|
|
|
Jul 27, 2026
|
|
|
|
|
Supported by
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Welcome back! DeepSeek puts its fundraising talks on hold. SpaceX completes its first Starship test flight since its IPO. Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies soars 472% in its Shanghai trading debut.
|
|
|
|
Chinese AI developer DeepSeek has told investors that it is putting its fundraising talks on hold, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The pause on the new funding round, which values DeepSeek at 500 billion yuan ($74 billion), comes after a leaked transcript of CEO Liang Wenfeng’s investor call went viral last week on Chinese social media and X. The call, which was held in May, laid out DeepSeek’s strategic priorities and Liang’s thinking behind them. The CEO was displeased with the leak, according to the person. The decision to put the new round on hold, which was reported earlier by Bloomberg, also comes after Moonshot AI, one of DeepSeek’s domestic rivals, recently became a global sensation with the release of its powerful new open-source model, Kimi K3, which rivaled U.S. frontier models on some benchmarks. Last week, some investors asked DeepSeek whether Kimi K3’s success could have any impact on DeepSeek’s plans, according to the person. In recent weeks, DeepSeek has been in talks to raise 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) for the new round, shortly after the firm closed its first-ever funding round last month, as The Information previously reported. Investors expect the fundraising talks to resume at a later date, but it is unclear how long the pause will last.
|
|
|
|
SpaceX completed its 13th test flight of its Starship rocket on Friday night after aborting a test launch last week, the first completed launch since the company went public last month. The test flight marked several key milestones for SpaceX, including deploying 20 of its next generation Starlink satellites into orbit for the first time before they were intentionally deorbited. The satellites are designed to be larger and more powerful than previous generations and the test allowed the company to see how the satellites would perform in flight for the first time. SpaceX said in a statement that the Super Heavy booster separated from Starship as planned but made a “hard splashdown” in the Gulf after only some of its engines reignited during the landing burn. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that the rocket’s next test might be even more advanced. “Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight,” he wrote on X. Starship is central to SpaceX’s ambitions to dramatically expand its Starlink network and support future missions with NASA. Shares of the rocket company have been trending lower in recent weeks and is now well below the initial public offering price of $135 last week.
|
|
|
|
ChangXin Memory Technologies, China’s leading memory chipmaker, jumped 472% in its Shanghai trading debut on Monday, as investors bet the Chinese memory chipmaker will benefit from growing demand for AI. The opening price valued CXMT at about 3.3 trillion yuan ($487 billion), making it the largest company listed in mainland China, and the stock climbed as much as 535% in morning trading. CXMT’s listing, the largest onshore initial public offering in China, raised up to 66.6 billion yuan. Apple is considering CXMT as an alternative supplier as memory-chip prices rise, but the plan faces political resistance in Washington, according to the Financial Times. The Pentagon has previously designated CXMT as a Chinese military company, and some U.S. lawmakers want the Trump administration to consider tougher restrictions on the chipmaker. CXMT makes Dynamic Random Access Memory, which helps phones, computers and servers quickly retrieve data while running programs. The company has quickly become the biggest challenger to Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron, the three companies that dominate the memory-chip industry. Its share of global DRAM sales rose to 8% in the first quarter from 3% a year earlier, making it the world’s fourth-largest supplier, according to research firm Counterpoint Research.
|
|
|
|
Online fashion retailer Shein revealed in paperwork for its forthcoming Hong Kong Stock Exchange IPO that last year’s elimination of regulations allowing retailers to import low-cost items without paying duties had hit its business hard. Shein’s revenue growth slowed to 1.1% in the first quarter of 2026, while its U.S. business shrank 14%. The company lost money in the first quarter. The de minimis rule, which allowed items worth less than $800 to be imported duty-free, was eliminated by the Trump administration in May of last year, and the European Union took similar steps. Shein’s revenue growth slowed in 2025 to 8%, from 21% in 2024. In 2023, the U.S. accounted for 29.4% of Shein’s revenue but only 22.5% in the first quarter of this year. In the IPO filing, Shein said the elimination of de minimis had forced Shein to adopt “formal customs clearance procedures and a framework of price increases, localized inventory and fulfilment” in the U.S., with similar measures expected in Europe. The result was “an adverse impact on our sales in the U.S. and the overall growth of our net revenues” and had also increased its fulfilment costs. Shein swung to a net loss in the first quarter of $99 million, after earning $395 million in the year-earlier quarter. In 2025, Shein earned $2 billion in net income, down from $3.365 billion in 2024, the IPO paperwork showed. The paperwork showed that Shein had 273 million customers last year, which rose to 281 million in the first quarter of this year.
|
|
|
|
Many of the largest U.S. tech companies signed a | | | |
