BEIJING — Chinese businesses are tapping DeepSeek’s newest artificial intelligence model to see how it can improve productivity.
The Chinese AI model took the world by storm in recent weeks after showcasing its reasoning process and claims to undercut rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT on cost — despite U.S. restrictions on Chinese access to the advanced semiconductors needed to develop the tech.
Eight automakers including BYD, at least nine financial securities companies, three state-owned telecommunications operators and smartphone brand Honor are among the many that have rushed in the last week to integrate with DeepSeek. Cloud computing operators Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent and Baidu have all offered ways for clients to access DeepSeek’s latest model.
“This is quite unprecedented,” Wei Sun, principal analyst of artificial intelligence at Counterpoint Research, said in an email Monday. She pointed to the rate of adoption, scale of business integration and breadth of specific industries covered.
“When we have all of these, we know it’s making a big social and economic impact,” she said.
Optimism over artificial intelligence has spread to Chinese stocks. UBS said Wednesday that AI-related Chinese stocks are up by 15% since the start of the year, outperforming the broader MSCI China Index by 9%.
As a result, less developed parts of China gained greater understanding of AI and its impact, a topic previously limited to conversations in China’s largest cities, said Wenhao Zhang, CEO of the Beijing-based consumer marketing consultancy Doodod.
“It’s a major education of the market. This will push the entire ecosystem’s development,” he said Tuesday in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
Zhang, who studied AI at Tsinghua University, founded Doodod in 2012 to build customer engagement through social media analysis. He said the company — which counts China Merchant’s Bank and Toyota as clients — started looking at DeepSeek’s offerings late last year, and began using it more after the R1 release in late January.
Another attractive factor for businesses is that DeepSeek’s models are open-source, allowing individuals and companies to download and customize it.
DeepSeek also advertised drastically lower prices for applications to use its tech versus that of OpenAI. ChatGPT is not officially available in mainland China and requires users to provide an overseas phone number and payment method from a supported country such as the U.S.
DeepSeek changed the perception that AI models only belong to big companies and have high implementation costs, said James Tong, CEO of Movitech, an enterprise software company which says its clients include Danone and China’s State Grid.
He said Movitech started integrating an earlier version of DeepSeek in the fourth quarter of last year, helping boost sales by about 25% from the same period in 2023. The company plans to launch a new DeepSeek-integrated application by the end of March to improve clients’ ability to make decisions, he said.
Many recent videos on Chinese social media have showed off how to run a local version of DeepSeek on Apple’s Mac mini.
Apple Mac mini online sales in China climbed significantly from November to January, versus the same period the year prior, according to data from consultancy WPIC. The electronics-focused JD.com site recorded unit sales of around 20,200 in January, up from nearly 19,400 in December and around 12,250 in November, the data showed.
DeepSeek’s affordability is pressuring more expensive AI models to cut prices, enabling more businesses to adopt the tech, said Chim Lee, senior Asia analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. He added that open-source models allow finance, banking and healthcare businesses — which aresubject to stringent data protection rules in China — to develop AI applications locally.
“It is still very early to point to concrete business applications, but a key takeaway is that DeepSeek will accelerate the commoditization of AI,” Lee said.
Beijing is also increasing support. China’s national supercomputing network announced Tuesday that eligible companies and individuals can obtain three free months of DeepSeek access, along with subsidized computing power.
The network is similar to OpenAI’s Trump-backed Stargate project in the U.S. for building AI infrastructure — with the potential for “even faster scaling,” Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law said Wednesday. He is also the author of “The Digital War: How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace.”
Not centered on DeepSeek
The rush to try out DeepSeek doesn’t mean it will be the only AI provider for Chinese companies. Developers in the U.S. and China are regularly releasing new models.
Movitech also uses Alibaba’s Qwen AI model, Tong said, noting that the market wants the tech that can lower costs and produce results the most, whether it’s OpenAI or DeepSeek.
HangHang AI, which has invested several hundred million yuan to develop AI solutions for companies across 20 industries, uses a range of models, said partner and COO Shu Weibing.
Many people first used “Baidu, then realized it wasn’t as good as Kimi, then it wasn’t as good as [ByteDance’s] Doubao, which also cut prices,” Shu said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. “Now it’s DeepSeek.”
It remains to be seen how much generative AI can boost productivity and profits.
Shu predicts that small businesses and companies that integrate AI with hardware will benefit more than large, consumer-facing internet platforms, whose AI work so far, he said, has focused more on boosting efficiency rather than creating new consumer services.
Despite AI models’ falling prices, “small and medium-sized businesses may still be in a period of wait-and-see” for adopting the tech due to the relatively high cost for a full deployment, including computing power and customization, Mike Fang, senior director analyst at Gartner, said Wednesday in Mandarin translated by CNBC.
But the consulting firm predicts that by 2027, the average price to access a generative AI model will be less than 1% of what it costs now — and that by 2029, 60% of Chinese businesses will have incorporated AI into their primary products and services, forming the top drivers of revenue growth.
Leading analyst Craig Moffett suggests any plans to move U.S. iPhone assembly to India is unrealistic.
Moffett, ranked as a top analyst multiple times by Institutional Investor, sent a memo to clients on Friday after the Financial Times reported Apple was aiming to shift production toward India from China by the end of next year.
He’s questioning how a move could bring down costs tied to tariffs because the iPhone components would still be made in China.
“You have a tremendous menu of problems created by tariffs, and moving to India doesn’t solve all the problems. Now granted, it helps to some degree,” the MoffettNathanson partner and senior managing director told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Friday. “I would question how that’s going to work.”
Moffett contends it’s not so easy to diversify to India — telling clients Apple’s supply chain would still be anchored in China and would likely face resistance.
“The bottom line is a global trade war is a two-front battle, impacting costs and sales. Moving assembly to India might (and we emphasize might) help with the former. The latter may ultimately be the bigger issue,” he wrote to clients.
Moffett cut his Apple price target on Monday to $141 from $184 a share. It implies a 33% drop from Friday’s close. The price target is also the Street low, according to FactSet.
“I don’t think of myself as the biggest Apple bear,” he said. “I think quite highly of Apple. My concern about Apple has been the valuation more than the company.”
Moffett has had a “sell” rating on Apple since Jan. 7. Since then, the company’s shares are down about 14%.
“None of this is because Apple is a bad company. They still have a great balance sheet [and] a great consumer franchise,” he said. “It’s just the reality of there are no good answers when you are a product company, and your products are going to be significantly tariffed, and you’re heading into a market that is likely to have at least some deceleration in consumer demand because of the macro economy.”
Moffett notes Apple also isn’t getting help from its carriers to cushion the blow of tariffs.
“You also have the demand destruction that’s created by potentially higher prices. Remember, you had AT&T, Verizon and T. Mobile all this week come out and say we’re not going to underwrite the additional cost of tariff [on] handsets,” he added. “The consumer is going to have to pay for that. So, you’re going to have some demand destruction that’s going to show up in even longer holding periods and slower upgrade rates — all of which probably trims estimates next year’s consensus.”
According to Moffett, the backlash against Apple in China over U.S. tariffs will also hurt iPhone sales.
“It’s a very real problem,” Moffett said. “Volumes are really going to the Huaweis and the Vivos and the local competitors in China rather than to Apple.”
Apple stock is coming off a winning week — up more than 6%. It comes ahead of the iPhone maker’s quarterly earnings report due next Thursday after the market close.
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In a year that hasn’t been kind to many big-name stocks, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is standing near the top. Berkshire shares have posted a 17% return year-to-date, while the S&P 500 index is down 6%.
That performance places Berkshire among the top 10% of the U.S. market’s large-cap leaders, and the run has been getting Buffett more attention ahead of next weekend’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s also good timing for the recently launched VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF(OMAH), which holds the top 20 most heavily weighted stocks in Berkshire Hathaway, as well as shares of Berkshire Hathaway.
“It’s a really well-balanced portfolio chosen by the most successful investor the world has ever seen,” Adam Patti, CEO of VistaShares, said in an appearance this week on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”
Berkshire’s outperformance of the S&P 500 isn’t limited to 2025. Buffett’s stock has tripled the performance of the market over the past year, and its 185% return over the past five years is more than double the performance of the S&P 500.
Berkshire Hathaway is one of 2025’s top performing stocks.
In addition to this long-term track record of success in the market, Berkshire Hathaway is getting a lot of attention right now for the record amount of cash Buffett is holding as he trimmed stakes in big stocks including Apple, which has proven to be a great strategy. The S&P 500 has experienced extreme short-term volatility since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Even after a recent recovery, the S&P is still down 8% since the start of Trump’s second term.
“The market has been momentum driven for many years, the switch has flipped and we’re looking at quality in terms of exposure, and Berkshire Hathaway has performed incredibly well this year, handily outperforming the S&P 500,” said Patti.
Berkshire Hathaway famously doesn’t pay a dividend, with Buffett holding firm over many decades in the belief that he can re-invest cash to create more value for shareholders. In a letter to shareholders in February, Buffett wrote that Berkshire shareholders “can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities — mostly American equities.”
The lack of a dividend payment has been an issue over the years for some shareholders at Berkshire who do want income from the market, according to Patti, who added that his firm conducted research among investors in designing the ETF. “Who doesn’t want to invest like Buffett, but with income?” he said.
So, in addition to being tied to the performance of Berkshire and the stock picks of Buffett, the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF is designed to produce income of 15% annually through a strategy of selling call options and distributing monthly payments of 1.25% to shareholders. This income strategy has become more popular in the ETF space, with more asset managers launching funds to capture income opportunities and more investors adopting the approach amid market volatility.
People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.
Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images
A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.
The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.
In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.
Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.
Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.
“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”
“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.
He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.
“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”
The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.
“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”
Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.
Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.
Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.