TMR

A HONG KONG official and a lawmaker have withdrawn from a Bitcoin Asia conference in the city following advice not to engage with Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump, the South China Morning Post reported.

Eric Yip, executive director at the Securities and Futures Commission, and lawmaker Johnny Ng were removed from the list of speakers for the Aug. 28-29 forum after receiving a request to skip the event featuring the American businessman, the paper reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

An archived version of the event webpage on July 14 shows both officials as speakers. Their names are gone from the current list.

The SFC, the Hong Kong government and Ng didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment emailed outside working hours.

The withdrawals come amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade, technology and other issues. The city is increasingly swept up in the crossfire of Trump’s trade war, facing tariffs this year that it was previously exempt from during Trump’s first term. The apparent avoidance underscores potential complications for the city’s push to become Asia’s crypto hub.

Both gave personal reasons for their absence, according to the SCMP. The SFC said Yip can’t attend due to a business trip, while Ng said he withdrew for family reasons, the newspaper said. 

Clarence Shen, a manager of the SFC who helps make policy on fintech matters, is now listed as a speaker.

The conference features Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He leads some US cryptocurrency ventures and is described by the event organizer as “one of the most vocal advocates of his father and the Make America Great Again movement.” –BLOOMBERG

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LYNAS Rare Earths Ltd., the critical-materials miner backed by Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart, is seeking to raise A$750 million ($488 million) to speed up its expansion.

The company said it will issue shares at A$13.25 apiece, representing a 10% discount to the last traded price on Aug. 27. In addition to this fully-underwritten placement, there will also be a non-underwritten share offering to raise up to a further A$75 million, it said.

The cash will be used to expand its Mount Weld mine, build more processing capacity in Malaysia and facilitate tie-ups with other companies trying to build metals and magnet plants outside China. Those goals are part of a “Lynas 2030” strategy also unveiled on Thursday.

“The rare earths market is rapidly evolving and we need to move at pace,” Chief Executive Officer Amanda Lacaze said in a Thursday statement. 

Lynas halted trading before the announcement. Its stock has more than doubled this year, and closed Wednesday at A$14.73 a share.

The news comes after Lynas recently sold rare earths at the highest price in three years, which could signal that the market is recovering from a protracted price rout. China, which produces about 90% of the world’s rare-earth magnets, reported July shipments jumped to their highest since January. 

The Perth, Australia-based company on Thursday posted A$8 million in net income for the year to June 30, below the A$23.5 million analyst consensus. –BLOOMBERG

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NEW YORK — A shooting occurred Wednesday morning at Annunciation Catholic School in the city of Minneapolis, the US state of Minnesota, killing an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old and injuring 17 others, police confirmed, reported Xinhua.

Before 8:30 am local time, the shooter, armed with a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol, approached the school church and fired through the windows at the children who were sitting in the pews during Mass, Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said at a news conference.

The shooter then killed himself in the rear of the church, O’Hara confirmed. The suspect was in his 20s and did not have an extensive criminal history, he said.

Among the injured, 14 are children, with two of them in critical condition, police said. The school is for kindergarten through eighth-graders.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz expressed support for the school community in a statement on the social media platform X: “I’m praying for our kids and teachers whose first week of school was marred by this horrific act of violence.”

“Minnesota is heartbroken,” said the governor, urging people to hug their kids close.

Hours after the shooting, US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation lowering the flags to half-staff in honour of the victims.

“I have been fully briefed on the tragic shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota,” said Trump on Truth Social, adding that the FBI quickly responded and is on the scene, while the White House will continue to monitor the situation.

The tragedy in Minneapolis marked the fifth planned school shooting involving active shooters in the United States in 2025, according to a school shooting tracker by NBC News.

A total of 286 mass shootings has occurred in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrator, are shot or killed. –BERNAMA-XINHUA

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NVIDIA Corp., the world’s most valuable company, gave a tepid revenue forecast for the current period, signaling that growth is decelerating after a staggering two-year boom in artificial intelligence spending.

Sales will be roughly $54 billion in the fiscal third quarter, which runs through October, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Though that was in line with the average Wall Street estimate, some analysts had projected more than $60 billion.

The outlook adds to concern that the pace of investment in AI systems is unsustainable. Difficulties in China also have clouded Nvidia’s business. Though the Trump administration recently eased curbs on exports of some AI chips to that country, the reprieve hasn’t yet translated into a rebound in revenue. 

Nvidia shares fell about 3% in extended trading following the announcement. They had rallied 35% this year through the close, lifting the company’s market capitalization above $4 trillion.

During a conference call with analysts Wednesday, the company’s leadership rejected the notion that interest in deploying AI infrastructure was flagging. 

“The opportunity ahead is immense,” Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said. “We see $3 trillion to $4 trillion in AI infrastructure spend by the end of the decade.”

The company also approved an additional $60 billion in stock buybacks. Nvidia had $14.7 billion remaining under its previous repurchase plan at the end of the second quarter. 

Sales in that period, which ended July 27, rose 56% to $46.7 billion. That compared with an average estimate of $46.2 billion. Though the gain added more than $16 billion in quarterly revenue from a year earlier, it was the smallest percentage increase in more than two years.

Second-quarter profit was $1.05 a share, minus certain items. Wall Street was looking for $1.01.

The data center unit, a division that’s now larger by itself than any other chipmaker, had sales of $41.1 billion. That compares with an average estimate of $41.3 billion. Gaming-related revenue — once Nvidia’s main source of income — was $4.29 billion. Analysts projected $3.8 billion on average. The automotive segment generated $586 million in sales, a bit shy of estimates.

The results showed hints that spending by giant data center operators “could tighten at the margins if near-term returns from AI applications remain difficult to quantify,” Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said in a note.

Nvidia is still dealing with the fallout from a growing US-China rivalry, where semiconductor technology has become a major flashpoint. In April, the Trump administration tightened restrictions on exports of data center processors to Chinese customers, effectively shutting Nvidia out of the market. Washington has subsequently rolled that back, saying that the US will allow some shipments in return for a 15% slice of the revenue. 

At the same time, Beijing has encouraged a move away from using US technology in AI systems accessed by the Chinese government. The shifting policies have made it difficult for Wall Street to predict how much revenue Nvidia might be able to recover in the market. Some analysts have made projections in the billions of dollars, while others have refused to predict any China sales until the company makes the situation clearer.

Heading into the earnings report, Nvidia analysts had a roughly $15 billion gap between their highest and lowest estimates for third-quarter revenue — one of the largest such ranges in the history of the company.

Nvidia said it didn’t record any sales of its H20 AI chip to China-based customers in the second quarter, a decline of about $4 billion in revenue from the prior period. The third-quarter forecast excluded H20 sales as well.

Nvidia also noted that the US government hasn’t yet codified its plan to take a 15% cut of revenue from China AI chip sales. And it acknowledged risks to enacting the policy.

“Any request for a percentage of the revenue by the USG may subject us to litigation, increase our costs, and harm our competitive position and benefit competitors that are not subject to such arrangements,” Nvidia said in a filing.

Ultimately, $2 billion to $5 billion in H20 chips could be shipped to China in the current quarter, Nvidia said. The number depends on getting licenses from the US government, clearance that a “few” customers have received so far.

“If we had more orders, we can bill more,” Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said during the conference call. She also said the company continues to urge the US government to approve a version of the more up-to-date Blackwell chip for sale in China.

“The opportunity for us to bring Blackwell to the China market is a real possibility,” Huang said. “We just have to keep advocating the sensibility of and the importance of American tech companies to be able to lead and win the AI race.”

If Nvidia was allowed to ship more capable products to the Asian nation, it would be able to take advantage of a $50 billion opportunity there, Huang said. Huge demand for AI systems in China means that market is set to grow at 50% a year, he said.

Under Huang, the 32-year-old chipmaker has suddenly become the biggest success story in the technology industry. Throughout most of its history, Nvidia lived in the shadow of larger rivals such as Intel Corp., carving out a modest living selling graphics processors to computer gamers.

Nvidia’s biggest breakthrough came when it adapted its graphics processing units, or GPUs, to run artificial intelligence software — creating something Huang calls accelerated computing.

As recently as 2022, Nvidia was a fraction of Intel’s size and booking less revenue in a year than it now generates in a quarter. These days, Nvidia is on course for annual sales of $200 billion — with the number estimated to eclipse $300 billion by 2028. That would give the company about a third of the chip industry’s total revenue. 

But Nvidia is largely dependent on the spending plans of just a few companies. Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and other giant data center operators account for about half of its sales. To diversify the business, Huang is pushing into new markets and providing a wider range of products. That includes offering complete computers, networking gear, software and services.

He’s determined to accelerate the adoption of AI across the economy, and he pushes his team to produce new hardware and software at a frenetic pace. 

For now, the Santa Clara, California-based company is largely unchallenged in the market for its AI chips, known as accelerators. In-house efforts by companies such as Amazon and early-stage challenges from would-be rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc. haven’t yet made a significant dent in its market share.

But the company faces other headaches. Aside from Nvidia’s struggles in China, the biggest impediment to growth has been the availability of supply. Like most chipmakers, Nvidia doesn’t own factories and relies on outsourced production, chiefly from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ramping up production of new technology remains an ongoing challenge. –BLOOMBERG

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