-Fu Lee has said his startup 01.ai was trained using only $3 million. TikTok parent company ByteDance on Wednesday released an update to its model that claims to outperform OpenAI's o1 in a key benchmark test.
"Necessity is the mother of invention," said Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. "Because they had to figure out work-arounds, they actually ended up building something a lot more efficient."
!summarize #economics #keynesian #neoclassical
!summarize #hollywood #culturewar
!summarize #gold #markets #china
"We'll be working with Treasury and the other regulators to figure out how we can offer that in a safe way," Pick said.
Trump has nominated multiple crypto advocates to critical positions across his administration. They include Paul Atkins to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was a commissioner under President George W. Bush. Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, is Trump's pick for secretary of Commerce, and hedge fund manager Scott Bessent was tapped to lead Treasury.
!summarize #recession #economy
!summarize #jfk #rfk #mlk #trump #declassification
If confirmed, Bessent would oversee the IRS and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which both play key roles in shaping tax and compliance policies for crypto transactions and setting guidelines for crypto adoption in the U.S.
Pick says Morgan Stanley will be working with federal regulators to determine whether it's possible to deepen the bank's ties to the cryptocurrency markets. His firm has been more aggressive than its Wall Street peers.
!summarize #ubs #trump #ceo #banking
!summarize #wealth #warrenbuffett
In 2021, Morgan Stanley became the first big U.S. bank to offer its wealthy clients access to bitcoin funds. Last August, it was the first major Wall Street player to let its financial advisors start pitching clients on some of the bitcoin exchange-traded funds that launched early last year. So far, wealth management businesses have only facilitated trades if customers requested exposure to the new spot crypto funds.
Pick suggested that the more bitcoin seeps into the mainstream, the more it's viewed as a legitimate part of the financial system.
"The longer it trades, perception becomes reality," he said.
!summarize #trump #china #tariffs #trade
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan echoed a willingness to embrace crypto, specifically as a payment option, if the regulatory environment shifts under the new administration. Speaking in Davos, Moynihan emphasized that clear guidelines could unlock broader adoption.
"If the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business with, you'll find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of it," Moynihan said in an interview on Tuesday with CNBC.
!summarize #retirement #investing #money
Moynihan, who runs the second-biggest bank by assets in the U.S., noted that crypto could become "just another form of payment," like Visa, Mastercard or Apple Pay. However, he steered clear of discussing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as investments or stores of value, calling it "a separate question."
Another major roadblock to Wall Street's adoption of cryptocurrencies is an accounting rule, issued by the SEC in 2022, that requires banks to classify cryptocurrencies as liabilities on their balance sheets. The rule subjects those assets to strict capital requirements, significantly raising the financial and regulatory risks of offering crypto custody services.
!summarize #kevinoleary #trump #tariffs #davos
Efforts to overturn the rule, known as SAB 121, gained bipartisan support in Congress last year. But then-President Joe Biden vetoed the proposed legislation, leaving the rule intact and further discouraging banks from adopting digital assets. Banks have been largely forbidden from expanding their crypto offerings beyond derivatives trading and offering ETFs to wealth management clients.
"At the moment, from a regulatory perspective, we can't own" bitcoin, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC in an interview in Davos this week. He said the bank would revisit the issue if the rules changed.
!summarize #tesla #semi #factory #trucking
!summarize #tesla #gigaberlin #automotive
With the pro-crypto Trump administration now in power, there is renewed optimism that SAB 121 could be repealed or revised, allowing banks to custody crypto assets without such burdensome capital requirements.
Bitcoin hit a record of nearly $110,000 on Monday ahead of Trump's inauguration leading broader gains in the crypto market. As of late Thursday, it was trading at around $104,000.
!summarize #ice #police #immigrants
!summarize #elonmusk #disruption #technology
"Elon Musk continues to be front and center as a potential bidder for TikTok which likely includes some tech partners/outside investors to get a deal done," Wedbush said in a research note on Wednesday.
"Musk would be hand picked by Beijing and his ironclad relationship with Trump would make this a very logical choice in our view," the note added.
Nat Schindler, an analyst at Scotiabank, also noted that Musk's acquisition of Twitter has demonstrated his interest in global social media platforms. However, he also sees some potential obstacles for the tech tycoon.
!summarize #tesla #rivian #lucid #ev
"Musk is under fire already for owning X and the perception that he is using it to promote certain political ideas, and any involvement in TikTok could draw additional fire and potentially antitrust scrutiny," Schindler said.
Trump has also said he'd "like" to see Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison purchase the platform.
Ellison, a longtime Trump supporter, stood beside the President at a press conference on his AI infrastructure investment plans on Tuesday, where Trump was asked questions about a potential TikTok deal.
"What I'm thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it, and give half to the United States of America. Half and we'll give you the permit," Trump said before turning to Ellison to ask if the deal sounded reasonable.
"Sounds like a good deal to me Mr. President," Ellison replied.
!summarize #investing #trump #money #markets #stock
Ellison and his company are currently at the center of the TikTok dilemma, operating as a cloud infrastructure provider for ByteDance in the U.S.
Given its existing relationship with Tiktok, Oracle and is "directly invested in Tiktok's success in the region," Scotiabank's Schindler said.
Ellison had bid for Tiktok, along with Walmart, back in 2020 when Trump first pushed for a ban on the platform. Neither company responded to CNBC's request for comment.
!summarize #tesla #modely #juniper #price #unitedstates
Trump had approved of the Walmart-Oracle deal in principle, which would've seen the tech and retail giants partner to take over the video-sharing app in the U.S., avoiding a shutdown. However, the Trump administration's attempt to ban TikTok in the U.S. fell through in the face of legal challenges.
Ellison later joined a group of investors that helped Elon Musk buy social media platform Twitter, now known as X, in 2022.
"[We believe] Oracle/Ellison could play a pivotal role in any deal given their key technology partnership with TikTok and his appearance at the White House with Project Stargate," Wedbush said.
!summarize #mini #rv #winnebago
Wedbush added that it expects a slew of TikTok bids to come over the coming weeks from a host of players with Musk and Ellison leading the pack.
Big players, serious money
In addition to Musk and Ellison, experts flagged several other parties likely to be interested in a potential deal for TikTok, adding that the barriers to entry were high.
Given the financial stakes of a TikTok deal, it's unlikely that some rogue investor is going to swoop in and buy the platform on the cheap, Paul Triolo of Albright Stone Group told CNBC.
"While an up-to-date valuation on TikTok is difficult to come up with, it is likely to the order of $40-80 billion, meaning whoever decides to jump in has to be ready with some serious money," he said.
He added that potential suitors are likely to include some of America's largest social media and technology players, such as Meta and Google, in addition to Musk's X.
Meta and Google didn't immediately respond to a CNBC inquiry.
Sarah Kreps, the director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, however, warned that players such as Meta, Google and Musk getting a substantial stake in TikTok could raise antitrust questions.
!summarize #trump #asheville #losangeles #disasters
Scotiabank analyst Nat Schindler noted that there were also a number of other players, including existing investors BlackRock, Coatue, and General Atlantic, who own a large chunk of TikTok's parent company. According to him, some of these investors are likely to participate in any sale of the U.S. platform by investing in the new entity.
"Other large VCs, hedge funds, and asset managers from Tiger to Fidelity would also likely show interest in a fast growing global platform with such a huge viewer base," said Schindler, adding that finding investors to own a part of Tiktok won't be a problem.
!summarize #china #phd #jobs #value #employment
Recently, some people on Chinese social media have expressed frustration, claiming that doctoral degrees in China are becoming increasingly undervalued, to the point where they are as common as "street goods.
MrBeast
The fervor surrounding a purchase of TikTok U.S. has also seen some unconventional players enter the fray.
Social media superstar MrBeast — real name Jimmy Donaldson — who has more than 100 million TikTok followers has posted several videos in which he indicated serious interest in buying the platform, claiming he has had talks with billionaires.
In one video, the internet personality claimed he had an official offer ready, jesting that he might be the new TikTok CEO.
Media reports have also mentioned Donaldson and a group of investors preparing to make a bid for TikTok.
On Thursday, Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesperson for Donaldson, told CNBC that "Several potential buyers are in ongoing discussions with Jimmy, but he has no exclusive agreements with any of them."
!summarize #construction #engineering #styrofoam
'The People's Bid for TikTok'
Led by Project Liberty Founder Frank McCourt and involving Canadian businessman and TV personality Kevin O'Leary, "The People's Bid for TikTok," has made a $20 billion cash offer to buy TikTok.
O'Leary told CNBC last year that he wanted to buy the platform at a discount as any possible deal won't include TikTok's original algorithm. The organization said it already has a replacement for the algorithm to use for TikTok U.S.
Following Trump's comments on a 50% stake in the platform, both McCourt and O'Leary told CNBC this week that they were interested in a TikTok deal and were hoping to work with Trump to make it happen.
!summarize #wef #trump #schwab #globalism #davos
McCourt has also told CNBC that he wants TikTok to run a decentralized social networking protocol, or DSNP, overseen by the Project Liberty Institute, a nonprofit founded by the billionaire.
Bidding interest aside, a number of legal and tech experts have told CNBC that Trump's executive order to delay the TikTok ban contradicts the Supreme Court's earlier ruling to uphold the PAFACA and could face legal opposition.
O'Leary also told CNBC on Monday that a TikTok deal could not happen under the current law, after the Supreme Court upheld an impending ban on TikTok under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, or PAFACA, on Sunday.
Beijing and its pending negotiations with Trump regarding trade with the U.S. is also expected to play a determining factor in whether the Chinese government would allow ByteDance to make a divestiture.
"In this game of high stakes poker between the Trump Administration and Beijing it's clear TikTok is a big chip on the table," Wedush said