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A fter the image-sharing site warned of lower ad spending in the United States, its largest market, as a result of the elimination of the "de minimis" trade loophole, Pinterest's stock fell roughly 15% on Friday. Some Asian e-commerce companies have been forced to reduce their U.S. marketing budgets due t o uncertainty caused by tariffs and the suspension of the exemption that allowed packages va lued at or under $800 to be shipped to the U.S. without incurring import duties. T he company, known for curating links to lifestyle products such as home decor, fashion accessories, and beauty items, saw a 25% decline in advertising prices in the second quarter. With U.S. tariffs in place, the trend is expected to continue. "Management's comments on tariff concerns extending into the third quarter likely spooked the Street," Roth Capital Partners analysts said. According to Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, the stalled user growth is a "sig...

On charges of money laundering and evading sanctions against the founder of Tornado Cash, a company that makes cryptocurrency transactions more difficult to trace, a U.S. jury reached a deadlock on Wednesday. Roman Storm was accused of conspiring to launder the proceeds of hacks, including those carried out by a group supported by the North Korean government, but the jury in a Manhattan federal court was unable to reach a decision. However, he was convicted by the jury of conspiring to run an unlicensed money transmission business, which is a less serious charge. Later, U.S. District Judge Katherine Faille will sentence him to a maximum of five years in prison. Each of the conspiracy charges related to money laundering and sanctions evasion carried a potential 20-year sentence. Storm was detained in 2023 on suspicion of assisting in the concealment of over $1 billion, including hundreds of millions of dollars for the hacking group Lazarus Group, which is backed by Pyongyang and has be...

The U.S. Justice Department announced Tuesday that two Chinese nationals were arrested in California and charged with illegally delivering Nvidia H100s and other AI chips worth tens of millions of dollars to China. According to a criminal complaint, Chuan Geng, 28, of Pasadena, and Shiwei Yang, 28, of El Monte, exported cutting-edge Nvidia chips and other technology to China between October 2022 and July 2025 without securing the necessary licenses from the U.S. Commerce Department. The complaint claims that Geng and Yang's El Monte-based business, ALX Solutions Inc., was established in 2022, just after the United States started requiring licenses for the chips and enacted broad export restrictions on technology to China. An Nvidia representative declined to comment. Shipping and freight forwarding firms in Singapore and Malaysia, which are frequently used as transshipment hubs for illicit goods to China, received more than 20 shipments from ALX Solutions. In January 2024, ALX rec...

On Monday, Donald Trump declared that he would significantly increase tariffs on Indian goods due to its purchases of Russian oil. New Delhi responded that it would take action to protect its interests and referred to the U.S. president's targeting of India as "unjustified." Following his announcement last Friday that the United States would impose a 25% tariff on goods imported from India, Trump said last week that Washington was still engaged in trade negotiations with the country. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the West, including the United States, has put pressure on India to sever ties with Moscow. Citing its historical ties to Russia and its economic needs, New Delhi has rejected that pressure, according to a new tab. In addition to purchasing enormous quantities of Russian oil, India is also making significant profits by selling a large portion of the oil on the open market. In a post on Truth Social, Trump stated, "They don't ...

In   an effort to retain the billionaire entrepreneur at the helm during a pivotal shift from its faltering core auto business to robotaxis and humanoid robots, Tesla (TSLA.O) has awarded CEO Elon Musk shares worth approximately $29 billion. The "interim award" of the 96 million new shares was characterized by the company as a first-step, "good faith" payment to honor Musk's 2018 compensation package, which was over $50 billion and overturned by a Delaware court last year. If Musk stays in a high-level executive position for two more years and the court does not reinstate the 2018 package that is currently being appealed, he is eligible to receive the new award. He can purchase the shares for $23.34 each, which is the same as the 2018 award's exercise price, and he must hold them for five years. At its annual investor meeting on November 6, Tesla will also vote on a longer-term CEO compensation plan. The goal of the move is to keep Musk, who is the public fa...

Exchange of cryptocurrency The company launched its roadshow to take advantage of the momentum created by digital assets in the face of regulatory clarity, and Bullish stated in a filing on Monday that it is aiming for a valuation of up to $4.23 billion in its US listing. Businesses that use cryptocurrency and associated technologies have embraced the Donald Trump administration's pro-crypto policies, like the GENIUS Act, which was recently passed and offers a preliminary stablecoin regulatory framework. With the help of one or more issuers of such tokens, Bullish, which is supported by billionaire Peter Thiel, intends to convert a sizeable amount of the IPO proceeds to stablecoins denominated in US dollars, the filing stated. Circle Internet, a significant stablecoin issuer, made a spectacular NYSE debut in June and is now trading at over 400% of its initial public offering price. Bullish is making its second attempt to go public in four years, offering 20.3 million shares at pric...

In a filing on Thursday, Meta Platforms (META.O) revealed plans to sell $2 billion worth of data center assets as part of its ongoing efforts to find outside partners to help finance the enormous infrastructure required to power artificial intelligence.  As they struggle with the skyrocketing cost of constructing and powering data centers to support generative AI, tech giants, who have historically been known for self-funding growth, are adopting a different approach. In order to help fund its significant capital expenditure for the upcoming year, the social media behemoth announced earlier this week that it was looking into ways to collaborate with financial partners to co-develop data centers. On a conference call following Wednesday's earnings, Meta Chief Finance Officer Susan Li stated, "We're looking into ways to collaborate with financial partners to co-develop data centers." According to Li, the company still anticipates funding a large portion of its capital ...

Elon Musk's electric vehicle company may face additional legal action after a Florida jury on Friday found Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab, liable to pay $243 million to victims of a fatal crash in 2019 involving a Model S equipped with Autopilot.  For victims of Autopilot-related accidents, the verdict is an uncommon victory. Based on a more sophisticated version of its driver assistance software, Musk has been pushing for a quick expansion of Tesla's recently launched robotaxi business.  Tesla's stock is down 25% so far this year after dropping 1.8% on Friday.  According to a verdict sheet, jurors in a federal court in Miami granted the estate of Naibel Benavides Leon and her ex-boyfriend Dillon Angulo $129 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages .  33% of the compensatory damages, or $42.6 million, were attributed to Tesla.  Although George McGee, the driver, was not a defendant and will not be required to pay his share, jurors fou...

Following a stellar earnings report that demonstrated its enormous bets on AI are paying off, Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, became the second publicly traded company after Nvidia (NVDA.O) to surpass the $4 trillion milestone in stock market value on Thursday. The market value of the four major AI companies increased by more than half a trillion dollars as a result of strong results from Microsoft and Meta Platforms (META.O), which opened a new tab late on Thursday and fueled gains in Amazon (AMZN.O). Additionally, the chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O) reached a record high. According to LSEG data, the major AI players on Wall Street, including Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (GOOGL.O), open a new tab, and Meta Platforms, now hold a quarter of the S&P 500. In order to meet the growing demand for AI, Microsoft projected a record $30 billion in capital expenditures for the first quarter of the current fiscal year. It claimed that its Copilot AI tools had more than 100 million monthl...

Adidas (ADSGn.DE), a sportswear company, opened a new tab on Wednesday and warned that it might have to raise prices in the US after revealing that US tariffs would increase costs by about $200 million ($231 million) in the second half. Adidas' stock fell 11% on the worst day since U.S. President Donald Trump announced higher tariffs in April, increasing the stock's losses since the year's beginning to 26%. Adidas claimed that trade uncertainty was preventing it from raising its yearly guidance and that it had not yet made a decision regarding potential price hikes in the US to lessen the impact. CEO Bjorn Gulden stressed during a call with analysts that the ultimate tariff levels were still unknown, but he expressed concern about how higher prices would affect U.S. consumer demand. "To be honest, I'm more concerned about how consumers will react to the price increases that I believe will occur not only in our industry but also in the United States as a whole than ...