Kuaishou Technology shares slid more than 6% in Tuesday morning trading after Tencent Holdings disclosed it had sold 273 million Class B shares. Tencent’s stake fell to 9.37% from 15.68%, meaning it is no longer a substantial shareholder, according to a Kuaishou filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Monday. Based on Kuaishou’s Monday close of HK$46, the sale is expected to raise about HK$12.56 billion (US$1.6 billion). Kuaishou said the transaction would not have any material adverse effect on operations, and noted it has repurchased HK$8.35 billion of shares, or 52% of its HK$16 billion buyback plan.

Shanghai Biren Technology plans to raise about US$892.5 million to accelerate mass production of its next-generation general-purpose GPUs, aiming to meet surging demand for AI computing from domestic customers such as cloud providers and AI data centres. The move underscores how China’s AI chipmakers are stepping up efforts to narrow the gap with Nvidia, but the fundraising is framed as routine capacity expansion rather than being tied to new orders, technical breakthroughs or policy support. It adds longer-term competitive pressure on Nvidia from local alternatives, without pointing to near-term catalysts such as fresh internal orders, shipments or regulatory changes.

Hong Kong’s Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority (MPFA) plans to revise its rules to let all gold ETFs that meet set criteria qualify for MPF investment, replacing the current case-by-case approval process. The new framework will include risk controls that bar ETFs from using derivatives and cap MPF exposure to any single gold ETF at 10%. The change targets the city’s 4.8 million MPF members, aiming to broaden product choices and support Hong Kong’s bid to become a regional gold trading hub. The MPF oversees HK$1.53 trillion (US$195 billion) in assets.

Shenzhen Longsys Electronics forecast 2024 first-half net profit attributable to shareholders of 9.2 billion yuan to 11 billion yuan, versus 14.8 million yuan a year earlier. The company said that implies year-on-year growth of 62,204% to 74,394%, and it expects revenue of 22 billion yuan to 25 billion yuan, up from 10.2 billion yuan. Longsys attributed the jump to stronger downstream demand and constrained growth in global memory wafer capacity, alongside renewed wafer supply agreements including long-term deals or memorandums of understanding.

Benin, Africa’s largest cotton producer, is building a 184km road to connect its northern growing areas with the GloDjigbé Industrial Zone (GDIZ) in the south to ease transport bottlenecks. GDIZ now processes a fifth of the national cotton harvest into finished garments for global brands including US Polo Assn and The Children’s Place. The project is part of a longer-term push to end raw cotton exports by raising the share of local processing, rather than a short-term shift in global cotton supply and demand with an immediate link to international cotton futures prices.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian drones struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Tyumen Region, more than 2,000 km from Ukraine’s border. He also said Ukraine has developed new long-range drones capable of operating over more than 3,000 km. Tyumen Governor Alexander Moor said Russian air defences repelled a drone attack on the refinery.

Iran said ships must obtain its permission to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and buy mandatory insurance it designates, which is free for now but could be charged later, while restricting transit to a single route along its coastline and banning alternatives. The move directly clashes with the US account that 20 ships transited overnight on a route it recommends along Oman’s coast. A 60-day interim arrangement between Washington and Tehran provided only that passage would be free during its term, leaving longer-term control unresolved. The announcements have lifted risk premia for energy shipping and intensified pressure on global crude supply-chain stability.

Chinese AI models are increasingly competitive with U.S. peers, but the country’s hardware base remains a bottleneck, with domestic chips used widely for inference while leading models are not known to have been pretrained on homegrown silicon. The main constraint is a gap in computing power and supporting software ecosystems that makes full-scale training difficult on local hardware. Tighter U.S. export controls are pushing Chinese labs to try moving earlier training phases onto domestic chips, increasing pressure to close the training gap. The shift does not erase Nvidia’s current lead, but it underscores geopolitical supply risk and longer-term substitution pressure, with spillover to traditional assets largely limited to sentiment and valuation expectations.

Central banks are set to add to their gold reserves, with 45% saying they plan to increase holdings over the next 12 months, a record high. In contrast, 74% of respondents expect the US dollar’s share of global reserves to be lower within five years. About nine in 10 central banks also expect total central bank gold holdings to keep rising over the next 12 months, according to the World Gold Council’s annual survey published on June 16.