“Jason’s leadership comes at a pivotal time as we accelerate our growth across Asia,” said Tom Evrard, Head of
Beyond his regional leadership responsibilities,
Commenting on his appointment,
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In 2025, China’s energy and emission trends moved closer to the pathways aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise: its total CO₂ emissions are projected to stay flat, and the power and transport sectors are set to see their emissions fall year-on-year. Clean energy growth is likely to make new records and grid energy storage has taken off. The EV breakthrough has accelerated, delivering a major reduction in transportation sector emissions.
However, despite coal consumption and related emissions being approximately unchanged this year, the country will miss important energy and emissions targets laid out in its current development plan, the 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP), which runs from 2021 to 2025. Specifically, the country will not achieve the target of reducing carbon emissions per unit of GDP, nor the pledges to “strictly control” coal consumption growth and new coal-fired power plants. The country’s determination to meet its 2030 climate targets is unclear, with the commitment to gradually reduce coal consumption in 2026–30, in particular, omitted in the new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and the Central Committee’s recommendations for the next FYP. The policy environment and target-setting for the next few years are concerning, raising the risk of an emission rebound after staying stable for two years.
Figure 1 — China’s annual change in CO₂ emissions compared to energy transition pathways.
Earlier this year, China released new climate commitments for 2035 under the Paris Agreement, the first update to its internationally pledged targets since 2021. The new NDC includes the country’s first absolute emission reduction target and the first emission target covering all greenhouse gases (GHG) and sectors. However, the level of ambition falls well short of what China needs to do to enable the world to meet the goals of the Paris agreement. China intends to reduce its GHG emissions from an undefined ‘peak level’ instead of a specific year in the past, which allows emissions to still grow in the near term.
On balance, China’s clean energy boom has a momentum of its own and has gained high economic significance both nationally and on the provincial level, which makes it more likely that the boom will continue. It’s clear that after the impressive growth of the clean energy sectors, China has the capability to keep emissions falling and start making progress towards its carbon neutrality target.
Aerial sunrise view of Osaka city in Japan
Frank Lee | Moment | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets opened mixed Thursday, after Wall Street gained on the latest jobs data that raised hopes the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates next week.
Payroll processor ADP reported that private companies cut 32,000 workers in November, compared with 47,000 additions in October, and well below the 40,000 increase expected by economists polled by Dow Jones.
Markets are pricing in an 89% chance of a cut when the Federal Reserve meets on Dec. 9-10, significantly higher than rate-cut bets just a couple of weeks ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index added 0.3% in early trading, and the Topix index advanced 0.33%.
Among the top movers on the Nikkei was Renesas Electronics, which jumped more than 6%, after California-based semiconductor company SiTime Corp was reportedly in talks to acquire the Japanese chipmaker’s timing unit. A deal could value the timing business at up to $2 billion, including debt, Bloomberg said, citing people familiar with the matter.
South Korea’s Kospi index fell 0.45%, while the small-cap Kosdaq climbed 0.12%.
Australia’s ASX/S&P 200 was flat.
Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index pointed to a higher open, trading at 25,829, against the index’s previous close of 25,760.73.
Overnight, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 408.44 points, or 0.86%, to finish at 47,882.90. The S&P 500 traded up 0.30% to end the day at 6,849.72, while the Nasdaq Composite added 0.17% to settle at 23,454.09.
Stocks with exposure to the artificial intelligence trade were the biggest drag on U.S. key benchmarks Wednesday stateside, after The Information reported Microsoft was cutting software sales quotas tied to artificial intelligence.
Other major tech names, including Nvidia and Broadcom, pulled the broad-based S&P 500 lower.
Microsoft refuted the claims in the report, which led the stock to recover slightly in after-hours trading.
— CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.
SAN FRANCISCO — After riding the artificial intelligence craze to new heights, business software maker Salesforce has been pummeled by a wave of investor skepticism that’s intensified the pressure on its persuasive CEO Marc Benioff to reverse the tide.
Benioff, who helped spearhead the transition to cloud computing after founding Salesforce in 1999, got a chance to try to change the AI narrative late Wednesday with the release of his company’s latest quarterly results.
The key numbers covering the August-October eclipsed the analyst projections that help steer the stock market, providing Benioff with some material to support his contention that Salesforce’s big bets on AI will yield a jackpot. The San Francisco-based company earned $2.1 billion, or $2.19 per share, a 37% increase from the same time last year while revenue rose 9% to nearly $10.9 billion. Salesforce also provided an outlook for the current quarter ending in January that exceeded analysts’ predictions.
“We’re uniquely positioned for this new era,” Benioff boasted during a 25-minute address on an analyst conference call that sometimes sounded like an AI sermon that also featured comments about “wow” moments that customers experience when seeing the company’s technology.
Salesforce’s shares initially surged by more than 5% after the results came out, but backtracked to a gain of 2% following Benioff’s presentation.
It’s unclear if that modest momentum will be sustained in Thursday’s regular trading session because making more money than analysts anticipated isn’t necessarily enough to keep propelling a technology stock amid persisting doubts about whether the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into the much-hyped technology will pay off.
Nvidia, the dominant maker of the chips needed to power AI, put a dent in the wall of worry a couple weeks ago with a quarterly earnings report that soared far beyond analyst estimates and initially eased fears about a Big Tech bubble bursting.
But the tranquility quickly evaporated, leaving Nvidia’s stock price slightly below where it was trading before the company’s stellar earnings report and 15% below its peak price reached in late October when the chipmaker became the first company to be valued at $5 trillion.
The AI jitters have punished Salesforce even more severely. Before the earnings report was released, Salesforce’s market value had plunged by 35%, wiping out about $125 billion in shareholder wealth, since Salesforce’s stock price peaked at $369 a year ago.
The downturn has happened even as Benioff has been doing his best to highlight AI’s potential benefits while calling upon the flair for salesmanship that he developed while become the become a chief evangelist behind the rise of software subscription services amid the ruins of the dot-com bust a quarter century ago.
Benioff, who owns Time magazine in addition to his Salesforce job, also is among the Big Tech leaders who have forged ties with President Donald Trump this year while trying to persuade the administration to adopt AI-friendly policies to protect U.S. interests as China also works feverishly on the technology.
Salesforce has been primarily focused on creating Ai agents that can automate more customer sales agents while spawning a digital labor force that will take over jobs that have traditionally been filled by people.
In a sign that Benioff intends to practice what he preaches, Salesforce laid off 4,000 of its own customer support workers as its “Agentforce” technology took over more of the responsibilities.
But the corporate customers that buy Salesforce’s services haven’t been embracing AI agents as quickly as investors initially thought, turning the company into a “poster child” for the doubts hanging over the technology, said Jay Woods, chief market strategist for investment banking firm Freedom Capital Markets.
The second-guessing hasn’t dimmed Benioff’s AI exuberance – a passion that recently displayed in a resounding endorsement of Google’s latest version of the Gemini technology powering its AI suite.
“We all know that the speed of innovation has exceeded the speed of customer adoption,” Benioff conceded while confidently predicting that dynamic is about to change dramatically as more companies and government agencies build AI services into their operations.
Salesforce is projecting $60 billion in revenue for its fiscal year ending in January 2030 – a target that would require average annual increases of 10% from its forecasted sales of $41.5 billion for its current fiscal year. The company also just completed an $8 billion acquisition of another software maker, Informatica, that is building AI tools to manage corporate data.
“We’re continuing to execute on the path to our $60 billion dream” Benioff said.
Can’t afford to rent an apartment in San Francisco? No problem. Now you can rent a bed.
Brownstone Shared Housing, a Bay-Area based “sleeping pod” startup, recently bought a six-level building in downtown San Francisco with the intention of housing up to 400 pods. The deal, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, represents a huge expansion for the company, which is currently operating about two dozen sleeping pods at a much smaller location in the city.
The company, which transforms commercial office space into residential space, charges $700 a month for the pods. Each pod contains a twin-size bed and can be stacked on top of one another, in a similar vein to Japan’s sleep capsule hotels. Tenants of Brownstone buildings also have access to a shared kitchen, bathroom and workspace. The pod’s price tag is in stark contrast to the $3,065 median rent for an apartment in San Francisco, and has become appealing to those seeking cheap accommodation.
Just a few months ago, Brownstone was facing an eviction lawsuit due to a failure to pay over $150,000 in rent it attributed to a “miscommunication” with a landlord whose mailed notices did not reach the company. The case was ultimately dismissed. The Brownstone Shared Housing chief executive, James Stallworth, said that he intended to continue operations at the original building at 12 Mint Plaza in addition to the new location at 1049 Market.
“We’ve gotten hundreds and hundreds of applications” from prospective renters, he told the Chronicle. “We’ve seen it even on a small scale [at 12 Mint Plaza] … we’ll see our residents walking down the street downtown. It’s just dramatically different from when that building was empty.”
The demand for cheap, temporary housing from companies such as Brownstone suggests people are willing to give up the finer things in life (or even the not-so-fine things, like walls) in a city that has pushed out many of its workers. San Francisco’s median rent has increased 12.2% year on year, far outpacing the 1% increase in average rent in California and a national average that has decreased 1.1%, according to online marketplace Apartment List.
The AI-boom is the latest player in the city’s housing market, with an influx of demand for housing from wealthy founders. Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst at Compass, explained to the San Francisco Standard that “if the worldwide AI economic tsunami continues, I would expect an accelerating explosion of wealth in San Francisco”.
With limited supply to meet the high demand, that leaves the rest of the city’s middle-class employees fighting for what’s left over – and heading to the sleep pods.
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(Bloomberg) — Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said he’s unsure whether China would accept the company’s H200 artificial intelligence chips should the US relax restrictions on sales of the processors, following a meeting Wednesday with President Donald Trump.
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Addressing reporters at the US Capitol, Huang said he and Trump talked about export controls but declined to offer specifics. The Nvidia chief’s meeting with the president comes after Trump administration officials discussed whether to allow the H200 to be sold in China. Asked whether authorities in Beijing would allow Chinese companies to buy the H200, Huang expressed uncertainty.
“We don’t know. We have no clue,” Huang said, as he headed into a closed-door meeting with members of the Senate Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over export controls. “We can’t degrade chips that we sell to China, they won’t accept that.”
During an Oval Office event later Wednesday, Trump sidestepped questions about the status of export controls but praised Huang as doing “an amazing job.”
Allowing H200 sales to China would mark a significant win for the world’s most valuable company, which has pressed the Trump administration and Congress for a relaxation of export controls that keep Nvidia from selling its AI chips in the world’s second-largest economy. Huang has forged a close relationship with Trump since the November election and has used those ties to make his case that restrictions only boost China’s domestic champions like Huawei Technologies Co.
Asked how often he’s in Washington, Huang said “Whenever President Trump would like me to be here.”
Huang’s visit to the nation’s capital came as Nvidia neared a major lobbying win in Congress, where lawmakers kept a provision out of must-pass defense legislation that would have limited the company’s ability to sell its advanced AI chips to China and other adversary nations. The so-called GAIN AI Act would require chipmakers, including Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., to give American customers first dibs on their powerful AI chips before selling in China and other arms-embargoed countries.
As the Banking Committee meeting concluded, Republican Senator Mike Rounds acknowledged Nvidia’s desire to compete globally. “They want the customers around the world,” Rounds, a member of the panel, told reporters. “We understand that. And at the same time, we’re all concerned, including Jensen, with regard to having restrictions on what goes to China.”
The long-anticipated store and its 500 co-workers welcomed crowds of excited Kiwis. Once through the doors, customers experienced styled room-sets and more than 7,500 products, convenient services, and plenty of inspiration.
For the first time when opening a new market, IKEA has set up 29 pick-up points across the country, where customers can collect their purchases even more affordably. The new IKEA store in Auckland, pick-up points, online and remote sales complement each other in an omnichannel way, allowing the Swedish retailer to get closer to the shopping preferences of New Zealanders. In addition, a Buy Back service is available at the store from day one – even for non-IKEA products – supporting circular living and reducing waste.
“I’m proud we are now open both in-store and online. We appreciate the excitement shown by the people who showed up and queued to visit our store for the first time,” said Mirja Viinanen, CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer, IKEA Australia and New Zealand. “It’s been some time since we first announced our intentions to enter New Zealand in 2019. Right from the start, we wanted to enter in the best way possible and be a good neighbour. We wouldn’t be where we are today without the support and collaboration from our neighbours and wider ‘IKEA Family’ community.”
Ahead of the store opening, IKEA has visited more than 500 homes in New Zealand to understand the life at home expectations of the many Kiwis and translate those learnings into its store and online presentation. It also collected those insights into its first Life at Home Report about New Zealand, and organized housewarming celebrations in secret locations across Auckland, reflecting the Kiwi lifestyle – from backyard gatherings to late-night garage jams and sunny mornings by the sea.
New Zealand is the first new market for the largest IKEA retailer since 2021, when a store was opened in Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia.
The expansion into New Zealand is part of a broader investment strategy aimed at making IKEA even more accessible worldwide. In total, more than EUR 5 billion will be invested by FY27 in opening new locations and optimizing the existing ones across many markets.
Facts about the first IKEA store in New Zealand:
About Ingka Group
With IKEA retail operations in 31 markets, Ingka Group is the largest IKEA retailer and represents 87% of IKEA retail sales. It is a strategic partner to develop and innovate the IKEA business and help define common IKEA strategies. Ingka Group owns and operates IKEA sales channels under franchise agreements with Inter IKEA Systems B.V. It has three business areas: IKEA Retail, Ingka Investments and Ingka Centres. Read more on Ingka.com.