BYD’s Olive Branch to Tesla

BYD’s Olive Branch to Tesla

“Our common enemy is the internal combustion engine car. We need to work together … to make the industry change,” Executive Vice-President Stella Li said in an interview with the Financial Times, highlighting the need for BYD [BYDDF] and Tesla [TSLA] to work together. Elsewhere, Seeking Alpha reported that Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm has sold 112,390 shares for $33.7m, following a similar sale last month.

Tariffs Wars Are Here 

Global markets slumped Tuesday as US President Donald Trump’s tariffs sparked fears of a full-blown trade war. A 25% tariff now applies to Canadian and Mexican imports, while Chinese goods face an additional 10% levy on top of the 10% imposed last month. Beijing responded with 10–15% tariffs on US agricultural products, while Canada hit $107bn of US imports and President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico would impose "tariff and non-tariff measures”.  

Taipei Reassures on New TSMC Plant

Taiwan’s government has downplayed fears of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co [TSM] becoming “Americanized” after Monday’s announcement of a $100bn US investment. “TSMC already has plants in the US and Japan, and it’s now building a new plant in Germany,” Minister of Economic Affairs Kuo Jyh-Huei said on Tuesday, as reported by Bloomberg. “These have nothing to do with tariffs.”

Which Chinese EV Stocks Could Challenge Tesla in Europe?

Tesla sold less than 10,000 vehicles across Europe in January, a 45% drop from a year earlier when it shifted approximately 18,000 vehicles, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. OPTO explores the investment case for Nio [NIO], XPeng [XPEV] and Zeekr [ZK], each of which are on a European offensive as they look for growth beyond China’s highly competitive EV market.

South Korea Battens Down the Hatches

The country’s top conglomerates are ramping up restructuring as Chinese competition grows and US tariff threats mount, the Financial Times has reported. Companies involved in steel, semiconductors and electric vehicle (EV) batteries are streamlining operations to raise cash. M&A deals surged from 817 in 2023 to 930 last year, with total value jumping to $68.3bn.

Tech Stocks Pile into Anthropic

A week after launching its “most intelligent” model to date, Anthropic raised $3.5bn in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, tripling its valuation to over $60bn. Other backers include Cisco [CSCO] and Salesforce [CRM]. The artificial intelligence (AI) start-up plans to use the capital for computing resources and global expansion as it squares up to OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek.

Tencent Beats DeepSeek on Installations

Last month, OPTO asked: ‘Can These 3 Chinese Tech Stocks Beat DeepSeek?’ It seems that one of them has: Bloomberg reported that Tencent’s [TCEHY] Yuanbao AI chatbot has overtaken DeepSeek as China’s top iPhone app. It integrates Tencent’s Hunyuan AI with DeepSeek’s R1 model. Three of China’s top-five free apps are now AI bots, another one being ByteDance’s Doubao.