Chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) kicks off its annual GPU Technology conference (GTC) on Monday, with artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing set to be in focus.
Shares in Nvidia (NVDA) jumped on Friday, closing the session up more than 5%, capping a volatile week for US stocks fuelled by economic concerns and uncertainty over US president Donald Trump's tariff policies.
However, the stock is down 9.4% year-to-date as DeepSeek's release of a lower cost AI model in January prompted investors to question the level of spending in this space by major tech companies. These concerns continue to hang over the sector.
Ahead of the conference, Nvidia (NVDA) shares were up 1% in pre-market trading on Monday morning. Quantum computing stocks were also on the rise, with Rigetti Computing (RGTI) advancing 2.5%, having surged 28% on Friday. Quantum Computing Inc. (QUBT) jumped 29% on Friday and was up nearly 12% in pre-market trading on Monday morning.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) has increased its stakes in Japan's largest trading houses, according to reports.
Bloomberg reported that filings with Japan's finance ministry showed Berkshire had raised its holdings in Mitsubishi Corp. (8058.T), Marubeni Corp. (8002.T), Mitsui & Co. (8031.T), Itochu Corp. (8001.T) and Sumitomo Corp. (8053.T). The average position across the five stocks went up to around 9.3%.
According to Bloomberg's report, Jumpei Tanaka, head of investment strategy at Pictet Asset Management Japan, said the increase in Berkshire's positions may “provide a sense of security about buying Japanese stocks at a time when the Nikkei is seeing some weakness."
Japan's Nikkei 225 (^N225) index is down more than 6% year-to-date, while the broader Topix index is 0.3% in the red so far this year.
Meanwhile, the company reportedly said that its ERNIE 4.5 model has "excellent multimodal understanding ability. It has more advanced language ability, and its understanding, generation, logic, and memory abilities are comprehensively improved."
Baidu is not the only Chinese tech company looking to compete with DeepSeek, with Tencent (0700.HK) having also recently released a new AI model. Tencent (0700.HK) claimed that its Hunyuan Turbo S could reply faster to queries than DeepSeek's latest R1 model.
On the UK market, shares in defence firm QinetiQ (QQ.L) slid 20% after the company warned its profits would be lower for the year.
In a trading update on Monday, QinetiQ (QQ.L) said it now expected to see organic revenue growth of around 2% in 2025, down from previous guidance of "high single digit" growth.
QinetiQ (QQ.L) also warned that its balance sheet would be impacted by a goodwill impairment charge of £140m ($181m) "due to the market backdrop and operational performance in the US", as well as a number of one-off exceptional charges of up to £40m.
QinetiQ (QQ.L) said it continued to face "tough near-term trading conditions", which had affected its short cycle work in UK intelligence and US sectors, resulting in further delays to a number of contract awards.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell (AJB.L), said: "A profit warning from the defence sector is the last thing investors expected, given how shares in the industry have rocketed this year on hopes of increased defence spending by governments in various parts of the world."
"It’s a reminder to investors that even the sectors with strong earnings growth opportunities aren’t immune to bumps in the road," he added.
The update weighed on the shares of fellow London-listed defence firms, with BAE Systems (BA.L) trading flat, Chemring (CHG.L) down 2.8% and Cohort (CHRT.L) dipping 1.2% on Monday morning.
Shares in AstraZeneca (AZN.L) were down nearly 1% after the pharmaceuticals giant announced that it was set to buy cell therapy specialist EsoBiotec for up to $1bn (£771m).
EsoBiotec has a platform that helps the immune system to attack cancers, which AstraZeneca (AZN.L) said "could offer many more patients access to transformative cell therapy treatments delivered in just minutes rather than the current process which takes weeks."
AstraZeneca's (AZN.L) acquisition of EsoBiotec is expect to close in the second quarter of this year.
Mould said: “This still represents a relatively small bet for a company of AstraZeneca’s (AZN.L) size – it is paying out an initial $425m with the remainder based on hitting certain milestones, having posted revenue of more than $54bn in 2024.
"Immunotherapy drug Imfinzi has separately been approved in the EU to treat a rare type of lung cancer, and Eneboparatide – a treatment for a rare endocrine disease – has met its primary endpoint in trials.
"Individually, these developments do not dramatically move the dial but for AstraZeneca (AZN.L) it is all about having plenty of shots at goal in its portfolio so it can score regularly and continue growing revenue, profit and cash flow."
