Finance

Chip giant Nvidia has flagged heightened competition from Huawei, despite U.S. restrictions on the Chinese telecommunications company.
In an annual filing Wednesday, Nvidia listed Huawei among its current competitors.
Since 2019, the U.S. has restricted Huawei’s ability to access technology from American suppliers, from advanced 5G chips to Google’s Android operating system.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

BEIJING — Chip giant Nvidia has flagged heightened competition from Huawei, despite U.S. restrictions on the Chinese telecommunications company.
In an annual filing Wednesday, Nvidia listed Huawei among its current competitors, including it in the list for a second straight year. The company, blacklisted by the U.S. for national security reasons, did not feature among Nvidia’s competitors for at least three prior years.

Nvidia listed Huawei among its competitors in four of five categories, including chips, cloud services, computing processing and networking products.
“There’s a fair amount of competition in China,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC’s Jon Fortt Wednesday.
“Huawei, other companies, are … quite vigorous and very, very competitive,” Huang said.
Since 2019, the U.S. has restricted Huawei’s ability to access technology from American suppliers, from advanced 5G chips to Google’s Android operating system.

Huawei’s revenue exceeded 860 billion yuan ($118.27 billion) in 2024, state media reported, a 22% jump in revenue from 2023, and the fastest growth since a 32% increase in 2016, according to CNBC calculations of publicly released figures. Huawei typically publishes its annual reports in March.

The company’s revenue barely grew in 2020, and plunged by nearly 29% in 2021. Its consumer segment was hit hard, and even as revenue rose 17% year on year to 251.5 billion yuan in 2023, it was just over half of what the unit generated at its peak in 2020.
The telecommunications company started to make a comeback in the smartphone market in 2023 with the release of its Mate 60 Pro in China. Reviews indicated the device offers download speeds associated with 5G — thanks to an advanced semiconductor chip.
Just over a year later, Huawei launched the Mate 70 smartphone series that uses the company’s first fully self-developed operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT. More

Some states like Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Rhode Island have delayed phases of their Home energy Rebate programs for consumers who make their homes more energy efficient.
They cited a White House freeze on federal funding that conflicts with President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The rebate programs, created by the Inflation Reduction Act, aim to defray consumer costs for retrofits and utility bills while reducing planet-warming carbon emissions.

Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images

Some states have stopped disbursing funds to consumers via Biden-era rebate programs tied to home energy efficiency, due to a Trump administration freeze on federal funding enacted in January.
The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, had earmarked $8.8 billion of federal funds for consumers through two home energy rebate programs, to be administered by states, territories and the District of Columbia.

Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Rhode Island — which are in various phases of rollout — have paused or delayed their fledgling programs, citing Trump administration policy.

The White House on Jan. 27 put a freeze on the disbursement of federal funds that conflict with President Trump’s agenda — including initiatives related to green energy and climate change — as a reason for halting the disbursement of rebate funds to consumers.
That fate of that freeze is still up in the air. A federal judge issued an order Tuesday that continued to block the policy, for example. However, it appears agencies had been withholding funding in some cases in defiance of earlier court rulings, according to ProPublica reporting.
In any event, the freeze — or the threat of it — appears to be impacting state rebate programs.
“Coloradans who would receive the Home Energy Rebate savings are still locked out by the Trump administration in the dead of winter,” Ari Rosenblum, a spokesperson for the Colorado Energy Office, said in an e-mailed statement.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the White House didn’t return a request for comment from CNBC on the funding freeze.

In some states, rebates are ‘currently unavailable’

Consumers are eligible for up to $8,000 of Home Efficiency Rebates and up to $14,000 of Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates, per federal law.
The rebates defray the cost of retrofitting homes and upgrading appliances to be more energy efficient. Such tweaks aim to cut consumers’ utility bills while also reducing planet-warming carbon emissions.
California, the District of Columbia, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and Wisconsin had also launched phases of their rebate programs in recent months, according to data on an archived federal website.
All states and territories (except for South Dakota) had applied for the federal rebate funding and the U.S. Department of Energy had approved funding for each of them.
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The Arizona Governor’s Office of Resiliency said its Home Energy Rebates programs would be paused until federal funds are freed up.
“Due to the current federal Executive Orders, memorandums from the White House Office of Management and Budget, and communications from the U.S. Department of Energy, funding for all Efficiency Arizona programs is currently unavailable,” it said in an announcement Friday.
Rhode Island paused new applications as of Jan. 27 due to “current uncertainty” with Inflation Reduction Act funding and executive orders, according to its Office of Energy Resources.

The Georgia Environmental Finance Authority launched a pilot program for the rebates in fall 2024. That program is ongoing, a spokesperson confirmed Monday.
However, the timeline for a full program launch initially planned for 2025 “is delayed until we receive more information from the U.S. Department of Energy,” the Georgia spokesperson explained in an e-mail.
However, not all states have pressed the pause button: It appears Maine is still moving forward, for example.
“The program remains open to those who are eligible,” Afton Vigue, a spokesperson for the Maine Governor’s Energy Office, said in an e-mail.
The status of rebates in the eight other states and districts to have launched their programs is unclear. Their respective energy departments or governor’s offices didn’t return requests for comment.

‘Signs of an interest’

While the Trump administration on Jan. 29 rescinded its memo ordering a freeze on federal grants and loans — two days after its initial release — the White House said the freeze nonetheless remained in full force.
Democratic attorneys general in 22 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming the freeze is unlawful. The White House has claimed it is necessary to ensure spending aligns with Trump’s presidential agenda.
David Terry, president of the National Association of State Energy Officials, said he is optimistic the rebate funding will be released to states soon.
“For these two particular programs, I do not think [the freeze] will stymie the programs,” Terry said. “I see signs of an interest in moving them forward and working with the states to implement them.” More

THE BATTLE between the world’s two largest exchange-traded funds has reached a pivotal moment. On February 18th VOO, an ETF tracking the S&P 500 that is managed by Vanguard, a giant passive-investing firm, took the crown as the world’s largest. Days later SPY, an ETF managed by State Street Global Advisors, another giant, reclaimed it. Both funds boast assets of over $620bn. More

Converge Home

“Ne Zha 2” came out in China in late January as one of six movies for the week-long Spring Festival holiday — and took half the box office for the period, according to ticketing site Maoyan.
It then beat Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” as the top-grossing animated film worldwide with a box office of more than 13 billion yuan ($1.79 billion).
Chinese animated films have only started to make a splash in the last 10 years.

Chinese animation blockbuster “Ne Zha 2” was released in late January alongside several other films for the local Spring Festival holiday period.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJING — For someone who’s lived in China since before the pandemic, the success of the animated film “Ne Zha 2” marks more of an industry milestone than a surprise.
The steady drumbeat of homegrown animation had picked up in 2023, just after the end of Covid-19 restrictions, with popular releases such as “Chang An” — a re-telling of Chinese poet Li Bai’s life from the perspective of his friend. It raked in about $250 million as the only animated film in China’s top 10 movies for the year, according to box office data from Maoyan.

The team behind “Chang An,” Light Chaser Animation, works largely out of an old white building in the sleepy outskirts of Beijing. The ceilings are high; stairs wind through the building to connect multiple floors and rooms — and a gym.
When I visited this week, some animators — working on their computers in the dark — were racing to finish cinematic lighting effects on scenes for this summer’s movie. Others designed historical Chinese robes, detailed eyebrows and re-created buildings.
“This place is no longer big enough,” Yu Zhou, president of the studio, said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
He said the 380-person company needs to hire at least 100 more people in the next year to keep up with its new production plan: two movie releases annually starting from 2026, up from one a year currently. AI, he said, can only be a tool for now. Light Chaser plans to move to a new office in the second half of this year.

Beijing-based Light Chaser Animation had more than 380 employees as of February 2025.

The studio sticks to a three-year production plan for all the movies it’s making simultaneously. It tries to imagine the future, and whether 20 million to 30 million people will watch it when the movie comes out, Yu said. “Will this story work in three years?”

This film slated for this summer, “Curious Tales of a Temple,” re-tells “Chinese ghost stories,” Yu said. The studio is in talks with “Hollywood mainstream players” for releasing the movie in theaters overseas, including in North America, at the same time as the planned China launch, he said.
Alluding to the studio’s appeal among global audiences, Yu claimed Light Chaser’s “Green Snake” — which is a rendition of a Chinese legend sets it partially in a futuristic city — did well on Netflix after its 2021 launch, remaining in the top 10 non-English content for three weeks.
Among the other animated features in the works, video-streaming company iQiyi is developing “Master Zhong” that’s expected to be released in China this year. Ya Ning, a senior vice president at the firm, said Chinese animation had started to break its “childish” image and was turning into an industry, expanding into movie merchandise and games as well.

A recent history

Chinese animated films have only started to make a splash in the last 10 years.
“In the history of Chinese animation, there has never been a film like “Big Fish and Begonia.” … as far as the Chinese industry goes, this bold and breathtaking fantasy adventure stands alone,” entertainment industry magazine Variety wrote after the movie’s 2016 release.
The film was made by Beijing Enlight Media. That’s the same producer behind this year’s “Ne Zha 2” and “Ne Zha 1” that came out in 2019 — it had topped China’s box office that year.
“Deep Sea,” from Beijing studio OctMedia, won acclaim in early 2023 with its fantastical pastel-colored rendering of a young girl’s journey of healing following her mother’s abandonment.
While popularity hasn’t always turned into box office sales, “Ne Zha 2” was able to succeed in part because it appealed to all ages, Liu Anxing, manager at a movie theater in Chengdu, told CNBC. While Liu said he was proud of Chinese animation industry’s achievements, he didn’t expect another “Ne Zha 2”-like blockbuster in the near future — at least not until “Ne Zha 3” comes out in 2028.
“Ne Zha 2” came out in China in late January as one of six movies for the week-long Spring Festival holiday — and took half the box office for the period, according to Maoyan. After its release in North America on Feb. 14, Maoyan data showed the movie beat Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” as the top-grossing animated film worldwide with more than 13 billion yuan ($1.79 billion) in ticket sales.

Strategy and plans

In contrast to Light Chaser’s focus on in-house production, the makers of “Ne Zha 2” relied on various studios. The director came from Chengdu-based Coco Cartoon, while Beijing Enlight Media was the primary producer and distributor. Chinese state media said nearly 140 businesses contributed to the production.
State media also highlighted how government subsidies from Chengdu to Qingdao have helped support domestic animation. Beijing in 2021 laid out a national plan for “building China into a major cinematic player” by 2035 that included a call for producing 50 films a year with box-office sales of at least 100 million yuan each.
Jonathan Clements, author of “Anime: A History,” cautioned that over-production of films could unpleasantly shock studios and investors. “Animation consumers are themselves a resource that needs to be carefully managed,” he said.
Clements added that in contrast to how Disney blockbusters made more than $1 billion in box office sales across multiple countries, “Ne Zha 2” has done so primarily due to sales in China. “You don’t have to worry about whether your story, or your characters, or your attitudes will play in other countries.”
China’s plan also specified that domestic films should account for at least 55% of the country’s annual box office sales.
Hollywood films, when allowed into China, have seen waning interest from domestic audiences. “Godzilla x Kong” was the only one to crack the top 10 last year, according to Maoyan. “Oppenheimer” failed to enter China’s 20 top-grossing movies in 2023, and “Barbie” was even further behind.
Back in 2019, “Avengers: Endgame” ranked third by domestic box office, according to Maoyan, just behind Chinese sci-fi sensation “The Wandering Earth” and the first “Ne Zha” film.
The characters and plots of many Chinese animated television series have come from stories written online by relatively unknown authors. China Literature, the operator of a major app for user-generated content, said 15 of the top 20 most watched online animated series in the first half of last year were based off content on its platform — in the last few years it’s also started putting the adaptations on YouTube as it strives to broaden its audience.
Chinese creators are also leveraging generative AI for filmmaking. Short-video streaming app Kuaishou is releasing a seven-part mini series, “New World Loading,” that’s largely created using the company’s Kling AI for video generation. Director Chen Xiangyu said the team just fed the AI model simple scripts, instead of having to draw characters. More

For the third year in a row, CNBC is working with market research firm Statista to list the world’s top financial technology companies.
Including startups, scaleups and established tech players, the top global fintech list aims to assess companies using an objective, key performance indicator-based methodology.

You can find out more information on the research project and methodology by clicking here.

Woman using digital tablet and credit card to do shopping.
John Lamb | Digital Vision | Getty Images

Applications are now open for companies to register their information for consideration by Statista’s researchers. To qualify, a company must focus primarily on developing innovative, technology-based financial products and services.
This year, we’re also digging deeper into the research to name the standout companies operating in the U.K. — the largest fintech market in Europe, as measured by the amount of funding raised.
Applications from companies headquartered in the U.K. will — in addition to being considered for the global fintech list — also be considered for a separate list of the U.K.’s top fintech companies. Firms do not need to fill in a separate application to be considered for the U.K. ranking.
Last year, fintech startups in the U.K. raised $3.6 billion in venture capital, ranking second worldwide and first in Europe for funding, according to industry trade body Innovate Finance. The country is also home to Revolut, Europe’s biggest fintech unicorn with a $45 billion valuation.

How to apply

Companies can submit their information for consideration by clicking here. The form, hosted by Statista, includes questions about a company’s business model and certain key performance indicators, including revenue growth and employee headcount.
The deadline for submissions is April 25, 2025.
If you have any questions about the lists or need assistance filling out the form, please reach out to Statista: topfintechs@statista.com.
Successful companies will be listed in the category that most closely reflects their business model. This year, insurance technology will be included as a category in the global fintech list. The other categories are payments, neobanking, digital assets, alternative financing, wealth technology, and enterprise fintech.
You can check out last year’s list here, which included well-known brands such as Mastercard and China’s Ant Group, global unicorns such as Brazilian digital lender Nubank and buy now, pay later firm Klarna, as well as smaller disruptors including payments platform Primer and investing app Stash. More

Democrat lawmakers led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday held a forum pushing back against the moves that the Trump administration and Elon Musk have taken to neutralize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The lawmakers questioned whether Musk was conflicted in his efforts to dismantle the CFPB, highlighting his recent plan to launch a digital payments service within X, the social media network he owns.
While Musk was invited to the Washington, D.C, event, according to Warren, he didn’t make an appearance.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., center, Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., conduct a news conference after the Senate Policy luncheons in the Capitol, March 14, 2017.
Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images

Democrat lawmakers led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday held a forum pushing back against the moves that the Trump administration and Elon Musk have taken to neutralize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Guests at the event included a retired military veteran helped by the agency, a mortgage broker who said the CFPB has helped curb industry abuses, and the bureau’s former head for supervision.

But the focus of the senators’ attention was Elon Musk, the driving force behind the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. While Musk was invited to the Washington, D.C, event, according to Warren, he didn’t make an appearance.
The lawmakers questioned whether Musk was conflicted in his efforts to dismantle the CFPB, highlighting his recent plan to launch a digital payments service within X, the social media network he owns.
“By seizing control of the agency, Musk can now root through all of the CFPB’s confidential data that DOGE has accessed on these potential competitors,” Warren said. “As Musk launches his new app, he faces oversight from the CFPB. His plan seems to be to eliminate the watchdog.”
A representative for Musk and X didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
Earlier this month, operatives from DOGE gained access to CFPB systems, shortly before the bureau’s new leadership shuttered the agency’s headquarters, froze nearly all activities and laid off roughly 200 employees. A CFPB union has alleged in a lawsuit that acting CFPB Director Russell Vought intends to fire more than 95% of the agency’s staff.

“Elon, how do you justify shutting down the agency that’s going to be looking at your peer-to-peer payment plan?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D.-Minn., asked rhetorically during the hearing Tuesday. “How do you justify shutting down the agency that has jurisdiction and oversight over many of the other financial issues that you are going to make money from doing?”

‘Secret sauce’

Responding to a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D.-Md., about what Musk could do with CFPB data, Lorelei Salas, the former CFPB supervision director, said the regulator kept “very sensitive trade secret information,” including from payments services PayPal, CashApp and Zelle, as well as online lenders.
“We’ve been looking at a number of digital wallet companies, payments companies, and we have information… on the technologies that they’re using,” Salas said. “We have information on the secret sauce of the credit models that people used with artificial intelligence to make decisions about whether you get a loan or not.”
Late last year, the CFPB took steps to supervise tech giants and payments firms that dominate the market, including Apple and PayPal, and sued the operator of the Zelle payments network and the three biggest U.S. banks using it for allegedly failing to properly investigate fraud complaints.
Besides confidential data on companies examined by the CFPB, the agency has “very sensitive data” from consumers filing complaints, Salas added. Consumers often leave account numbers and other personal data in their complaints, agency sources have said.
Now, with the CFPB and its employees in a state of limbo, the question is how far Musk and Vought can take their campaign to minimize the watchdog. A federal judge has halted their efforts, saying that they cannot fire employees or purge bureau data for the time being.
“The CFPB has been sidelined, but it is not dead,” Warren said, asserting that only Congress can shut down the bureau. “Advocates are in court right now asking judges to enforce the law, and I am confident they are going to win.” More

One of the biggest fears about Donald Trump’s approach to the economy was that he might try to undermine the Federal Reserve’s independence and press it to cut interest rates. So far that has not come to pass. Instead, he has set himself an even tougher challenge: persuading investors that market-determined rates should come down. Specifically, Mr Trump and senior members of his administration want to bring down the yield on ten-year Treasury bonds. On February 25th it fell to its lowest level since mid-December (see chart). All going to plan? Not quite. More

An expensive stock market did not prevent traders from getting more bullish as investors increasingly bet that the bull run could keep chugging along, according to Charles Schwab’s new quarterly client survey.
The bulls continue to outnumber the bears among traders 51% to 34%, according to Schwab’s survey, which polled 1,040 active traders last month.

Traders work on the New York Stock Exchange floor on Feb. 20, 2025.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images

An expensive stock market did not prevent traders from getting more bullish as investors increasingly bet that the bull run could keep chugging along, according to Charles Schwab’s new quarterly client survey.
The bulls continue to outnumber the bears among traders 51% to 34%, according to Schwab’s survey, which polled 1,040 active traders last month. Young traders under the age of 40 especially showed a spike in optimism, with bullishness jumping to 59%. That compares to 47% in the fourth quarter. The positive sentiment came even as two-thirds of the traders believe the market is overvalued, the survey said.

“It’s clear that the majority of traders believe there’s some froth in the market but on balance they also feel like there’s still more room for the bulls to run,” said James Kostulias, head of trading services at Charles Schwab. “More than half of traders plan to move additional money into stocks in Q1,” Kostulias added.
While bullishness indicates positive views on the market, it can also be seen as a contrary indicator when there are signs of excess.

Stock chart icon

After a booming two-year period in which the S&P 500 climbed more than 50%, the momentum has slowed as of late with rising concerns about an economic slowdown and heightened volatility from rapid policy changes from the new administration. The equity benchmark is only up 1.3% on the year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has dipped into negative territory for 2025.
In terms of sectors, traders are most bullish on energy, tech, finance and utilities. These sectors are typically beneficiaries under the Trump administration due to potential deregulation.
The survey also detected a significant drop in the number of traders who believe a recession will occur in the U.S. Only a third of the respondents called it “somewhat likely,” compared to 54% in the prior quarter.
The majority of traders also did not see a reacceleration in inflation, with two-thirds of them seeing price pressures holding steady.

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