On Monday, mainland China's benchmark CSI 300 posted its biggest gain since 2008.
Costfoto/NurPhoto/Getty Images
China's aggressive stimulus measures have sparked a significant stock market rally.
Many analysts say the measure is not enough to fix the challenges in China's economy.
However, the measures aim to boost sentiment and stem the negative feedback loop between markets and the economy.
Skeptics have been out in force since China rolled out aggressive stimulus measures last week to prop up its ailing economy and markets.
It's just not enough to reverse the magnitude of China's problems — including an epic property crisis and high youth unemployment — they say.
Still, traders, investors, and speculators have sent China's stock market to its best month in nearly a decade, signaling that the market players think that Beijing's moves are a "bazooka."
On Monday, mainland China's benchmark CSI 300 closed 8.5% higher, posting its biggest gain since 2008.
The gains are significant because the Chinese markets were in a prolonged market slump until last week's announcements.
"The PBoC and Politburo, all leaning in on putting a floor in property, boosting equities and backstopping households, have hit the right notes," Vishnu Varathan, Mizuho's macro research head for Asia excluding Japan, wrote in a note on Monday.
The People's Bank of China's stock market stimulus was unusual.
State media China Securities Journal explained the thinking behind the move in an editorial on Monday
"The capital market is not only a 'barometer' of the macroeconomy, but also a 'thermometer' of investor sentiment," said the editorial, which acknowledged the vicious cycle of negative feedback between the stock markets and economic sentiment.
"Boosting the capital market is an important breakthrough in strengthening confidence. An active stock market and improved investor confidence will improve expectations for economic development," the media outlet wrote.
Chinese central bank governor Pan Gongsheng even said during his Tuesday announcement of the stimulus measures that authorities would consider injecting more liquidity into the system if stock market support measures from swaps and loans for share buybacks prove to be successful.
Pan did not spell out the definition of success or put a limit to the amount of additional liquidity that authorities could inject, fueling euphoric hopes that the Chinese Communist Party could come close to throwing the kitchen sink.
"In other words, the state is actually telling investors that the Chinese stock market will not continue to decline, and China will provide 'unlimited ammunition' to support the stock market," Criss Wang, an independent analyst who publishes on the Smartkarma platform, wrote on Monday.
Once the capital market is stabilized, overall sentiment would improve and boost the economy, she added.
New tactics and shrinking factory activity
The PBOC's recent intervention is a "clear departure from previous policy," wrote Global Data.TS Lombard economists wrote in a note last week.
"The bank, which usually cautions against speculation, now seeks to encourage it!" they added.
Whether such a strategy would work in the long run is a question mark, since China's economy faces significant fundamental challenges.
China's factory activity shrank for a fifth straight month in September, official data showed on Monday.
But the financial markets are fickle and trading increasingly automated, so there may be room for the rally to run.
"The sheer relief of coordinated China stimulus is manifesting as 'risk on' and can take on its own momentum," wrote Mizuho's Varathan.
The Hong Kong Stock Exchange will be closed on Tuesday for a public holiday.
Mainland China's stock markets will also be closed from Tuesday to Monday.
James Corden has opened up about his experience taking Ozempic.
Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images
James Corden said Ozempic didn't help him lose weight because he doesn't eat only when he's hungry.
Ozempic, a brand name for the drug semaglutide, works by suppressing appetite.
But Ozempic doesn't address the root cause of eating behaviors nor change them, experts say.
James Corden has opened up about his experience using Ozempic, a diabetes drug that has become a household name in the last few years thanks to its success as a treatment for obesity.
Speaking on a recent episode of his SiriusXM podcast, "This Life of Mine With James Corden," the British comedian and actor, 46, said that he tried taking Ozempic for weight loss — but it seems he didn't reap the same benefits as other high-profile weight-loss drug users like Elon Musk.
"I tried Ozempic, and it won't be surprising to you when you look at me now, that it didn't really work," he said, per People. "I tried it for a bit and then what I realized was I was like, 'Oh no, nothing about my eating has anything to do with being hungry.'"
"All this does is make you feel not hungry," he continued, adding that he's "very rarely eating" simply because he feels hungry.
"You are looking at someone who's eaten a king size — and when I say king size Dairy Milk, one you give someone for Christmas — in a carwash," he added. "None of that was like: 'Oh, I'm so hungry.' It is not that, it's something else."
Ozempic's active ingredient is semaglutide, an injectable drug that helps people feel full by mimicking the hormone GLP-1. Brand names for the drug, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, have surged in popularity in recent years.
Common side effects of taking the drug include nausea and diarrhea, while some people can also regain weight after stopping treatment.
Ozempic doesn't address the root cause of eating behaviors nor change them
For those who have a more complex relationship with food and maybe struggle with emotional eating, Ozempic might not be the answer.
Brianna Paruolo, a licensed psychotherapist based in New York, told Business Insider that since Ozempic works primarily by reducing appetite and slowing digestion, it will not help someone whose issue with food stems from an underlying emotional problem.
"For individuals who use food as an emotional coping tool, simply reducing physical hunger (as Ozempic does) doesn't address the root cause of their eating behaviors," Paruolo said.
"Emotional eating is a complex behavior that often has little to do with physical hunger cues. It's a coping mechanism for managing emotions, stress, or past trauma," she added.
Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy.
Noting that semaglutide was initially developed to treat type-two diabetes, which is a metabolic disorder, Sarah Boss, a clinical psychiatrist and director at The Balance rehabilitation clinic, said that Ozempic and other similar medications "have the potential to disrupt our very delicate metabolic system."
Taking it "has the danger of worsening the underlying issue the individual is experiencing with their disordered eating pattern," Boss said.
"It is essential to address the root cause of emotional eating with a mental health professional to slowly adapt to new behaviors rather than going for the quick-fix solution that everyone in modern society is looking for right now," she added.
Paruolo advised that those struggling with emotional or binge eating would be better off using a combination of mental health support, nutritional counseling, and other medical care to meet their weight loss goals.
The National Health Service (NHS) England medical director, Stephen Powis, said in June that while such drugs "will be a powerful part of our arsenal dealing with obesity," they should "not be abused.
"Drugs including Ozempic and Wegovy should only be used by people prescribed them for obesity or diabetes. I'm worried about reports that people are misusing them — they are not intended as a quick fix for people trying to get 'beach body ready,'" he added.
Russia would be in a recession by now if it weren't for the nation's hefty war budget, economists told BI.
War spending is propping up the economy, which is becoming increasingly overheated, they added.
But Moscow has big problems on its hands, including soaring inflation and mounting currency issues.
War may be the only thing keeping Russia's economy afloat.
According to Jay Zagorsky, an economist and markets professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, the Ukraine invasion is likely the only thing preventing the country from slipping into a recession.
That's because Russia's hefty military budget is supporting its sagging economy. But that's a temporary solution for Moscow's mounting economic problems, he told Business Insider. Dilemmas faced by the Kremlin include spiraling inflation and lingering currency and budget issues.
"The Russian economy right now is being propped up by large amounts of government spending, so there's not going to be a slowdown in any sector in the economy that the Russia government is buying supplies from," Zagorsky said, pointing to Kremlin purchasing uniforms, boots, ammunition, and food as part of its war efforts against Ukraine. "So if there was no war, oh yes, I think there'd be an immediate recession."
While the war continues, the timing of a downturn is uncertain, according to Yuriy Gorodnichenko, an economist and professor at the University of California-Berkeley who also sees trouble ahead for Russia.
The nation is reportedly setting aside a record 13.2 trillion rubles for its defense budget next year, which should help stimulate its economy. However, that kind of monster spending can't continue forever, Gorodnichenko said.
"With the government money, they can keep the economy afloat, but at some point the government is going to run out of money, so they'll have to stop, and they'll have a recession," he added.
Moscow's economic issues
There are many red flags waving inside Russia's economy.
Inflation is one of the biggest problems, Zagorsky said. According to Russia's official statistics service, consumer prices climbed 9% year-over-year in August.
Yet Zagorsky speculated that inflation could be running way hotter than that. The Bank of Russia hiked rates to 19% in September — the highest they have been since the Ukraine invasion began — which prompted central bankers to take emergency policy moves.
"It suggests to me that inflation might actually be really higher, and they're a little bit underreporting," Zagorsky said, pointing to the Soviet Union's practice of understating its inflation numbers during the Cold War.
Russia's economy is also being plagued by currency problems, Gorodnichenko said, pointing to Russia's limited access to the dollar as the result of Western sanctions. That's crimped Moscow ability to trade, especially for its oil and crude products, which make up a significant portion of its total revenue.
Russia has turned to alternative currencies, like China's yuan, to bolster its balance sheet and keep trade humming along. But now even the reminibi is in short supply, with Chinese firms increasingly hesitant to do business with Russia in fear of being targeted by secondary sanctions from the US and other Western states.
"Russia is making fewer sales to China, or receiving less for whatever volumes, physical volumes they send to China. All ... are contributing factors to economic problems in Russia," Gorodnichenko said.
Previously, Gorodnichenko predicted Russia could see a severe recession in the next year if the nation ran out of dollars.
It's unclear if that will happen in the next year, he said, though he noted that the nation's oil revenue has dropped as military spending has climbed. That's partially been a result of crude-oil prices falling globally.
"Russia is not only facing a reduction in demand for its product, but a rather dramatic fall in the price. This is kind of a double-whammy," Zagorsky said. "To me, it's a pretty simple story. The question is how long can the Russian economy keep going in the face of these big headwinds?"
Neither Zagorsky nor Gorodnichenko could say concretely when a recession could start for Russia. That will ultimately depend on how long the war in Ukraine — and therefore, spending on the war — will last.
Gorodnichenko is keeping a close eye on whether Russia will further raise the signing bonus for recruited soldiers. He says that if it does increase, it will be a sign that the nation is both running out of workers and that its economy is overheated.
"At some point, they will have to make critical decisions — very unpopular decisions," he said.
Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son has had a dizzying career betting big on technology.
Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has spent his life putting bold bets on the future of technology.
A new book charts the journey of the Japanese businessman from social outcast to the pinnacle of the tech sector.
BI spoke with Lionel Barber, the author who got up close to Silicon Valley's ultimate disruptor.
On an evening at the turn of the millennium, Masayoshi Son had a rousing message for the entrepreneurs who flocked to Tokyo's Roppongi district.
"Japan is going through its biggest social upheaval since the Meiji Restoration," he said with characteristic grandiosity. "Let's make it so that a millennium from now, people will look back on our time and remember that the kind of society they're living in was created by us today."
SoftBank, the media-technology conglomerate Son founded two decades prior, was riding high on the glory it attained in the dot-com boom. Son himself had briefly seen his wealth surpass that of Bill Gates in the era's frenzy; he was the world's richest person for three days. Now, he was ready to see a new generation emulate his success.
It's a story that Lionel Barber, the former editor of The Financial Times, recounts in his new book "Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan's Masayoshi Son." Over 335 pages, he charts the journey of the 67-year-old — known to many as Masa — from a life in poverty to a dizzying career betting it all on technology.
From his early years distributing software, he would go on to build a telecoms empire and mint a near-$100 billion investment fund that would splash money on everything from Uber to WeWork.
For Barber, who has stood face-to-face with leaders like Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin and Barack Obama in Washington, the allure of Son was simple. "This is a story of our times," he told Business Insider. "The cheap money, leverage, technology — he's ridden this wave right from when he started with software distribution, which has penetrated every aspect of society."
As history shows, the hopes and dreams the SoftBank founder shared for the future that evening 24 years ago would crash back to reality days later. Having made a killing from an early $20 million bet on Jack Ma's Alibaba and taking a share in Yahoo, Son was about to see an abrupt change in fortune as SoftBank's stock crashed.
By March 2000, the dot-com bubble would burst altogether.
Masayoshi Son was an early investor in Jack Ma's Alibaba.
Wang HE/Getty Images
That said, Son's humiliation at that moment would not stop him from chasing visions of extraordinary scope again and again, even if it meant hard falls were to come once more. This is the career of a man whose ambition has taken him to the brink and back.
And signs suggest he's not done just yet.
Social pariah to technology visionary
Son's rise to what Barber describes as a "place at the very pinnacle of the global plutocracy" was hardly guaranteed.
Though he's now worth almost $17 billion, owns a mansion likened to Batman's Wayne Manor, and places himself among a peer group of Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan, and Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, Son was born in August 1957 to Koreans "on a dirt track with no name" on the Japanese island of Kyushu, according to the book. It recounts that "Masa's earliest memories were the smell of pigs and the sound of steam trains belching soot and smoke which filled his makeshift home."
Discrimination was a part of his childhood, too, with postwar Koreans living in Japan labeled "Zainichi" — a term used as a pejorative to categorize the ethnic minority as second-class citizens. For Son, being born in poverty meant his early years involved a pariah-like experience.
However, as Barber notes, the younger Son would go on to enjoy a future audience with the 45th President of the United States and court royals in Riyadh. He would, more importantly, play a pivotal role in transforming the technology sector from a niche interest of computer obsessives into a global force that turns the world economy.
In Barber's telling, a few key factors drove Son down this path. His inaugural visit to the US, where he attended Berkeley, coincided with the microprocessor revolution. Like Microsoft's Gates, he claims to have had an epiphany after seeing the Intel 8080 microprocessor for the first time in a copy of the Popular Electronics magazine; he foresaw a future in which the world could one day be powered by silicon.
Masayoshi Son found early inspiration in Bill Gates.
Jordan Strauss/AP
However, self-conviction in his own "genius" appears to be first and foremost. Combined with his outsider status, Son was a young man with a chip on his shoulder. Visiting Son's father, Mitsunori Son — creator of a gambling business built on arcade pachinko machines — at their family home, Barber recalled how it felt like a shrine devoted to their son. "He was treated like a princeling from day one and behaved like a princeling. He was told he was special," Barber told BI.
The early years are key to understanding how Son became preoccupied with unwieldy ambition that would take him too close to the sun time and again. He made his first major bet on his own genius when he founded SoftBank in 1981. It was the start of a two-decade chapter defined by high-profile encounters with the likes of Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, and Jack Welch, acquisitions totaling billions of dollars, and an all-or-nothing attitude toward innovation.
At that time, Son was akin to an "arm-waving internet prophet," Barber said, who devised the idea of distributing software. Years later, when Japan's economy began to collapse, he quickly maneuvered a return to the US, where he bought big assets such as the then-popular tech trade show Comdex, gaining access to the deep Silicon Valley networks that came with it.
Though it ended with a spectacular crash, Son offset the damage that left SoftBank "virtually broke" by working 18-hour days, seven days a week, to bring the high-speed broadband revolution to Japan in the 2000s.
A helping hand from Steve Jobs, who he first met at the Comdex trade fair in Las Vegas in the 1980s, also came as SoftBank struck an exclusive carrier deal in Japan for the iPhone from 2008 to 2011. It gave him a front seat to the smartphone boom.
Steve Jobs and Masayoshi Son first met in the 1980s.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
This cycle of rise and fall has made a curious reappearance throughout Son's career. As Barber puts it, Son is a gambler, which means his life has followed a familiar pattern that goes something like this: "A blizzard of ideas followed by intense enthusiasm and focus, leading to overreach, failure, and repentance — until the whole process started over again."
He is also someone Barber deems ruthless, a fighter with a penchant for the "crazy" that sits at odds with the portrait of a more shy and self-conscious leader that the billionaire has often presented to the public.
Nowhere have these elements shown themselves more than they have done in Son's leadership over SoftBank 2.0.
A gambling man with $100 billion to play with
In 2010, as the world was picking itself up from the financial crash, Son spent a lot of time thinking about 2040. He wanted to know how technology would shape society in 30 years' time.
He concluded that the tech-enabled information revolution should mean "happiness for everyone." At that time, though, Son was getting bored of being an operator — it was time to be a "grand investor." In Barber's assessment, this is a period in Son's life that shows how he's "quite capable of serious hardball" to get what he wants while leaving himself entirely vulnerable to those who might dare to dream as big as he does.
Enter the Vision Fund. Rajeev Misra, a former trader at Deutsche Bank who profited from a huge short bet against the subprime mortgages at the center of 2008's financial meltdown, was brought in to help lead Son's investment charge. So, too, was Nikesh Arora, a "fast-talking" former Google executive pulled away from a $50 million-a-year package.
Rajeev Misra ran SoftBank's Vision Fund.
Phil McCarten/Reuters
In the context of traditional Japanese corporate life, these hires were total anomalies. But Son's decision to bring them on board signaled the bold push he was ready to make. Buoyed by the credibility attained from the 2014 IPO of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, Son tapped Misra's ties to wealth funds in the Middle East to raise a combined $60 billion from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala.
In particular, for Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's ruler-in-waiting who led talks with SoftBank, Son's proposition gave him the opportunity he sought to present himself at home as a prince with a bold plan for the future. "He wants to be seen as the great modernizer transforming this petrostate into a truly modern economy where technology is at the forefront," Barber told BI.
Eventually, almost $100 billion was raised for a startup investing vehicle known as the Vision Fund, which brought untold chaos to the technology sector. Silicon Valley's biggest funds before then were no bigger than a few billion dollars, and SoftBank was ready to outbid them all to lead blockbuster investment rounds. Michael Moritz, lead partner at Sequoia Capital at the time, likened Son's arsenal of capital to Kim Jong Un's intercontinental ballistic missiles. Did Son care? Barber thinks not.
But as previous cycles in Son's life dictate, the flurry of enthusiasm is typically followed by failure. Though he proved himself to be ruthless in the $32 billion acquisition of chip designer Arm in 2016 — its shares are up almost 200% since being re-listed last year — he would fall prey to the charms of WeWork cofounder Adam Neumann.
The Israeli entrepreneur, who Son invited into the back of a taxi while en route to see Donald Trump, would eventually cause him trouble. Billions of dollars of investment were burned as the office space company masquerading as a tech one fell apart. A SoftBank bailout of WeWork cost $9.5 billion in 2019.
It wasn't the only blunder. SoftBank-backed Wirecard imploded after the Financial Times exposed large-scale fraud at the German payments provider. Greensill Capital, a supply chain finance firm that fell apart, forced the Vision Fund to write down a $1.5 billion investment.
Masayoshi Son has battled ups and downs in his career.
NurPhoto/Getty Images
As the misfires have mounted, critics have put Son's successful bets over the years down to luck. In Barber's view, the picture is more complicated. He told BI that he sees an "intelligent brain thinking ahead, anticipating," but also a reckless impulse to "put a chip on every board." There is a visionary that co-exists with a "gambling addict."
Barber's book comes at a critical juncture. Since the launch of ChatGPT, the technology industry has made artificial intelligence its central focus, with an arms race underway among global companies wanting to make smarter versions of the technology. For Son, an AI obsessive long before the current era of generative AI chatbots, it's a moment that seems tailor-made to his desires. But he has been slow to match that with the bold bets he has become known for.
While SoftBank oversaw Arm's IPOin September 2023 and acquired chip firm Graphcore in July, it has not yet invested in companies developing the large language models powering the current boom, such as OpenAI or Anthropic. In 2019, it dumped its nearly 5% stake in Nvidia, the chip giant now worth over $3 trillion.
Still, it's hard not to see a splurge coming soon. In June, the SoftBank boss told shareholders past investments were "just a warm-up" for the AI era. It's no surprise to Barber, who sees Son as never satisfied.
"He's definitely got another act," Barber said. "There's no question."
'Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Masayoshi Son' by Lionel Barber is published by Allen Lane on October 3 in the UK, and Atria/One Signal Publishers in January 2025 in the US.
The author went from not working out to now being on her 250th Orange Theory class.
FilippoBacci/Getty Images
I bought a Peloton during the pandemic but it turned into a clothing rack.
I had tried all kinds of workouts and nothing stuck, but I also wasn't happy with my postpartum body.
I discovered Orange Theory through a friend, and I just completed my 250th class.
I am not an athlete. It isn't for a lack of trying, though.
As a kid, I tried to dance, but my coordination was off. I attempted gymnastics and even baton twirling (again, no coordination). I played soccer consistently for years, only continuing to make the team because I was able to kick the ball far. I could barely run, and my breath left my lungs before I could make real progress in any sort of athletic activity.
During my college years, when being thin was my only priority, I spent hours in the gym, but I hated every second of it. Still, I was always trying to get myself to love fitness. As an adult, I have tried it all: hot yoga, boxing, pilates, barre, spinning — if there was a fitness trend going on, I was in the class trying hard to fall in love with it.
Of course, none of it stuck
I didn't want to hold on to my postpartum body
Then, I had kids. My husband and I bought a Peloton for the house, hoping that would be the end of my search for a fitness regime I would stick to. The pandemic offered me an opportunity not to have the "time" excuse anymore and I did enjoy my spin classes for quite some time. But eventually, that Peloton became a (very expensive) clothing rack that now takes up precious space in our bedroom.
I was at a point in my search where I had tried it all — aside from the more intense workouts like Crossfit, which scared me way too much to try, I was seemingly out of options. But my mental health was suffering, and my postpartum body was not something I wanted to hold onto.
My best friend had recently started Orange Theory classes and was trying to get me to join. But I looked at Orange Theory as one of those scary options I would never consider — it seemed like you had to be an athlete to go to those classes, and I am not an athlete.
I finally tried Orange Theory
After months of my friend wearing me down, and slightly out of desperation, I signed up for a trial class. My nerves were explosive. I spent the night picturing a class of uber-fit men and women who would laugh at me when I couldn't figure out how to use a rower machine.
But as soon as I stepped into the studio, I realized I was wrong.
The members were of all shapes and sizes and the coaches were calm and explained in detail what I could expect from my first class. Suddenly, I could breathe a bit easier.
Once the class started, I immediately realized that even if I couldn't figure out how to use the rower, it would be unlikely that any of the other members at the studio would even notice. Everyone was focused on themselves, which made my nerves disappear rather quickly.
I would later learn that my first class was one of their signature classes called Everest, which mimics a climb up Mount Everest and is thus considered one of their hardest formats. The idea that I was able to complete the entire class without falling off the treadmill or passing out (although I did feel like I might), gave me the confidence to go back again. And again. And again.
I now love working out
It has now been over a year since I first walked into Orange Theory. I recently completed my 250th class and I can officially say that fitness is not just something I strive to love, but something that has become part of my everyday routine.
When I started, running for more than two minutes was an impossible feat. Now, I am signing up for 5K's and half marathons. I run faster, I lift heavier, and I leave each class with a mental clarity and a newfound stamina that I never had before.
Beyond the fitness aspect, my health has improved. I no longer worry about longevity or keeping up with my kids. My cholesterol dropped over 50 points and I am finally able to see beyond my physical appearance and realize how much fitness impacts other areas of my life.
In the past, I worked out and attended fitness classes to lose weight. Now, I show up to Orange Theory to start my day off right, to challenge myself physically and mentally, and to show my girls that you don't have to be an athlete, or be super thin, to be fit. I am now, to my huge surprise, the type of person who wakes up before 6 a.m . everyday to get a workout in. I am the type of person who runs four miles during a family vacation before everyone else gets up — not because I feel like I have to, but because I want to.
Swallowing my fear and walking into Orange Theory one year ago may not have turned me into an athlete — I still cannot run and kick a ball at the same time if my life depended on it — but it did turn me into a fitness lover. And in the end, that's enough for me.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, delivers an important speech at a meeting celebrating the 75th founding anniversary of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference CPPCC in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 20, 2024. (Photo by Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images
China has announced a slew of supportive policies to give its economy a boost.
But the past week's stimulus blitz did not offer fiscal support to China's discouraged consumers.
China needs to spend more on its people and offer incentives for buyer demand to return
China's latest stimulus blitz offers everything but one key fix: new incentives to revive consumers.
In a rare press conference on Tuesday, Beijing demonstrated fresh resolve to reverse the country's economic malaise. An adrenaline shot worth of policy was announced, ranging from mortgage financing to lower interest rates and reductions to the reserve requirement ratio.
JPMorgan estimates that the latter will inject around 1 trillion yuan into the country's banking system. That's alongside other liquidity support and plans for a stock stabilization fund.
Markets have lauded the measures as a step in the right direction and a meaningful improvement compared Beijing's piecemeal support initiatives thus far. The country's equities have ballooned on the news, leading to the largest weekly rally since 2008.
But economists, though also encouraged, warn not to overestimate what these policies can achieve.
"Although the numbers sound big and the efforts seem wide-reaching, this stimulus announcement alone may not be enough to bring the entire Chinese economy out of the doldrums," Liz Young Thomas, Head of Investment Strategy at SoFi, said in written commentary.
Want change? Help consumers
"This economy has many deep, structural, fundamental problems that cannot be turned around just simply by a stimulus package," Tianlei Huang told Business Insider. "I think it's probably a bit too early to celebrate."
The Peterson Institute for International Economics research fellow explained that Tuesday's stimulus boost will be offset by the country's major fiscal contraction. The government has simply not spent enough on consumers, even though an economic recovery depends on them.
A lack of domestic spending sits at the crux of China's turmoil: consumers are so savings-oriented that China is fighting a deflation spiral. Meanwhile, buyers don't want to touch real estate, a sector so big it makes up as much as 30% of the nation's GDP, Huang said.
Despite its size, the market suffers from debt, defaults, and unsold inventory.
In Huang's view, Beijing needs to start spending more on people rather than its consistent focus on areas like infrastructure. Addressing the housing downslide might also boost confidence, given how many individuals depend on the market for work.
While Tuesday's stimulus package didn't address fiscal support, Chinese officials appear to be getting around to it. On Friday, Reuters reported that China plans to issue over $284 billion worth of yuan in special sovereign bonds — a move meant to shore up fresh stimulus.
That followed a day after Chinese leadership noted a need to support household consumption and a stable real estate market. These rare comments were made at the Communist party's monthly Politburo meeting, Reuters said.
Meanwhile, Barclays cited that some policymakers have recently advocated for an even larger fiscal stimulus package, amounting to as much as $1.4 trillion worth of yuan, to be unleashed over two years.
The bank considers this a "bazooka" stimulus scenario, which would snap up housing surplus, prop up consumption, and continue to ease debt burdens and fund public services. By Barclay's estimates, this could take GDP growth to 5% in 2025.
The scenario reported on Friday will trigger a milder boost, raising next year's growth to 4.4%.
As to this year's growth, economists have turned anxious that Beijing may miss its growth target of 5%. Even if China commits to bigger fiscal support in the near term, it could be too late to change things this year, Huang said.
He noted a lag between bond announcements and actual bond issuance. Winter is also around the corner, which can slow down activity in stimulus-targeted sectors, such as infrastructure.
"Sounds weird, but that was actually one of the major reasons why additional Treasury bond issued last year since October was actually not spent until earlier this year," he said.
To be sure, fiscal expansion is not enough to entirely shore up consumer faith. Policies need to address why consumers are not spending, Bank of America wrote on Wednesday.
"We argue the key is to fix an increasingly prevalent problem to save China from the economic malaise — the lack of positive incentives at the micro level in both public and private sectors," the bank said.
Huang explained this on the fact that new construction is simply not getting finished, reducing fresh demand — some shoppers are waiting for years to receive their purchase. In his view, the government needs to be more direct in funding unfinished projects.
At the Meta Connect developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg shows off prototype of computer glasses
picture alliance/Getty Images
The social-media giant held its big Meta Connect conference in Silicon Valley this week.
Mark Zuckerberg is spending heavily on AI and AR technology.
Is the CEO still obsessed with efficiency?
2023 was Mark Zuckerberg's "Year of Efficiency." He chopped tens of thousands of jobs, eliminated management layers, and took other drastic steps to save Meta money.
That effort continued into 2024 as the Meta CEO whittled down VP ranks and took more cost-cutting steps.
However, Meta has also gone on a spending bender for AI, GPUs, and the data centers needed to compete with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.
So, is Zuckerberg still obsessed with efficiency?
The company dropped a big clue this week at its Meta Connect conference in Silicon Valley.
Tech reporter Pranav Dixit attended and noticed that the WiFi password for the event was "effici3ncy."
A post on Threads
Pranav Dixit/Threads
Dixit posted about this on Threads and Zuckerberg liked the post.
A post on Threads liked by Mark Zuckerberg
Pranav Dixit/Threads
That's a big hint that the Meta CEO is still laser-focused on keeping his company's costs in check, even as it presses on with pricey AI projects such as its Llama open-source AI models.
Business Insider asked Meta for comment on Thursday and didn't get a response.
Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova Systems
SambaNova Systems
Nvidia faces competition in AI inference from startups like SambaNova, Groq, and Cerebras.
Inference, the production stage of AI, is seen as a key market by these startups.
Startups claim superior speed and efficiency for inference, but there are tradeoffs.
It's difficult to chip away at a headstart that is essentially trillions of dollars strong, but that's what Nvidia's competitors are attempting. They may have the best chance of competing in a type of artificial intelligence computing called inference.
Inference is the production stage of AI computing. Once training a model is done, inference chips produce the outputs and complete tasks based on that training — whether that's generating a picture or written answers to a prompt.
Rodrigo Liang cofounded SambaNova Systems in 2017 with the aim of going after Nvidia's already obvious lead. But back then, the artificial intelligence ecosystem was even younger, and inference loads were tiny. With foundation models advancing in size and accuracy, the flip from training machine learning models to using them is coming into view.
Last month, Nvidia CFO Colleen Kress said the company's data center workloads had reached 40% inference. Liang told Business Insider he expects 90% of AI computing workloads will be in inference in the not-too-distant future.
That's why several startups are charging aggressively into the inference market — emphasizing where they might outperform the goliath in the space.
SambaNova uses a reconfigurable dataflow unit or RDU instead of Nvidia's and AMD's graphics processing units. Liang's firm purports that its architecture is a better fit for machine learning models since it was designed for that purpose, and not for rendering graphics. It's an argument that fellow Nvidia challenger Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman references too.
Nvidia also agrees that inference is the larger market, according to Bernstein analysts who met with Nvidia CFO Colette Kress last week.
Kress believes Nvidia's "offering is the best for inferencing given their networking strength, the liquid cooling offering, and their ARM CPU, all of which are essential for optimal inferencing," the analysts wrote. Kress also noted that most of Nvidia's inference revenue currently comes from recommender engines and search. Nvidia declined to comment for this report.
Liang said the inference market will begin to mature within roughly six months.
SambaNova uses a different architecture for it's chip than Nvidia or AMD.
SambaNova
Startups are betting on computing speed
To pull customers away from Nvidia, newer players like Groq, Cerebras, and SambaNova are touting speed. In fact, Cerebras and SambaNova claim to offer the fastest inference computing in the world. And neither use GPUs, the type of chip leaders Nvidia and AMD promote.
According to SambaNova, its RDUs are ideal for agentic AI, which can complete functions without much instruction. Speed is an important factor when multiple AI models talk to each other and waiting for an answer can dampen the magic of generative AI.
But there isn't just one measure of inference speed. The specifications of each model, such as Meta's Llama, Anthropic's Claude, or OpenAI's o1, determine how fast results are generated.
Speed in AI computing results from several engineering factors that go beyond the chip itself. And the way chips are networked together can impact their performance, which means Nvidia chips in one data center may perform differently than the same chip in another data center.
The number of tokens per second that can be consumed (when a prompt goes in) and generated (when a response comes out) is a common metric for AI computing speed. Tokens are a base unit of data, where data could be pixels, words, audio, and beyond. But tokens per second don't account for latency or lag — which can stem from multiple factors.
It is also difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison between hardware as performance depends on how the hardware is set up and the software that runs it. Additionally, the models themselves are improving constantly.
In the hopes of advancing the market for inference faster, and edge their way into a market dominated by Nvidia, several newer hardware companies are trying different business models to bypass direct competition with Nvidia and go straight to the companies building AI.
SambaNova offers Meta's open-source Llama foundation model through its cloud service and Cerebras and Groq have launched similar services. Thus, these companies are competing with both chip design companies like Nvidia and AI foundation model companies like OpenAI.
Artificialanalysis.ai provides public information comparing models that offer inference-as-a-service via API. On Wednesday, the site showed that Cerebras, SambaNova, and Groq were indeed the three fastest APIs for Met'a's Llama 3.1 70B and 8B models.
Nvidia isn't included in this comparison because the company doesn't provide inference-as-a-service. MLPerf shares inference performance benchmarks for hardware computing speed. Nvidia is among the best performing in this dataset, but its startup competitors are not included.
"I think you're gonna see this inference game open up for all these other alternatives in a much, much broader way than the pre-training market opened up," Liang said. "Because it was so concentrated with very few players, Jensen could personally negotiate those deals in a way that, for startups, it's hard to break up," he continued.
Cerebras's AI chip is roughly size of a dinner plate.
Cerebras
What's the catch?
Semianalysis chief analyst Dylan Patel said chip buyers have to consider not just performance, but also all the advantages and expenses that make a difference over a chip's lifetime. From his view, these startup chips can start to show cracks.
Patel told BI that "GPUs offer superior total cost of ownership per token."
SambaNova and Cerebras disagree with this.
"There is typically a tradeoff when it comes to speed and cost. Higher inference speed can mean a larger hardware footprint, which in turn demands higher costs," Liang said, adding that SambaNova makes up for this tradeoff by delivering speed and capacity with fewer chips and, therefore, lower costs.
Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman disputed the view that GPUs have a lower total cost of ownership, saying "While GPU manufacturers may claim leadership in TCO, this is not a function of technology but rather the big bull horn they have," he said.
Got a tip or an insight to share?Contact Senior Reporter Emma Cosgrove atecosgrove@businessinsider.comor use the secure messaging app Signal: 443-333-9088
When OpenAI released ChatGPT, Nischal Nadhamuni said he "abdicated all my other responsibilities" for one month to focus on the breakthrough new technology.
Klarity
Klarity, a startup that makes accounting software, put engineers on a "generative AI sabbatical."
For four weeks, employees froze all of their new development work to focus on the breakthrough tech.
As a result, Klarity switched off its own bespoke models in favor of using large language models.
In the months after ChatGPT exploded into public life, Klarity, an accounting software startup that's backed by super-entrepreneurs Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, faced an ah-ha moment.
Klarity's cofounder and chief technology officer, Nischal Nadhamuni, told his team that artificial intelligence was going to disrupt everything right beneath their feet. Klarity would either adapt or lose to a competitor.
In order to figure out what was possible for Klarity with large language models that could understand as well as produce natural language or code, Nadhamuni placed a team of engineers on a "generative AI sabbatical."
For four weeks, employees put all other new development work on hold and focused on how to use these models to improve Klarity's product and delight customers. The only rule was radical ideas only, nothing incremental.
"I basically abdicated all my other responsibilities and just worked on AI, 12 hours a day, every day, for a month," said Nadhamuni, who studied computer science and machine learning at MIT. "We just gutted our product and rebuilt it using generative AI."
The result: Klarity unlocked new levels of automation for processes that were previously done by people — increasing its pass-through rate to 85% — and sped up its ability to ship features.
Investors took notice. In June, Klarity grabbed $70 million in a Series B round led by Friedman and Gross, with participation from Scale Venture Partners, Tola Capital, Picus Capital, Invus Capital, and Y Combinator. The round brings Klarity's funding to over $90 million. It didn't share a valuation.
"Of our portfolio, they were by far the fastest to move," said Aaron Fleishman, a Klarity investor through his firm Tola Capital, an early-stage venture firm.
It's a sink or swim moment for tech companies. Just as the internet transformed industry by industry 40 years ago, the rapid and unstoppable march of AI is changing every corner of society. For startups, it means adopting the tech is no longer optional; it's fast becoming the lifeline companies need to stay afloat in a competitive market.
"Their window is closing," Fleishman said of companies that have yet to adapt. "They can either quickly become an almost AI-native player in the market, or they're going to fail because they're going to get disrupted."
'The rules of physics have changed'
Even before its sabbatical, Klarity was well-versed in natural language processing and computer vision. Its software turned documents like order forms, invoices, and other contracts into structured data that machines can understand to the same degree as humans. This helped accountants save time and avoid costly mistakes.
Early versions of its product were built on a smorgasbord of third-party models, open-source libraries, and models that Klarity trained itself. But Nadhamuni said its own models were limited in their ability to process documents they had never seen before because they were trained on small data sets. When OpenAI released the large language model GPT-3.5, it opened new possibilities for tech firms that were using their own bespoke models.
Klarity's sabbatical kicked off with a three-day executive team gathering to bring them on the same page. Nadhamuni gave a talk on generative AI, its history, and the latest breakthroughs in the technology. On the first night, he gave the executives homework: play around with ChatGPT on personal and work tasks.
"The way we framed it is, the rules of physics have changed," Nadhamuni said. "Before we ideate, we need to know what the new rules are to really get a sense of what might be possible."
On the second day, the executives huddled around a conference room table and threw a Miro board up on a screen. They asked themselves how generative AI could transform the way their product extracts data from documents and understand the nuances and context of the data. They pared down hundreds of suggestions into five key hypotheses. If the new tech could do those five things, they would rebuild the core of Klarity's platform using generative AI.
For example, a total reset was worth considering if the new tech was better at understanding forms and data that it hadn't seen before. If the new tech made onboarding easier for non-experts, it would completely change how Klarity sells to enterprises.
Engineers split into small groups to tackle each hypothesis. Nadhamuni said employees had "complete autonomy to do what they want, use what tools they want, obviously while respecting data governance issues." They met on Fridays to share a roundup of the past week's learnings.
Nadhamuni also wrote a playbook on how to run a generative AI sabbatical that's available on Tola Capital's blog.
By the end of the four weeks, Klarity was ready to push the nuclear button on its bespoke models in favor of using large language models. The GPUs it used are gathering dust in an office.
According to Nadhamuni, a sabbatical allowed the company to move at the speed of the tech's rapid development. It shortened software development cycles from weeks and days to hours. And a sabbatical forced the team to radically rethink what was possible.
"What I always tell my team is assume there's 17 iterations between where we are today and the right answer," he said. "Don't obsess over the right answer, obsess over how does one iterate quickly and in an informed way."
Lux Capital general partner Deena Shakir just released a children's book on entrepreneurship.
"Leena Mo, CEO" features a young Muslim Arab girl building a robot and scaling her very own company.
The book has been Shakir's passion project for the past five years alongside her VC day job.
VC Deena Shakir fields hundreds of startup pitches a year. But when it came to finding a publisher for her children's book, "Leena Mo, CEO," she found herself in the hot seat.
Shakir cold-emailed her draft to more than 200 book agents over the course of a year. Her pitches were mostly ignored.
It took Shakir two years to find an agent; it wasn't until 2022 that she got an offer from Simon & Schuster.
Now "Leena Mo, CEO," finally has a place on bookshelves. The book centers on a young girl pursuing her dream of building something great — a robot that takes care of her snow-shoveling chores.
Shakir first set out to find a story for children about entrepreneurship in 2019. But she struggled to find any books for kids about founders, let alone books with a young female protagonist or a protagonist of color.
Writing a children's book about a young Muslim Arab girl becoming a founder that her children and other kids everywhere can relate to became a passion project for Shakir, she said.
"I want my kids to grow up in a world where they can see that at a young age," she said.
Shakir's book, which releases on September 24, features blurbs by prominent authors and entrepreneurs like Chelsea Clinton and Sheryl Sandburg. Shakir said she plans to donate all of the book's proceeds to the global nonprofit Save the Children.
Shakir's children's book, "Leena Mo, CEO," releases September 24, 2024.
Deena Shakir
Writing the female founder's story
Shakir wrote the entire first draft of "Leena Mo, CEO" one frenzied weekend in December 2020. Yet despite Shakir's prominent position in the venture capital world — she's backed hot startups across healthcare like Maven Clinic and Everly Health — getting her book out into the world took years and plenty of rejection.
"The more I get told no, the more I want to prove that I can do something," she said. "And honestly, that's not dissimilar from my journey into venture, which was not easy, not linear, and was just full of rejections in the early days."
Shakir reading to her daughter's preschool class in October 2019.
Deena Shakir
During the five years Shakir spent at Google in the 2010s, she worked on some of the tech giant's social impact initiatives to address the attrition of female engineering employees at Google.
In those efforts, Shakir said, she learned that dismantling the structures that keep women away from careers in tech or cause them to leave those careers must start early.
"You can't just address it by making sure there are more computer science classes that are inclusive of women in college. It literally starts from the first days of consciousness and reading," she said. "That's really what led me to try to take this on at the childhood level."
"Leena Mo, CEO" is also peppered with Arabic words — like the robot's name, "Helmy," a Romanized derivation of the Arabic word for "my dream."
Shakir, the daughter of Iraqi immigrants, said she wanted Leena Mo's identity as a Muslim Arab girl to just be a normal part of the story's context, showing a type of young leader not typically featured in children's books while keeping the plot relatable to kids of all backgrounds.
Shakir's characters use Arabic words intermittently throughout "Leena Mo, CEO".
Deena Shakir
Shakir said she's gotten a lot of positive feedback about the book from both her family and her VC and founder friends. Next, she said she'd consider writing a children's book about an investor or maybe a book for a slightly older demographic — the four-year-old daughter she set out to write a book for is now nine.
Two of Shakir's three children are boys. Shakir emphasized that this book is for them, too, not just for young girls.
"Think about some of the canonical children's books of our childhood. Did it matter to us that the characters were boys? I never thought that a book wasn't relatable to me because the character was a boy," she said. "That's part of what I want to normalize here. Yes, it's a story about a kid and the kid happens to be a girl. That doesn't mean it's a story for girls."
A San Francisco venture firm developed a proprietary model it calls "moneyball for venture capital."
The firm is revealing 19 exceptional female investors with a keen eye for identifying future unicorns.
Women still comprise only about 11% of investing partners at US VC firms.
Even though venture capitalists invest in tech companies, most VCs are still decidedly low-tech, relying on gut, intuition, and personal relationships to make investment decisions.
TRAC, a San Francisco-based early-stage firm cofounded by Fred Campbell, Joseph Aaron, Scott Pyne, Steve Marek, and Dick Fredericks, aims to take a more systematic approach. It developed a proprietary model it calls "Moneyball for venture capital" that uses AI to predict which early-stage startups are most likely to become unicorns, which are companies valued at more than a billion dollars.
"At TRAC, we are in the prediction business," said Aaron. "Data is our investment committee and AI is our MO. We are 100% data-driven."
Key to the model is a very small group of 261 early investors it labels "SuperForecasters," which the firm has found can predict with a remarkable degree which young companies will someday mature into unicorns.
Now, TRAC is sharing 19 exceptional female investors who its model shows are well on their way to being SuperForecasters or in the case of Stephanie Zhan, Natalie Diggins, and Shruti Gandhi, are already there.
"By following this methodology, we aim to highlight the most promising and active new women venture capital investors who are making significant impacts in the industry," Aaron said.
Growing up in Asia, Zhan learned to code by creating basic video games and later studied computer science at Stanford. She joined Sequoia Capital in 2015, where she focuses on early-stage companies. Zhan's board seats include Skild AI, which is building a AI foundation model for robotics, and Linear, a software development platform.
Natalie Diggins, angel investor
Natalie Diggins
Courtesy of Natalie Diggins
Notable investments:Vitally, TypingDNA, Gryps, Atomic Jar, Une Femme Wines
Diggins wears many hats, as a technologist, founder, board member, advisor and angel investor. She is also the founder ofTheArts.ai, an initiative that bridges the arts and technology. "As a hands-on operator, I invest in companies that are solving problems I deeply understand" Diggins told BI.
Xuezhao foundedBasis Set, an early-stage venture firm with over half a billion under management and one of the earliest firms to focus on machine learning and automation. "I like founders with the steepest learning curve, and exceptional execution," Xuezhao told BI.
Jana Messerschmidt, Founding Partner #Angels
Jana Messerschmidt
Courtesy of Jana Messerschmidt
Notable investments: Vanta, Lovevery, Ashby, Fireflies, Persona
Messerschmidt led Twitter's global strategic partnerships until 2016 and joined Lightspeed Venture Partners in 2018. She also founded #Angels in 2015, a team of experienced executive operators collaborating to make angel investments. Asked for the most important factor she looks for when deciding to write a check, Messerschmidt says: "Founder tenacity and unrelenting capacity to solve problems."
Gandhi is an AI engineer whostarted Array Venturesto invest in technical founders like herself who are starting enterprise companies in areas like AI, data, and cloud. Gandhi says she seeks out "agitated technical founders who have domain expertise in different stacks of an enterprise business and are raising their first round of capital."
Kirsten Connell, Octopus Ventures and Alma Angels
Kirsten Connell
Connell is an angel investor at Alma Angels, which is a community of investors who have pledged to invest in female-founded startups. She also is an investor at London-based Octopus Ventures, which backs health, fintech, deep tech, consumer, and B2B software companies. Connell says she searches for '"pattern-breaking' founders who have the grit, resilience, and capability to build outlier companies."
Parthasarathy seeks out startup investments as a member of the corporate development team at software giant SAP. Previously, she was the investment director at Intel Capital. Parthasarathy says the most important thing she looks for in a company is "strength of the founding team."
Elizabeth Weil, Scribble Ventures
Scribble Ventures founder Elizabeth Weil
Weil founded Scribble Ventures in 2020 to back early-stage tech startups with checks up to $1.5 million. Before that, she was a partner at venture firms, including A16z and 137 Ventures, and an executive at Twitter. She's been angel investing in startups for more than a decade and has backed companies like SpaceX, Carta, Slack, and Figma.
Barber has worn many hats since the beginning of her career — as a corporate lawyer, a McKinsey consultant, a startup founder, and now an investor. She previously served as a managing director of Techstars and ran the firm's Los Angeles startup accelerator. At M13, she backs startups innovating in health, finance, work, and commerce.
Wan is the founding partner of crypto-focused Primitive Ventures, a firm that invests only its own money to promote cryptocurrency tech as "the new socioeconomic primitive." After a four-year stint at eBay, she became a full-time investor and now crypto influencer, with more than136,000 Twitter followers.
Bendz, based in Stockholm, Sweden, invests in seed-stage companies as a general partner Cherry Ventures. Before breaking into venture capital, she was Spotify's global director of marketing for seven years. She served as a partner at Atomico before joining Cherry Ventures, and remains an Atomico advisor. She's also mademore than 50angel investments.
April Underwood, Adverb Ventures
April Underwood
April Underwood
Notable investments: Outset, Particle, Piramidal, Vanta, Color
Underwood began making startup bets while working at Twitter in the early 2010s, cofounding #ANGELS with other former female Twitter executives and making her own investments on the side. She teamed up with one of those Twitter alums, Jessica Verilli, to start Adverb Ventures with a $75 million fund in 2023. She's also on the board of directors at Zillow and Eventbrite.
Anna Palmer, Flybridge Capital Partners
Anna Palmer, general partner at Flybridge and cofounder of XFactor Ventures.
Palmer started her first company, the designer clothing donation company Fashion Project, after graduating from Harvard Law School in 2011. She went on to start and lead two other companies, including XFactor Ventures, a Boston-based venture fund focused on female founders. She was the first female general partner to join VC firm Flybridge in 2020.
Alongside three other female investors, Palmer is also a cofounder and part-owner of a new Boston soccer team in the National Women's Soccer League, which will start playing in 2026.
Carine Aagescas founded the startup accelerator AngelPad in 2010 and has invested in more than 150 startups during her time as an angel investor. She comes from the marketing world, having held director-level communications roles at two software startups before founding her own company, an e-commerce platform for buying French home accessories in the US. She's also a fine art photographer who has done solo and group exhibitions in New York and San Francisco.
Sarah Imbach played a crucial role in growing a handful of early-aughts startups that went on to be big public companies – she was a senior vice president at PayPal, COO at LinkedIn, and COO at 23andme – before moving to the investing side. She's been angel investing since 2010. In 2020, she co-founded braincandy, an online community to help readers find their next book to read.
Ellen Levy, Silicon Valley Connect
Ellen Levy, Managing director of Silicon Valley Connect
Christopher Michel
Notable investments: BetterUp, Omni, Banjo, Jobr
Ellen Levy's day job is managing director of Silicon Valley Connect, an organization that facilitates relationship building between the San Francisco tech community and the rest of the world.
In addition to holding that position since 2007, Levy has made angel investments in dozens of startups and advises them. She started her career in the corporate world and has completed stints at PwC, Apple, Stanford University, and LinkedIn, where she was vice president of strategic initiatives.
Euri Kim has been writing checks for consumer startups for more than a decade, and she's the managing partner at Forerunner Ventures. Before joining Forerunner Ventures in 2021, Kim invested in growth-stage consumer and retail companies with Bain & Company.
Kim started her career in management consulting, and today she sits on the board of startups including Oura, Curology, and The Feed.
Sonali de Rycker, Accel
Accel partner Sonali De Rycker
Accel
Notable investments: Spotify, BeReal, Lyst, Match
After getting her start in investment banking, Sonali de Ryker has spent the majority of her career working in VC, first at Atlas Venture and currently as a partner at Accel, which she joined in 2008. Based in London, de Rycker is interested in marketplaces, SMEs, and fintech, and she's backed startups including Spotify, BeReal, Lyst, and Match.
Nicole Junkermann, NJF Capital
Notable investments:Infront Sports & Media, Owkin
UK-based Nicole Junkermann founded NJF Capital in 2012 to make investments in the healthtech, fintech, foodtech, and deep tech verticals. Of the more than 40 companies the fund has invested in, 30% are unicorns. She's a career entrepreneur, having launched soccer gaming platform Winamax after graduating from college.
China's massive consumer base is just not spending enough.
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
China just announced aggressive monetary stimulus measures to boost its struggling economy.
They include interest rate cuts, liquidity support, and reduced bank reserve requirements.
Analysts are divided on the impact, citing ongoing challenges like low consumer confidence.
China's finally getting serious about stimulating its dismal economy.
On Tuesday, three of its top financial regulators appeared side by side in a rare press conference on the economy where People's Bank of China governor Pan Gongsheng announced a broad range of monetary stimulus measures.
They include cutting a short-term key interest rate and reducing reserve requirement ratio, or RRR, to the lowest level since at least 2018. The RRR refers to the amount of money banks need to hold in reserve.
Pan also announced 800 billion Chinese yuan, or $114 billion, in liquidity support. He said authorities are looking into a stock stabilization fund.
Analysts say the measures are aggressive and even historic.
"Today's policy measures are bold by historical standards," Betty Wang, the lead economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note on Tuesday.
"This is the first time since the pandemic that the central bank offered a combination of rate cuts, RRR cuts, and structural monetary policies at the same time," she added.
Wang said China's central bank pulled the aggressive moves in part due to weaker-than-expected economic data, which increases the risk that the country wouldn't be able to hit its GDP growth target of around 5% this year.
The show of commitment sent a shot of confidence to investors, sending shares soaring.
China's benchmark CSI 300 closed 4.3% higher, clocking its best day in four years and nearly wiping out steep losses this year — although it's still about 40% lower than a 2021 peak.
Despite the fanfare, analysts are divided over whether the moves that ease monetary policy constitute a massive "bazooka" stimulus.
Most say the monetary easing policies don't address the lack of confidence contributing to depressed consumer spending.
"While these measures will boost confidence to some extent, we do not believe these monetary and financial policies alone are enough to arrest the worsening economic slowdown," Nomura economists wrote in a note on Tuesday, pointing out that the RRR cut is of "limited meaning."
"The real bottleneck faced by the economy is a lack of effective demand rather than loanable funds available," they wrote.
The Nomura economists said Beijing should focus on fiscal stimulus and reforms, such as direct funding to stabilize the property market, "as the housing crisis is the root cause of these shocks"
Beijing could also increase pension payments to underprivileged groups and provide more funding to local governments, they added.
China has pulled out multiple support measures this year to shore up its economy and stock markets, but any kneejerk optimism has been shortlived.
It remains to be seen if Tuesday's gains will hold in the long run. China's economy is facing multiple challenges including an epic property crisis, high youth unemployment rates, and geopolitical tensions.
Still, the commitment shown by Beijing on Tuesday is lifting market sentiment and fuelling hopes that the world's second-largest economy may finally emerge from its struggles.
"Overall, we feel today's measures are a step in the right direction, especially as multiple measures have been announced together rather than spacing out individual piecemeal measures to a more limited effect," Lynn Song, the Greater China chief economist at ING bank, wrote on Tuesday.
Since most global central banks are on an easing cycle, China could also head down that path in the months ahead, he added.
"If we see a large fiscal policy push as well, momentum could recover heading into the fourth quarter," Song added.
