CNBC Daily Open: It’s a rich Nvidia’s world

A 2025 refrain many of us likely have heard would be: “You’re buying that? You’re doing that? In this economy?”

But this problem does not seem to extend to the world’s most valuable company Nvidia, which is sitting on a problem most of us would like to have: having too much cash. 

At the end of October, Nvidia had $60.6 billion in cash and short-term investments. That’s up from $13.3 billion in January 2023, just after OpenAI released ChatGPT. 

And this is even after splashing out billions of dollars on stakes in companies: $1 billion for Nokia, $5 billion for Intel, $10 billion for Anthropic—and a jaw-dropping $100 billion commitment to OpenAI still under discussion. 

To add to this, Nvidia announced it would invest $2 billion in Synopsys this week.

Nvidia, which has gone from a niche maker of graphic cards to the world’s most valuable company, has also made $37 billion in buybacks and dividends, with a further $60 billion authorised. 

When your biggest challenge is figuring out how to spend $60 billion, you’re living the ultimate corporate luxury.

To take a line from ABBA: “Money money money, must be funny, in Nvidia’s world.”

Microsoft Office price hikes. Microsoft said Thursday that it will increase the prices of Office productivity software subscriptions for commercial and government clients on July 1. The company has been facing increased competition in recent years from Google.

India cuts rates. The Reserve Bank of India cut its policy rate by 25 basis points to 5.25%, matching forecasts. The bank delivered a unanimous reduction, citing “weakness in some key economic indicators,” even as headline inflation eased significantly.

‘China’s Nvidia’ IPO. Shares of Moore Threads, a Beijing-based graphics processing unit (GPU) manufacturer often referred to as “China’s Nvidia,” soared by more than 400% on its debut in Shanghai following its $1.1 billion listing.

Markets little changed. U.S. markets traded mixed Thursday stateside as investors assessed a report showing announced job cuts in November from U.S. employers surpassed 1 million for the year. Markets in Asia slid, with Japan leading losses.

[PRO] AI stocks at a reasonable price? Investors should turn to less explored pockets of the market to find stocks that are a play on the artificial intelligence boom but also offer growth at a reasonable price, Citigroup analysts say.

Ukraine, trade, pandas: What China’s Xi and France’s Macron discussed in Beijing

China said it was open to importing more goods from France in exchange for a “fair, conducive environment” for Chinese businesses in the European nation, President Xi Jinping told his counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Thursday as they met in Beijing.

The French president kicked off a 3-day visit to China on Wednesday — his first trip to Beijing in more than two years — on the heels of growing frictions over a range of topics including trade imbalance and the long-running war in Ukraine.

In a separate readout from the French government, Macron told Xi that the two countries must work together based on “a balanced relationship,” while urging Beijing to help end the Russia-Ukraine war.

— Anniek Bao