OpenAI’s next model is being designed by another model in a sign that AI is reaching “superintelligence,” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son told CNBC.

The billionaire’s comments come amid a warning from Anthropic that artificial intelligence development may need to be slowed down to deal with the implications of the rapid pace of improvement.

Son runs SoftBank, one of the world’s biggest tech investors and one of the largest OpenAI shareholders. In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Son said he had spoken to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and engineers at the firm, who told him that an AI “model is designing” a future model.

“So that’s going to happen to all the other major models,” Son said, adding that engineers will no longer be smart enough to design the next model.

“So once that happens, [the] model generates [the] next model … and it’s going to be exponentially smarter than all of us. That’s a superintelligence,” Son told CNBC.

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on unreleased models but highlighted areas where the company was already using AI in model development.

In February, OpenAI said its GPT‑5.3‑Codex is its “first model that was instrumental in creating itself.” The team behind Codex, which is OpenAI’s coding tools, “used early versions to debug its own training, manage its own deployment, and diagnose test results and evaluations.”

Son’s comments are part of a broader conversation about “artificial superintelligence” or ASI, a term that in 2024 he described as AI that is 10,000 times smarter than humans. At the time, Son said ASI will be here in 10 years.

However, he told CNBC on Monday that when he laid out that timeline nearly two years ago, he was “trying to be conservative because people get shocked.”

“In my mind, I thought it was coming in four years instead of 10 years. Now, I say it’s coming in the next two years,” Son said.

The SoftBank CEO said he currently uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT two to three hours a day as the AI is smarter than he is in “most subjects.”

In the next couple of years, AI will be smarter than humans in around 70% to 80% of subjects, and those subjects in which it exceeds human intelligence, it “may be 10 times smarter than average people,” Son said.

Son has been bullish on AI for several years and has positioned SoftBank in the middle of the boom through its ownership of chip designer Arm and stake in OpenAI as well as investments in areas such as robotics and autonomous driving.

He told CNBC that the AI revolution is 50 times bigger than the dot-com revolution in the 2000s.

The dangers of more advanced AI systems were thrust into the spotlight Thursday after Anthropic released a blog post about “recursive self-improvement” or RSI, a trend where an AI system is “capable of fully autonomously designing and developing its own successor.”

While Anthropic said that there would be positive outcomes, it warned that “full recursive self-improvement also might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems.”

The company, which develops the AI chatbot called Claude, said a coordinated effort between AI labs to slow down the development of this technology “would likely be a good thing.”

When talking about OpenAI’s model improvement, it’s unclear if Son was referring to RSI. But in June, an OpenAI research paper said there are “early signs” of RSI in today’s systems.

“We expect this to increase competitive pressures among developers and nations, and create governance challenges that existing institutions are not equipped to address. As RSI emerges, societies will need ways to shape the trajectory of AI development and ensure that it serves human interests,” the paper said.

In a quarter partially affected by the economic disruptions from the Middle East conflict, India’s economy grew at 7.8% year-on-year in the three months to the end of March, a faster-than-expected pace.

As per a Reuters poll, the economy was forecast to grow by 7.2% in Jan-Mar, lower than 7.8% in the previous quarter.

In the first half of the quarter, India’s trade prospects improved sharply as it finalized a “mother of all deals” with the European Union and managed to get the U.S. to lower tariffs on its goods from 50% to 18%.

These were further lowered to 10% after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs as illegal.

But then the Iran war began at the end of February, which has since become a severe risk to India’s economy and is anticipated to hurt growth and raise inflation.

On Friday, India’s central bank raised its inflation projection for the financial year ending March 2027 by 50 basis points to 5.1%, while tempering the economy’s growth forecast to 6.6% for the year, down from 6.9% projected earlier.

Energy supply disruptions caused by the conflict have inflated India’s import bill, piling pressure on the rupee that has already been hit by record foreign investor outflows.

The world’s fastest-growing major economy is expected to feel the pinch of inflation as the government has passed on global fuel price hikes to consumers in May, after holding them off for a couple of months.  

As of April, inflation remains under the RBI target of 4%, but India is widely expected to face weather-related disruptions due to El Nino this year, which could cause crop shortages and push food prices higher.

The Reserve Bank of India on Friday said the policy has turned “cautious” owing to the deteriorating global economic conditions.

India is doubling down on measures aimed at attracting foreign portfolio investments, as capital outflows hit a record high.

The government on Friday announced that it has exempted foreign investors and ​the Bank for International Settlements — a global financial institution owned by central banks— from income tax on any interest or capital gains.

The exemption will take effect from ​April 1, 2026, ​as per the government’s release.

Foreign investors face 12.5% long-term capital gains tax on listed ​shares and bonds held for more than ​12 months, ⁠and a 20% withholding tax on interest earned from government bonds.

In its monetary policy Friday, the Reserve Bank of India also announced that it was expanding the bouquet of government securities for non-resident investors to park funds while also removing limits on “short-term investment, concentration, and individual securities” for foreign portfolio investors.

All these measures, along with numerous trade deals India has entered into, will allow for a “much better BOP (balance of payment) this year,” than what would have been otherwise, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said in a press conference on Friday.

The central bank also said that the limits for investment in stocks, without registration with India’s capital market regulator, are being increased for non-resident Indians and those holding overseas citizenship of India.

Since the start of the year, the sell-off by foreign investors in Indian securities has intensified, particularly in stocks. Foreign investors have sold Indian equities worth $27.6 billion since January, compared with a total of $18.9 billion in 2025, per data from the Indian depository NSDL.

These sell-offs, coupled with the rising import bill due to the surge in global oil prices, have weighed on the Indian rupee, putting it among the worst-performing currencies in Asia.

The moves easing capital inflows will help the rupee, which has been mostly falling due to the strong currency outflows, Krishna Bhimavarapu, APAC economist at State Street Global Advisors, told CNBC.

He added that this is a “step in the right direction,” and the announcement has come at a “very good time.” On a year-to-date basis, the rupee has fallen by more than 6%, LSEG data shows.

South Korea stocks plunged Friday, leading losses in the region, as the slump in Wall Street tech names overnight spread into Asia, dragging benchmark indexes lower.

The Kospi ended Friday’s session 5.54% lower at 8,160.59. Index heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped 6.40% and 9.92%, respectively. The small-cap Kosdaq index fell 4.50%.

In a move that could pressure South Korea’s tech sector further, the country’s labor minister urged its biggest technology companies to distribute more of the gains from the AI-driven semiconductor boom with workers and suppliers, saying record profits risk exacerbating income inequality.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 1.31% to 66,588.12.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 0.70% to 8,625.10.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 1.11% in its last hour of trade, while mainland China’s CSI 300 dropped 1.79% to 4,816.92.

India’s Nifty 50 was marginally lower in choppy trade, while the BSE Sensex was flat as of 1:00 p.m. loca;l time (3:30 a.m. ET)

Overnight in the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied to a fresh all-time high, while the Nasdaq Composite underperformed as investors appeared to rotate out of chip names in favor of non-tech stocks.

The 30-stock Dow jumped 874.86 points, or 1.73%, to close at a record 51,561.93. The Nasdaq lost 0.09% and ended at 26,830.96, while the S&P 500 rose 0.41% to 7,584.31.

The rotation was sparked by a sell-off in Broadcom that led investors to pare exposure to AI-linked stocks. The chipmaker slid more than 12% after its fiscal second-quarter revenue missed estimates. Chip names, which led the latest leg higher in the market’s rally to record levels, fell broadly. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) lost more than 1%. Arm Holdings shed more than 4%, while Micron Technology fell close to 8%.

Stocks also came under pressure on Middle East worries. Mixed messages have emerged recently out of negotiations to end the war, which has upset global markets and caused oil and gasoline prices to spike.

— CNBC’s Spencer Kimball and Lisa Kailai Han contributed to this report.

India’s central bank on Friday held interest rates at 5.25% at a time when surging global energy costs have hammered its currency, while the Iran war risks accelerating inflation.

The Reserve Bank of India was widely expected to keep rates steady, as per economists polled by both Reuters and CNBC.

RBI raised its inflation projection for the financial year ending March 2027 by 50 basis points to 5.1%, while tempering the economy’s growth forecast to 6.6% for the year, down from 6.9% projected earlier.

Governor Sanjay Malhotra said in his statement that “monetary policy has turned more cautious” as the global economic outlook remains clouded by the “geopolitical impasse” in the Middle East. He added that “sharply escalating energy prices and global supply chain disruptions continue to hinder economic activity.”

Krishna Bhimavarapu, APAC economist at State Street Global Advisors, told CNBC that the RBI with its “hawkish stance,” is preparing the market for a possible rate hike in August.

The conflict in the Middle East has posed a severe risk to the Indian economy, as energy supply disruptions have inflated the country’s import bill, piling pressure on the rupee that has already been hit by record foreign investor outflows.

In an attempt at shoring up the currency, Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month urged citizens to pause gold purchases, conserve fuel, and avoid overseas travel.

Policymakers have also taken action to defend the rupee, including selling dollars through state-run banks to stem its slide, according to a Reuters report. The government has also raised duties to curb demand for gold, a move aimed at conserving foreign exchange reserves.

Despite these measures, the rupee remains fragile. On a year-to-date basis, the rupee has weakened by over 6% against the dollar as per LSEG data, trading at 95.78 against the greenback.

The RBI faces a tough choice as the Iran war slows the world’s fastest-growing major economy, while inflation risks loom. In April, even before the government passed on the fuel price increases, India’s inflation rose for a sixth straight month to 3.48% from 3.40% in March.

Though inflation remains under the RBI target of 4% for now, India is expected to face weather-related disruptions due to El Nino this year that could cause crop shortages and push food prices higher. Food inflation, a key constituent of India’s consumer price index, rose 4.2% in April from 3.87% in March. 

As per a Reuters poll, India’s economy is expected to grow by 7.2% in January-March quarter, slowing from 7.8% in the previous quarter. The official quarterly GDP print will be released later on Friday.

“The biggest risk for India in terms of inflation is the delayed south-west monsoon, with a high probability of El Nino,” Bhimavarapu said.

Yield on India’s 10-year government bonds was down about 4 basis points at 6.958%, while the Nifty 50 stock index was up 0.22%.

Hello, this is Anniek Bao writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.

Wall Street had a strong session overnight — if you squint past the Nasdaq. The Dow hit an all-time high and oil cooled on optimism that the Iran war was nearing its end.

Chip stocks, however, stumbled; bitcoin is hovering at its weakest since the war began, private credit is throwing off sparks again — and a flesh-eating parasite has turned up in Texas.

As Wall Street is throwing a rocket-themed party for SpaceX, rating agency S&P Global made it clear that the blockbuster IPO may not see a swift entry for the company into its benchmark index.

The ceasefire trade is back on, with the Dow surging to a fresh all-time high, the S&P 500 edging higher and oil prices cooling 3%.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he’d be “honored” to meet Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, if a deal can be reached, while the Wall Street Journal reported that the president was reluctant to resume a full-scale war with Tehran.

Brent futures, the international crude benchmark, lost 2.8% to close at $95.03 per barrel, West Texas Intermediate futures dropped 3.1% to settle at $93.04 per barrel Thursday. Both were down in Friday Asia trading.

That drop in oil comes even as Iran-backed Hezbollah has rejected the terms of a U.S.-backed ceasefire agreed between Israel and Lebanon as “absurd, humiliating and insulting,” demanding a full Israeli withdrawal before any deal holds.

From energy to tech: Broadcom tumbled about 15% after missing revenue expectations — enough to drag the Nasdaq down nearly 0.1% even as the rest of Wall Street cheered. The tech contagion spread to stocks in Asia, dragging key indexes lower.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has invited Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on June 11 over the company’s China sales and U.S. export controls, according to a letter seen by CNBC.

Meanwhile, TSMC Chairman Che-Chia Wei told shareholders on Thursday that the firm was striving to keep up with demand and avoid becoming a bottleneck in the global supply chain, while signaling a willingness to raise prices.

Crypto slide continued, with bitcoin weathering its ugliest week in months, briefly dipping below $62,000 before steadying near $63,719. It has now erased all of its gains since the war began, caught between ETF outflows, a rotation into other assets and Michael Saylor’s Strategy revealingits first bitcoin sale since 2022.

Cracks in private credit widened. Blackstone capped withdrawals from its flagship Blackstone Private Credit fund, following a spike in investor redemption requests. It followed Switzerland’s Partners Group, which did the same for one of its private equity vehicles while warning that it may restrict withdrawals across more funds as the pressure spreads from credit into private equity.

The Wall Street banks are competing to fete clients ahead of the SpaceX listing. Bank of America, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are all hosting splashy events over the next few days for a deal that aims to raise a record $75 billion at an expected $1.75 trillion valuation — the largest IPO of all time.

In other news, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed the detection of a New World screwworm in a bovine in Zavala County, Texas — the first detection of the flesh-eating pest in the United States in decades, found in a 3-week-old calf.

— Anniek Bao

The World Cup will boost these hospitality stocks, Deutsche and Goldman say

The world’s biggest sporting event kicks off in North America next week. Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have listed the sectors and stocks they see getting a boost from the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted by the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

“Our analysts in leisure, restaurants and beverages, media, tech, and gaming see names in their coverage for which the World Cup could be a supportive factor for shares,” Deutsche analysts wrote on Tuesday, outlining a number of stocks that would get a “temporary tailwind.”

Deutsche picked U.S. restaurant brands with greater proximity to World Cup host cities, saying they were best positioned to benefit from increased tourism. 

Goldman Sachs is also forecasting a boon to European and U.S. consumer staples, European consumer discretionary, U.S. retail, US lodging and leisure, and U.S. airlines, because of the sheer number of people spending big to travel to see the games.

— Joseph Wilkins

A youth political movement in India that has gone viral on social media — and that has a cockroach as its mascot — will face its first offline popularity test on Saturday as it plans a protest in New Delhi.

Within weeks of its launch in mid-May, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) amassed over 22 million followers on Instagram.

The pseudo-political CJP was launched on May 16 by political communications strategist and Boston university student Abhijeet Dipke in response to comments by India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant calling some unemployed youngsters’ “parasites” and “cockroaches” during a courtroom hearing.

The CJP claims to have more than a million members and describes itself on its website as the “voice of the lazy and unemployed.”

But experts said there is little evidence of on-ground support for the mock party, adding that the scale of protest at the weekend would determine if the movement would be seen as a warning sign or a market-moving event.

Similar movements led by disgruntled youth on social media in Nepal, Bangladesh, and, more recently, Indonesia have disrupted economic activity and threatened political stability. In some cases, it has also led to the ouster of the ruling party.

For investors, it is important that governments “maintain confidence that the next generation will enjoy better economic prospects than the last,” Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia research at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC.

Across Asia, this proposition “is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain,” she added.

At its core, the movement reflects “growing frustration over why the much-discussed demographic dividend has delivered uneven outcomes after more than a decade of political promises and expectations,” Bhattacharya said.

India’s economy has been under strain since the start of the Iran war, as energy supply disruptions have led to the weakening of the rupee against the dollar, and there are mounting concerns about slowing growth and rising inflation.

Against this backdrop, experts said job creation continues to be the biggest challenge facing the country with the world’s highest youth population.

In an open letter in April, global equity research firm Bernstein warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi of a deepening employment crisis in the country. The rise of generative AI is also expected to slow down hiring in India’s IT sector, while manufacturing jobs have not shown significant growth.

Other major economies in Asia, like China, are also facing diminished prospects for private sector jobs due to an economic slump and worsening business sentiment.

Through its social media handles, the CJP posts about the lack of development and rising unemployment. But the protest on Saturday will address recent discrepancies in crucial high school and entrance exams conducted by the government, which media reports say have affected millions of students.

“This party, this youth movement seeks accountability from the system,” a Cockroach party spokesperson said at a press conference on Wednesday. He added that the “rot” in the system runs deep, and people are being vocal about it by supporting the party on social media.

The CJP is demanding the resignation of India’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, it said during the press conference.

India’s leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, has also raised the issue of mis-marked exams in a May 17 post on X, stating that Pradhan “has failed every single age group of India’s students at once.”

The discrepancies in exams have been “fairly disastrous,” said Ashok Malik, partner at public policy think tank The Asia Group. “It is perhaps the biggest challenge the government has faced in 12 years,” he added.

He also said the performance of the government on job creation has been inadequate but said that these issues have not dented the popularity of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi so far.

Last month, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party achieved a historic election win in West Bengal, strengthening its grip on power even as the country faced economic challenges.

“The PM’s predictability remains fairly high,” Malik said, adding that if the protest on Saturday gathers a million people, it would be significant enough for investors to take notice.

Last time the Modi government faced stiff protests was in 2020 when it introduced farming reforms. After yearlong protests from farmers across the country, Modi repealed the controversial laws in November 2021. His government returned to power for a third term, but lost its outright majority.

“I don’t think India is at risk [of political upheaval] since India is a vast and complex country where for any political outfit to make an impact, it needs serious physical presence and ground mobilization,” said Ronojoy Sen, a senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies.

“Only an online presence won’t do,” he added, referring to the CJP’s social media handles.

HELSINKI, Finland — Finnish President Alexander Stubb has outlined his vision for a much larger European Union, saying the 27-nation bloc needs to “think big” and seize the moment to project power on the global stage.

Speaking at an energy conference in the Finnish capital on Wednesday, Stubb said the EU should push to increase its membership to 40 states and named the U.K., Canada, Turkey, Norway and Iceland as potential candidates to join.

His comments come as the Trump administration’s actions, alongside Russia’s war with Ukraine, prompt some countries to reconsider the benefits of EU membership.

Stubb told the Eurelectric Power Summit that “the window of opportunity” for EU enlargement “is quite short because when the war in Ukraine ends and perhaps when the U.S. administration changes, I don’t know, then people are going to take their foot off the gas pedal and start heckling about unnecessary stuff again.”

Stubb added that “European strategic autonomy or European geopolitical power” is “often based on size and scale and I think the best European policy ever has been European enlargement.”

“In this moment, we need to think big and geographically, we need to enlarge or at least create memberships which are flexible enough to bring in a sum total of 40 European states — or even non-European,” Stubb said.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The EU is pursuing its largest enlargement in a generation, with nine candidate countries all eyeing entry to the bloc over the coming years. Montenegro and Albania are seen as the frontrunners among the Western Balkans, while Ukraine and Moldova are moving closer to opening formal membership talks.

Finland’s president said the EU should look to its western flank and bring the U.K., which left the bloc in 2020, back into the fold, or at least “as close as possible.”

Canada should be considered as another option, Stubb said. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if Canada was the 28th state of the European Union rather than the 51st state of the United States?”

U.S. President Donald Trump has touted his ambitions of annexing Canada. In a Truth Social post earlier in the week, Trump wrote “51st state!” while sharing a Bloomberg news article about Canada entering a technical recession for the first time since 2020.

Stubb told the conference that after looking at Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, “we need to think seriously about Turkey.”

“No one is talking about Turkey anymore, and we need to open our minds to understand that at least from a security perspective, Turkey needs to be as close as possible,” Stubb said.

“Then you go to the south or southeast, we look at the Western Balkans, I mean that is the hottest spot in Europe … it’s super important. What do we do with Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia? What are we doing with Bosnia and Herzegovina?” he added.

“And then finally, the ones that are really close to my heart, if you go up north, is Iceland, which is holding a referendum, and then Norway,” Stubb said.

“We need to start thinking big if we want to project power in the world. But who is going to do this, when, where and how, I don’t know,” Stubb said.

Iceland’s parliament recently voted in favor of holding a referendum on Aug. 29 on whether to begin EU accession talks. The small Nordic country had applied to join the EU in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis, before suspending membership talks four years later.

Former Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir previously told CNBC that she didn’t see the argument for joining the EU, adding the country already maintains close economic collaboration with the bloc and its citizens enjoy high living standards.

“If a majority of the people wants to apply, it is very important to listen to that majority, but I haven’t changed my position,” Jakobsdóttir told CNBC in mid-April.

Norway is reportedly reconsidering its relationship with Brussels as it navigates a power struggle between the U.S. and China. Oslo has twice rejected EU membership.

The companies that can provide the most economic value from the power their AI uses will ultimately command the highest valuations, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told CNBC on Wednesday.

Srinivas said that whichever company can provide the “most token value per watt per user” will be the winner in the future.

“Whoever is able to maximize this particular objective really will, by balancing accuracy, latency, cost, privacy and intelligence all together, they’re going to win, that’s what’s going to win long term,” Srinivas told CNBC’s Elaine Yu in an interview on Wednesday.

A token refers to the basic unit of data that an AI model can process. When an AI chatbot is asked to carry out a task, it breaks it down into tokens. Each token then requires energy to be processed. Srinivas’ view is that whichever company can provide the best ratio of energy to economic output will be in the strongest position.

“And so it might feel like some model providers are making a lot of money because their models are very expensive … but that’s short-term revenue growth,” Srinivas said.

Perplexity is stepping up its focus on agentic AI, a term that refers to AI systems capable of handling more complex tasks beyond simple queries. In February, the company announced Perplexity Computer, an agent it says can execute complex tasks over long periods of time.

While Perplexity develops some of its own models, its key products integrate models from other AI firms like Anthropic. A key focus for Perplexity is improving efficiency to achieve the best outcomes while minimizing energy use. To support that goal, Perplexity announced Personal Computer on Tuesday, a tool which it calls an “orchestrator.”

The process of orchestration involves a system that makes decisions on what the best model is to use for a particular task, how agents work together, and where the AI should process queries. Much of the actual AI processing today is done in data centers.

But there is an increasing focus from AI firms on enabling these models to be processed on a device like a phone or laptop. Experts say this could reduce the power required to process AI, make it faster and more secure, since the data is not being sent to a server. Perplexity Personal Computer automatically routes the processing to where it deems best.

“The data center is coming to your laptop,” Srinivas said, adding that it’s crucial to have an AI operating system that brings everything together in a single unified system.

On Wednesday, Perplexity said that its Personal Computer product will be available on Microsoft’s Windows operating system, enabling the AI to connect to apps like Word and Outlook, as well as files on a user’s device. Perplexity has already launched the Personal Computer on Apple‘s Mac product.

Srinivas said that Perplexity is focused on creating a “sustainable, durable advantage” versus competitors and that “this is an orchestration problem.”

“We believe that by solving that, we’ll be building a pretty valuable company that has endurable, long-term advantage,” Srinivas said.

Perplexity faces increasing competition as rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have ramped up their focus on AI agents.

Perplexity, which was last reportedly valued at $20 billion, trails behind Anthropic and OpenAI, whose valuations have climbed to nearly $1 trillion and just over $850 billion, respectively. Anthropic this week confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the U.S. as investor demand for AI stocks continues.

Even as Perplexity expands its products across products from Microsoft and Apple, those very same companies are developing AI agents of their own. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced new coding and reasoning models. Apple is currently working on an updated version of its digital assistant Siri based on Google’s AI models.

Srinivas said that while these companies will build their own AI, Perplexity’s platform-agnostic approach will help it compete.

“I think they absolutely will try to build their own AI systems, but we believe we’re building the most versatile operating system by making it work across different models, across different chips, across different traditional operating systems, different hardware providers, different laptops,” Srinivas said.

“That hybrid neutral orchestration layer is what we are doing, and that allows us to balance all the different objectives simultaneously.”

Whenever Anthropic’s models get better, Perplexity improves too because Anthropic’s models are integrated into Perplexity, the CEO said. This has led Perplexity to triple its annualized revenue since the beginning of the year, “thanks to model advances that have been made by Anthropic,” he told CNBC.

China is making it harder for retail investors to steer money to U.S. stocks, ramping up a longer-term shift that steers domestic capital and companies toward Hong Kong. 

Beijing’s securities regulator recently tightened scrutiny on offshore brokerages, saying it will “resolutely crack down” on Tiger Brokers, Futu Holdings and Longbridge Securities over what it described as illegal cross-border securities operations. It’s the latest salvo in a years-long effort to close loopholes that allowed mainland investors to access overseas markets outside formal channels.

The change “may potentially reduce funds to ADRs listed in the U.S.,” said Vey-Sern Ling, senior equity advisor at Union Bancaire Privée. “Hong Kong listings may therefore become more attractive if the company is eligible for Stock Connect,” a program which allows mainland Chinese to invest in some Hong Kong-listed stocks via their local brokerages.

The latest move comes as Beijing intensifies a broader cleanup of China’s financial sector under securities regulator Wu Qing, while simultaneously tightening oversight over cross-border capital flows and financial risk.

While the crackdown has revived concerns over foreign access to Chinese markets, analysts broadly downplayed the impact on global investors and liquidity.

“It should not have any material impact on foreign investors at all,” said Theodore Shou, chief investment officer at Skybound Capital. The crackdown is unlikely to materially hurt trading volumes in Chinese ADRs, he added, because affected mainland investors represent only a small portion of these platforms’ client bases and could still find alternative routes into overseas markets.

The bigger implication may instead be the continued migration of Chinese listings and investor activity toward Hong Kong, which analysts say Beijing viewed as a safer and more controllable offshore financial hub.

Still, UBP’s Ling cautioned the incremental boost may be limited because many major Chinese firms have already shifted toward Hong Kong over the past several years amid escalating U.S.-China tensions.

“Among companies with dual U.S. and Hong Kong listings, the majority of trading is already done through HK in most cases,” he said.

Some strategists argued that Beijing’s tightening also coincides with a broader push to channel investor enthusiasm toward China’s domestic technology champions and strategic industries — for instance, a series of initial public offerings expected in coming months.

The pipeline of high-profile listings including memory chipmaker CXMT, robotics firm Unitree and semiconductor company YMTC might benefit from Beijing’s changes, according to Peter Alexander, founder of Shanghai-based consulting firm Z-Ben Advisors.

“The public launch of these companies goes far beyond just the financial headlines,” he said. “China is making real strides in building a roster of companies that are customed built to address the technological gaps currently present with America.”