AI heavyweight Nvidia blew past all Q3 estimates.Asia’s tech optimism is back and the “AI bubble” debate cools down for now:US$57B revenue, brutal 73% margins, GPUs sold out.
⛓️ AI Supply-Chain Surge: HBM hype is lifting Korea, Taiwan & Japan. SK hynix wins as Nvidia’s top HBM supplier, Samsung follows closely, and TSMC is booked out for months. Tokyo Electron & Lasertec jump up to 6%.
⚡️ Tencent Turbo: Tencent grows +15% on smarter ad-targeting, higher game engagement, and coding automation. Valorant Mobile smashes records, cloud revenues climb double digits, and its foundation model HunYuan gets a major upgrade.
🏇🏻 ByteDance bidding frenzy: An internal share auction pushes ByteDance’s valuation to US$480B, far above recent US$300B marks. Investors compete for access to China’s most powerful AI engine.
🎥 Kuaishou Kling: Kuaishou’s video AI blows past expectations. Instead of US$60M, Kling generates US$140M in Q3 revenues. Profit +37%. AI-generated content becomes the short-video industry’s fastest growth engine.
🦾 AI-boosted boom: Baidu beats EPS by 30%, PDD grows double digits globally, Trip.com crushes expectations (+236% EPS). Travel, search & discount commerce remain China’s strongest consumer stories — with AI driving margins and efficiency everywhere.
Big Picture
The debate about the AI bubble is split: Sam Altman warns that ‘investors are overall too euphoric about AI.’ Fed Chair Powell, on the other hand, emphasizes that the big tech companies ‘actually generate profits.’ The Q3 numbers support this picture: AI champions like Nvidia, Tencent, Baidu & Kuaishou earn real money, raise forecasts, and invest in infrastructure that is already being used today.
The dangerous part of the market is not AI itself, but overpriced AI startups without a viable business model.
The China Survival Guide for Western Businesses
Entity setup, WeChat strategy, hiring your first local team. 12+ years on the ground in Shanghai.
