AI Developments and Market Movements: From TikTok Negotiations to Chinese AI Innovations

CNBC Daily Open: Chasing the bull market? Maybe pay attention to gold

This report is from today's CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here. Colombia to see first Trump tariffs U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social he would immediately impose a 25% tariff -- which will go up to 50% in a week -- on goods from Colombia, as well as enact other punitive measures on the Colombian government. U.S. consumers might have to pay more for coffee, crude oil and cut flowers from Colombia. Second winning week for U.S. stocks Major U.S. indexes retreated on Friday, but still ended the week higher, their second consecutive week of gains. The pan-European Stoxx 600 edged down 0.05%, but ended the week more than 1% higher. Burberry jumped around 10% on a shallower-than-expected dip in sales in the fiscal third quarter, while Ericsson fell more than 12% after the company missed estimates for its fourth-quarter earnings. New high for Alphabet Alphabet shares closed on Friday at $200 for the first time on a split-adjusted basis. The company implemented a 20-for-1 stock split in 2022. At that time, the stock was trading at about $2,750, equivalent to $137.50 after the split. Morgan Stanley analysts highlighted on Friday opportunities presented by Alphabet's artificial intelligence agent products. Mega Meta investment Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday announced the company plans to invest around $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditures in 2025. Meta is also building an AI engineer that will contribute "increasing amounts of code to our R&D efforts," Zuckerberg added. After the announcement, Meta shares closed at $647.49, a new all-time high. Trump's intentions with TikTok Trump is making a deal to save TikTok's operations in the U.S., Reuters reported, citing two people with knowledge of the discussions. The sources said the deal would involve Oracle. However, in comments made to reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, Trump denied Oracle's participation, and said "very substantial people" are talking to him about buying TikTok. One of the parties could be Perplexity AI, which revived its proposal to ByteDance. [PRO] Earnings dominate week Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Tesla announce their earnings on Wednesday, followed by Apple on Thursday -- analysts think the reports could determine the direction of markets. Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve concludes its meeting on Wednesday, when investors will scrutinize Chair Jerome Powell's comments for hints on the path of interest rates.

CNBC Daily Open: Gold prices might be a warning to bull market

U.S. tariff on Colombia called off Colombia agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported migrants, the White House said on Sunday. That marks a reversal from Colombia's earlier decision to reject two aircraft, which prompted U.S. Donald Trump to write on his social media platform Truth Social he would immediately impose tariffs on goods from Colombia. Factory output in China contracted China's official purchasing managers' index for January came in at 49.1, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday showed, below Reuters poll estimates of 50.1. That means the country's factory activity unexpectedly contracted, partly because of a slow season ahead of the Lunar New Year. However, industrial profits in December jumped 11% from a year earlier, their first growth since July. Second winning week for U.S. stocks Major U.S. indexes retreated on Friday, but still ended the week higher, their second consecutive week of gains. Asia-Pacific markets were mostly higher on Monday. Japan's Nikkei 225 bucked the trend and fell around 0.9%. The index was weighed down by chip-related stocks, which retreated on worries that China's DeepSeek artificial intelligence model threatens Asian tech companies in the U.S. AI value chain. China's AI aims for more than chatbots Chinese AI applications are moving beyond chatbots, such as those from OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.ai. For instance, Baidu's Wenku platform, which creates presentation decks and other documents, reached 40 million paying users, while Alibaba's Accio, an AI-powered search engine for product sourcing, has 500,000 small business users globally. Trump's intentions with TikTok Trump is making a deal to save TikTok's operations in the U.S., Reuters reported, citing two people with knowledge of the discussions. The sources said the deal would involve Oracle. However, in comments made to reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, Trump denied Oracle's participation, and said "very substantial people" are talking to him about buying TikTok. One of the parties could be Perplexity AI, which revived its proposal to ByteDance. [PRO] Earnings dominate week Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Tesla announce their earnings on Wednesday, followed by Apple on Thursday -- analysts think the reports could determine the direction of markets. Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve concludes its meeting on Wednesday, when investors will scrutinize Chair Jerome Powell's comments for hints on the path of interest rates.