26/06/2026

BIZ & FINANCE FRIDAY | JUNE 26, 2026

18

Binance to stay in Europe despite licence issues

Qualcomm sees US$15b data centre chip sales by 2029 BENGALURU: Qualcomm said it expects to generate US$15 billion (RM62 billion) in sales from its data centre business by 2029 as it moves beyond its core smartphone chips, sending shares more than 12% higher in after-hours trading on Wednesday. Chief financial officer Akash Palkhiwala said at an investor presentation that the data centre business will bring in US$5 billion for fiscal 2027, with US$1 billion coming from the new custom-chip customers. Qualcomm also said it expects US$40 billion in revenue from chips outside its smartphone stronghold by 2029, up from previous estimates of US$22 billion, and with handsets only making up a third of its chip revenue by then. “We will be truly diversified,“ Palkhiwala said. Arm Holdings, which supplies underlying technology for many Qualcomm chips, also rose 5% after the forecast. Bank of America analysts had earlier said they expect modest revenue of roughly US$2 billion to US$5 billion annually from Qualcomm’s data centre push by fiscal 2027-2028. Earlier in the day, Qualcomm said Microsoft and Meta Platforms will use its new AI chips and that it will make custom chips for two other unnamed “hyperscalers.” Qualcomm’s shift to AI chips reflects mounting pressure in the smartphone market, which has been squeezed by a memory chip shortage driven by surging demand for AI infrastructure, and major customers such as Apple and Samsung developing chips in-house. The chipmaker on Wednesday said Microsoft will use its new category of chips that relies on cheap memory chips used in smartphones and laptops, instead of the pricey high-bandwidth chips used by Nvidia and SRAM memory used by Cerebras Systems . The company calls the new category “High Bandwidth Compute” or HBC. “That is a tremendous value that we deliver to the industry in terms of performance per cost advantage,“ said Tony Pialis, Qualcomm’s data centre chief. Qualcomm said Meta will use its new CPU called Dragonfly C1000 that it has designed specifically for AI data centres, entering a market where both Arm Holdings and Nvidia are courting customers. Pialis also said Qualcomm has won two major customers – called “hyperscalers” in the computing industry – for whom it will make custom chips, with revenue starting before the end of this calendar year. “I have not had to push my way into hyperscale customers; they’ve been pulling us in,“ Pialis said, without naming the customers. Qualcomm, which has attempted to boost its data-centre business multiple times, is re-entering a fast-growing, but hyper-competitive AI market full of large incumbents such as Nvidia, the newly minted Cerebras and other custom chip options including Amazon’s Graviton and Google’s Axion, Bank of America analysts warned in a client note on Tuesday. Qualcomm said in April that it plans to begin shipping processors and other AI chips for data centres by year-end. – Reuters

o Crypto exchange explores alternative routes to authorisation after its Greek approval bid failed ahead of an EU deadline PARIS: Crypto platform Binance intends to stay in the European Union (EU) and will make a fresh push for permission to operate there, a senior executive told Reuters, after its application under a new licence regime failed, threatening access for millions of users. “Binance is not leaving Europe,” Gillian Lynch, head of Europe and the UK, told Reuters, after its bid to secure a licence in Greece to offer services such as crypto trading in the EU unravelled. “We may just have a different pathway to being authorised,” she said. “If it is not Greece, I’m looking at other alternatives.” The comments put Binance on a potential collision course with European regulators. The company has one week to secure a licence before its current permission to operate in Europe expires, which would require it to wind down EU operations. Two people with knowledge of the process told Reuters that Binance has held talks with regulators in Ireland, Latvia and Greece but faced resistance in all three countries. They said officials were concerned about the company’s past penalties for money laundering, its complex international structure and what they viewed as a risk-taking culture. Regulators in the three countries declined to comment, or did not respond. The approaches to several regulators highlight how one of the world’s largest crypto companies has struggled to overcome regulatory resistance to securing an EU licence. Lynch said Binance did not know why it had been refused approval and had previously believed the Greek regulator planned to grant a licence. She said Binance had contacted four or five regulators but only made one application, to Greece. A spokesman for Binance added that the company had not engaged with Ireland’s central bank for a number of years. Asked about Binance’s past problems, Lynch

Europe remains a key market for Binance, which says it has no plans to leave despite regulatory setbacks. – UNSPLASH PIX

laundering controls, which they viewed as inadequate, the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. One source pointed to the influence of founder Changpeng Zhao, who said in a February podcast that he remained the ultimate beneficial owner, as well as Binance’s complex global structure. Lynch told Reuters Zhao is “100% removed” from the company. Binance has previously struggled to win regulatory approval elsewhere. It is unauthorised in the UK and was told to leave Japan after operating there without a licence. Its main licence is now in the United Arab Emirates. In 2023, Zhao – known as CZ – pleaded guilty to breaching US anti-money laundering laws as part of a US$4.3 billion (RM18 billion) settlement following a years-long investigation. He served nearly four months in prison before being pardoned last year by US President Donald Trump. US authorities said Binance had broken anti money laundering and sanctions laws and failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions linked to groups designated by Washington as terrorist organisations.

said Binance had invested in compliance and internal controls, employed about 1,500 compliance staff, and had no outstanding issues related to its application. Binance’s failure to secure an EU licence before the June 30 deadline raises uncertainty over its future in the bloc. Whether authorities can now enforce what would amount to a ban will test the strength of the EU’s new crypto rules. On Tuesday, the European Securities and Markets Authority said crypto firms without a licence must “take immediate steps to wind down their EU activities in an orderly manner”. The EU’s landmark crypto regime, known as MiCA, came into force last year, giving firms until end-June to obtain authorisation in one member state to serve customers across the 27-country bloc. Binance says it has more than 300 million customers globally but declined to say how many are in the EU. The app was downloaded more than 4 million times in the bloc last year, with most downloads in France, Germany and Spain, according to estimates from Sensor Tower. Regulators assessing Binance’s bid were also concerned about the background of senior executives and the exchange’s record on money

Anthropic alleges Alibaba copied Claude AI capabilities SAN FRANCISCO: US AI company Anthropic accused Alibaba, the Chinese technology and e commerce giant, of illicitly extracting its Claude AI model capabilities in what it said was the largest known attack of its kind on the company, according to a letter seen by Reuters. Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren, the chair and ranking member, respectively, of the US Senate Banking Committee, ahead of a scheduled hearing on AI. In April, the White House accused China of stealing US AI labs’ intellectual property on an industrial scale. It also said at the time that the campaigns were growing in “intensity and sophistication” and that addressing the threat would require “rapid, coordinated action among industry players, policymakers and the global AI community.”

Alibaba was added to the Pentagon’s Chinese military companies list this month, a designation it is challenging. But the Commerce Department has held off placing DeepSeek on a trade blacklist, as Reuters exclusively reported this month, despite it being deemed a national security risk by an interagency governmental committee, as the department tries to avoid escalating tensions with Beijing. Meanwhile, on June 12, two days after Anthropic sent the letter, the Commerce Department imposed controversial restrictions on Anthropic’s latest Mythos and Fable AI models because officials feared they could be deployed by military intelligence users in China and other countries of concern. The restrictions resulted in Anthropic disabling access to the models globally.

The strike by Alibaba is described as a “distillation” effort, which Anthropic has said involves training a less capable model on the outputs of a stronger one. Anthropic said the campaign was conducted between April 22 and June 5, and generated more than 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through almost 25,000 fraudulent accounts. Anthropic said in the letter that distillation is a way to help accelerate China’s ability to reach Anthropic’s advanced Mythos Preview capabilities. It said the campaign was conducted by operators affiliated with Alibaba and Alibaba Qwen, Alibaba’s AI lab. Alibaba did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The letter dated June 10, was sent to Senators

Anthropic said in the letter it was supportive of the US government’s efforts to combat the attacks, including partnering with private sector AI companies through threat-intelligence sharing and other exercises. Anthropic said in a February posting that it had identified a campaign by Chinese AI startup DeepSeek – whose low-cost AI model sent shockwaves through the technology world in January 2025 – and two other Chinese AI labs to illicitly extract capabilities from its Claude AI platform. It said DeepSeek’s operation involved over 150,000 exchanges, while Moonshot AI was at a scale of over 3.4 million and MiniMax over 13 million.