25/05/2026

BIZ & FINANCE MONDAY | MAY 25, 2026

/thesuntelegram FOLLOW / Malaysian Paper

ON TELEGRAM m RAM

16

Huang: Forecast of U$200b CPU market includes China

DeepSeek to make permanent 75% price cut on flagship V4 Pro AI model BENGALURU: Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek will make permanent a 75% price cut on its flagship V4-Pro artificial intelligence model, keeping prices at a quarter of their original level, the company said in a statement on Saturday. DeepSeek did not disclose whether the permanent price cut was due to increased supply of Huawei’s Ascend 950 chips, which it used to maximise V4’s performance. The company cut V4-Pro API costs to between 0.025 and 6 yuan per million tokens (RM0.0145 to RM3.50) depending on usage type, from 0.1 to 24 yuan previously, the statement said. A “token” is a unit of text processed by the AI model. Huawei’s AI chip sales have benefited from US export controls that prevent Nvidia from selling its most advanced semiconductors in China, although separate curbs on chipmaking equipment exports have limited Huawei’s ability to scale up Ascend production. When DeepSeek launched V4 last month, it said the Pro version would cost up to 12 times more than the less powerful Flash version due to “constraints in high-end compute capacity”, limiting availability. It also said Pro pricing was expected to fall sharply once Huawei Ascend 950 supernodes are launched in large quantities in the second half of the year. – Reuters US$250m settlement over Microsoft buyout WILMINGTON: Shareholders of Activision Blizzard reached a US$250 million (RM992 million) settlement over allegations that the company’s former executives and Microsoft shortchanged them when Microsoft acquired the game maker for US$75.4 billion in 2023, according to a filing made public on Friday in a Delaware state court. Shareholders of the Call of Duty video game maker, led by Swedish pension fund Sjunde AP-Fonden, accused former Activision Blizzard executives including chief executive Bobby Kotick of breaching their fiduciary duties to investors by agreeing to a US$95 per share takeover price. The shareholders said Kotick rushed into the merger so he could keep his job and US$400 million of change-of-control benefits. Microsoft and Kotick brought counterclaims against Sjunde, which will also be resolved in the settlement agreement. Both sides denied the allegations against them, according to the court filing. The defendants said they were settling to avoid the distraction of litigation and Sjunde said it was settling because the payment was fair. The settlement must be approved by Kathaleen McCormick, the chief judge of the Delaware Court of Chancery who is overseeing the litigation. The settlement will be funded 40% by Microsoft, while the remainder will be paid by directors and officers’ liability insurance, according to a court filing. The payment amounts to around 30 cents for each Activision Blizzard share. The deal was the largest in the video game industry when it was unveiled in 2022 and gave Microsoft the heft to compete with Sony Group. – Reuters Shareholders of Activision reach

flagship AI chips. During an earnings call on Wednesday, Huang said Nvidia’s new “Vera” central processors give it access to a new US$200 billion market. Speaking to reporters upon arrival in Taipei on Saturday and asked if that forecast included China, he said: “I would think so.” Nvidia has received licences from the US government to sell its H200 chips but has not received approval from Chinese officials who are fostering China’s own chip suppliers. US President Donald Trump’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this month produced no immediate breakthrough for Nvidia to sell H200 chips. Huang was also there as part of the US delegation. Reuters reported last week that the US has cleared around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, but not a single delivery has been made so far. “H200 has been licensed to ship to China. It would be terrific to be able to serve that market. The Chinese market is very important. It’s very large, of course,” Huang

said, speaking at Taipei’s downtown Songshan airport. Huang is in Taipei ahead of next month’s Computex trade show. AMD said on Thursday it would invest more than US$10 billion in Taiwan’s AI sector to deepen strategic partnerships and expand its capacity to build and assemble advanced AI chips. Asked whether Nvidia had also invested in Taiwan’s supply chain or planned to do so, Huang said: “We haven’t announced anything in the past, but we’ve invested in and supported our partners here far more than that.” He said he would also meet with TSMC while in Taiwan, the world’s largest contract chipmaker which makes many of the advanced semiconductors powering the trend towards AI. He added that Nvidia is ramping up production of its Vera Rubin platform, which combines the company’s Vera CPU and Rubin GPU architectures, making for “a very busy second half” for Taiwan’s supply chain. – Reuters

TAIPEI: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Saturday that his forecast of a US$200 billion (RM793.5 billion) market for CPUs includes China, signalling Nvidia still sees significant long-term demand in the market amid ongoing US-China technology tensions. Central processing units have taken centre stage as companies and businesses gravitate towards agentic AI – systems that perform autonomous functions – broadening demand beyond graphics processing units, or GPUs, that are used to train large models. Huang on Wednesday aimed to assure investors that the world’s most valuable company can keep up its blockbuster growth with the help of a broad base of customers and that new products will help it beat the US$1 trillion in sales it has forecast for its o Nvidia ramping up production of its Vera Rubin platform

Huang arriving at a ‘Meet-a-Claw’ event in Taipei on Saturday. Meet-a-Claw is an exclusive AI developer event hosted by Nvidia. – REUTERSPIC

Delivery Hero confirms takeover offer from Uber BENGARLURU: German food delivery service Delivery Hero confirmed it had received a takeover offer from rival Uber valuing the company at €33 (RM152) per share, it said in a statement on Saturday. billion, according to Reuters calculations. The German group’s CEO Niklas Oestberg said last week he would step down, following campaigns by several large shareholders for a strategic review. possible takeover bid, Multiple investors indicated they would seek a price above €40 per share for the German food delivery service, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The offer represents a discount of about 1.76% from Delivery Hero’s last close on Friday, according to LSEG data. Delivery Hero said last week its US rival had increased its holding to about 19.5% of issued capital from roughly 7%, becoming its largest shareholder. The stake is worth around €1.7

The company reiterated that it was fully focused on executing its strategic review process, without disclosing additional details on Uber’s offer. The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Uber and DoorDash had held exploratory talks with investors in Delivery Hero ahead of a

Delivery Hero’s board is mulling either a total sale or a series of deals that would spin off the group’s Middle Eastern and South Korean divisions, the FT said. DoorDash is primarily interested in the group’s Middle East business, which includes Talabat and HungerStation, it said. – Reuters