China

The Costly Arms Race: How TikTok Is Fighting for Survival in a World Without NVIDIA

While the Western world is captivated by U.S.–Iran peace talks and falling oil prices, a quieter but no less dramatic battle is unfolding in China. A battle for chips. A battle for artificial intelligence. A battle for survival in a world where America is cutting off access to the most advanced NVIDIA processors through export restrictions.

On Monday, Reuters reported news that caught the attention of investors across Hong Kong’s technology sector. ByteDance—the parent company of TikTok and owner of the world’s most downloaded app—is in talks to purchase AI chips from two Chinese manufacturers. The first is Iluvatar CoreX, a relatively unknown Shanghai-based company that has largely relied on government contracts. The second is Baidu, the internet giant that has spent years trying to turn its Kunlunxin chip project into an independent business.

The report broke during trading hours, sending Iluvatar CoreX shares (ticker 9903 on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange) up nearly 12% at one point. Although much of those gains were later erased, the message was clear: ByteDance is looking for alternatives, and those alternatives increasingly lead to Chinese chipmakers.

Why does this matter? Because ByteDance is not just another Chinese startup. It is a global phenomenon. TikTok—and its Chinese AI-powered platform Doubao—process terabytes of data, generate billions of AI-related requests, and require enormous computing resources. If ByteDance cannot secure chips, its AI ambitions stall. That is why it is willing to buy hardware from almost anyone—even Baidu, a direct competitor in online advertising and search.

Let’s take a closer look at what these negotiations mean, who Iluvatar and Baidu Kunlunxin are, and why this potential deal could reshape the AI landscape.

Iluvatar CoreX: Shanghai’s Dark Horse

For most people, the name...

When China’s Internet Dragon Goes Hunting

On Tuesday morning, something happened on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that many had anticipated, but few expected on such a scale. Shares of Tencent—the company that means as much to China as Google, Facebook, and Amazon combined mean to America—jumped 5%. The stock reached HK$468.4 per share.

A 5% move for a giant like Tencent, whose market capitalization is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars, is more than just a green arrow on a chart. It represents billions of dollars in added market value in a single day.

What caused such optimism? Bonds. At first glance, they seem like ordinary debt securities. But these were anything but ordinary.

Tencent entered the market with a dual-currency offering—in U.S. dollars and offshore Chinese yuan. The company aimed to raise about $4 billion. Instead, it received orders exceeding $6 billion.

Investors were willing to lend Tencent more than $6 billion. That is trust. That is confidence. And it is a signal the market finds difficult to ignore.

Let’s take a closer look at what happened, why investors lined up to buy these bonds, and what it means for Tencent, China’s technology sector, and global markets as a whole.

The Dry Numbers Behind an Ocean of Money

Let’s start with the details, because in finance, that’s often where the most interesting part of the story lies.

Tencent offered investors two types of bonds:

• Offshore yuan-denominated bonds with maturities of 10 and 30 years.

• U.S. dollar-denominated bonds with maturities of 10 and 20 years.

A fairly standard structure for a large multinational company seeking long-term financing.

What was not standard was the market’s reaction.

Demand for the yuan-denominated bonds reached 20.5 billion yuan, or approximately $3.02 billion at current exchange rates. Demand for the dollar-denominated bonds exceeded...

Asian markets were painted deep red on Wednesday — and this was no mild correction. It was a full-scale selloff, triggered by a wave from Wall Street and intensified by local disasters. Three consecutive sessions of declines in U.S. indexes, a collapsing tech sector dragging everything else down with it, and South Korea’s KOSPI plunging more than two and a half percent to lead regional losses. This is what happens when several storms converge at one point: geopolitics pushes oil higher, oil fuels inflation, inflation drives interest rates up, and higher rates crush technology stocks. And in the middle of all this sits Samsung’s own drama, adding another canister of fuel to an already raging fire.

KOSPI and Samsung: When a Labor Dispute Becomes a Systemic Risk

South Korea’s KOSPI didn’t just fall — it collapsed, and the main culprit was the company that for decades symbolized national pride. Shares of Samsung Electronics, which erased early gains and plunged more than four percent, dragged the entire index down with them. The breakdown of negotiations with the labor union, reported by Yonhap, became exactly the trigger the market feared but hoped until the last moment to avoid.

The strike scheduled for Thursday, May 21, now looks almost inevitable. Forty-eight thousand workers, eighteen days of potential shutdowns, and no sign that the two sides will reach an agreement in time. For investors, this means an immediate repricing of risk. Samsung is not just another stock in the index — it is the pillar supporting a substantial portion of the Korean market’s capitalization. When that pillar shakes, the whole building trembles. The KOSPI’s drop of more than two and a half percent reflects growing recognition that Samsung’s problems may not be a short-term incident, but the beginning of a prolonged conflict with unpredictable...

A Quarter That Changed the Narrative

When Bakkafrost published its first-quarter results, the numbers immediately caught the market’s attention. A year ago, the company reported a small net loss. This year, it delivered a net profit of DKK 307 million. On paper, it looks like a sharp turnaround. In reality, the story behind those figures is much deeper than a simple rebound in earnings. What happened over the past twelve months reveals how modern salmon farming has become a battle not only of prices and production volumes, but also of biology, geography, and operational discipline.

At first glance, the broader market environment did not look particularly favorable. Global salmon prices in the quarter were lower than a year earlier. Supply from major producing countries increased significantly, putting pressure on benchmark prices across Europe and Asia. In industries tied to commodities, lower prices usually translate directly into weaker profits. Yet Bakkafrost managed to move in the opposite direction.

That alone says a great deal about the company’s underlying condition.

Why Efficiency Matters More Than Salmon Prices

The key to understanding this quarter lies in one word: efficiency. Not the empty corporate kind of efficiency often repeated in investor presentations, but the real, measurable kind that determines whether a fish farmer makes money or loses it. In salmon farming, efficiency starts with biology. Healthy fish grow faster, require less treatment, consume feed more effectively, and survive in greater numbers until harvest. Sick fish do the opposite. Every biological problem eventually becomes a financial problem.

This is where Bakkafrost’s Faroese operations stood out.

The Faroe Islands are not just another production region on the map. For salmon farming, they are close to ideal. Cold Atlantic waters, strong ocean currents, stable temperatures, and relatively isolated fjords create natural conditions that reduce many of the...