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Tag: Rakuten Group Inc

  • Japan stocks lead gains in mixed Asia-Pacific markets with Nikkei up more than 2%

    Japan stocks lead gains in mixed Asia-Pacific markets with Nikkei up more than 2%

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    The momentum in Japan markets were largely driven by the country’s technology and financial sector. 

    Doctoregg | Moment | Getty Images

    Japan’s major indexes gained more than 2% on Tuesday as markets resumed trading after a holiday.

    The benchmark Nikkei 225 jumped 2.72% higher and breached 36,000 for the first time since Aug. 2. The broader Topix gained 2.25%.

    The momentum was largely driven by the country’s technology and financial sectors, with Rakuten Group and Trend Micro leaping more than 8% and 6%, respectively.

    The country’s parliament plans to hold a special session next week to discuss the Bank of Japan’s decision to raise interest rates last month, Reuters reported, citing government sources.

    Japan’s producer price index rose 3% in July from a year earlier, climbing at a faster pace compared to 2.9% in June.

    South Korea’s Kospi dipped 0.2%, while the small-cap Kosdaq lost 1.57%.

    Wages in Australia rose 0.8% in the quarter ended June, the slowest pace since the same quarter a year earlier, compared with estimates of a 0.9% rise. Wages rose 4.1% on an annual basis.

    Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.16%.

    Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index kicked off the trading day with a 0.4% gain, while mainland China’s CSI 300 opened 0.06% higher.

    In Southeast Asia, Singapore reported its economy grew 2.9% in the second quarter from a year ago, in line with the advance gross domestic product estimate released in July. The Ministry of Trade and Industry cited strength in the wholesale trade, finance and insurance as well as the information and communication sectors. The city-state also said it sees 2024 GDP growth of 2% to 3%, versus its previous forecast of 1% to 3%.

    U.S. markets grappled with a choppy session overnight as investors braced for key inflation data.

    The S&P 500 concluded the day flat at 5,344.39, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.21% to close at 16,780.61, led by shares of Nvidia soaring 4%. On the flipside, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 140 points or 0.36% to conclude at 39,357.01.

    Traders await Wednesday’s consumer price index for July, a key indicator of the health of the U.S. economy. Investors will analyze the data for indications the Federal Reserve can begin cutting rates in September.

    —CNBC’s Brian Evans and Tanaya Macheel contributed to this report.

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  • Japanese tech giant Rakuten plans to launch proprietary AI model within next two months

    Japanese tech giant Rakuten plans to launch proprietary AI model within next two months

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    The logo of Japanese tech giant Rakuten logo seen at the Mobile World Congress 2019.

    Paco Freire| SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty Images

    Japan’s Rakuten plans to launch its own artificial intelligence language model within the next two months, its CEO told CNBC in an interview that aired Monday.

    It comes as the fintech-to-e-commerce giant looks to join other technology firms developing the rapidly growing technology.

    Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani said the company is working on its own large language model, or LLM. These are huge algorithms trained on massive data sets that underpin artificial intelligence applications, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

    Rakuten has a number of businesses from banking to e-commerce and telecommunications, therefore has a large amount of “very unique” data to train its LLM on, according to Mikitani.

    “Nobody has a dataset like we do,” he added.

    The company plans to use the AI model internally to improve operational efficiency and marketing by 20%, Mikitani said.

    He also wants to offer the model to third-party businesses to build on, much like Amazon or Microsoft do.

    “So we can easily teach them [businesses], package it and provide the platform for them to completely they can use it for their business,” Mikitani said.

    The CEO added that Rakuten is going to “have something within a couple of months.”

    To date, major U.S. and Chinese technology giants have been launching their own large language models.

    OpenAI, Amazon and Google are among the most notable in the U.S. In China, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have launched their own models too.

    Japanese firms have fallen somewhat behind their U.S. and Chinese counterparts. But they are trying to quickly catch up.

    Telecommunications group NTT announced this month that its proprietary LLM will be available in March.

    The telecommunications arm of SoftBank announced in November that its generative AI computing platform is operational.

    Japanese firms have a chance to create LLMs specific to the Japanese language, potentially giving them an edge over their U.S. and Chinese rivals.

    Mikitani said the push into AI is going to give Rakuten “huge profitable growth.”

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  • Forget the U.S: Pros say another top market looks cheap and offers the ‘best’ opportunities

    Forget the U.S: Pros say another top market looks cheap and offers the ‘best’ opportunities

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