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CoreSite CEO Juan Font thinks of his company's facilities like shopping malls. View More

The part of artificial intelligence that often gets overlooked lives inside data centers like CoreSite's sprawling complex just outside New York City. CEO Juan Font thinks of his company's facilities like shopping malls. "You have multiple stores sharing the same building, the same power, the same cooling, but in the digital sense, as opposed to having every company build their own data centers," Font told CNBC during a recent tour of CoreSite's NY3 facility in Secaucus, New Jersey. AI-optimized data centers like NY3 are popping up all around the country as technology companies crave more and more high-powered computing capacity to run their artificial intelligence workloads. They are the physical manifestation that enables the everyday tasks that we conduct on smartphones, computers, wearables, and connected cars. Big Tech — including portfolio names Amazon , Alphabet , Meta Platforms , and Microsoft — has already poured billions upon billions of dollars into data center buildouts. Collectively, these four companies are on track to spend at least $608 billion this year to keep in the AI arms race. That number may move even higher after all four companies report earnings after Wednesday's closing bell. On top of all that, newcomers OpenAI and Anthropic are also spending at furious clips ahead of their expected initial public offerings (IPOs), which could happen, at the earliest, near the end of this year. You have multiple stores sharing the same building, the same power, the same cooling, but in the digital sense. CoreSite CEO Juan Font For these complex, power-hungry data centers to operate, an ecosystem of technologies must come together. This new AI infrastructure gold rush is creating massive opportunities for Investing Club names tied to major parts of these facilities. To better understand how data centers are built and how some of our holdings — from top chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom to leading energy generator GE Vernova — come into play, I took an in-depth tour of CoreSite's Secaucus facility. I also spoke with executives at Amazon and another facility designer, Prime Data Centers (no relation to Amazon's subscription service Prime). Here's what I learned. Power It starts with power. "The innermost loop of this intelligence revolution is power," CoreSite's Font said as we walked through his company's Secaucus facility. CoreSite is owned by communications real estate investment tru s t (REIT) American Tower , and operates 30 data centers in 11 markets across the U.S. Before installing a single piece of technology, data center developers source electricity as the first and most critical step of the process. (Energy is also the base layer of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's "five-layer cake" of AI .) "If we go back three years, [clients] would be coming to us and saying, 'Do you have 10, 20, 30 megawatts?' … That's enough power for a sizable town," said Michael Wall, executive vice president of product delivery at Prime Data Centers, which has 29 facilities in seven American markets and three in Europe. "Now they say, 'How many hundreds of megawatts do you have available?'" Wall said demand has even scaled into multiple gigawatts (1,000 MW) for really big centers, reflecting the rapid increase in power needs driven by artificial intelligence. Data center size is measured by these energy increments as a nod to power being the limiting factor of how much computing capacity they can deliver. The powerful chips used to train and operate AI models — and the labyrinth of infrastructure to run, connect, and cool them — put pressure on an already constrained public energy grids. "The grid capacity as it stands today has probably been taken up," said Wall, adding that companies need real estate with either existing grid capacity or can support what he calls behind-the-meter power generation. The supply gap has led companies to seek alternative, supplemental avenues such as natural gas, fuel cell, solar, and wind solutions to keep projects on track. CoreSite selected fuel cell technology , which is the conversion of gas from a utility provider into electrical energy without combustion. GE Vernova , which supplies equipment like natural gas turbines, is another popular choice for data centers. Shares of the Club stock have surged more than 60% year to date after doubling last year. GEV YTD mountain GE Vernova YTD AI demand for energy products used to power data centers helped fuel GE Vernova's stellar quarter report last week. Revenue grew 16% year over year to $9.3 billion in the first quarter. GE Vernova also saw strong equipment orders, driven by growth across all of its segments. The company added $13 billion to its backlog in 90 days, expecting to reach a $200 billion backlog in 2027, a year sooner than anticipated. We increased our price target on the stock to $1,300 after its more than 12% post-earnings rally. We kept our buy-equivalent 1 rating on shares. Jim Cramer called GE Vernova's stock "one for the ages." Power management solutions to run data centers at peak efficiency is where Club name Eaton comes in. "Our PDUs, power distribution units, are provided by Eaton and Schneider," said Anthony White, CoreSite's senior manager of data operations. CoreSite also sources the facilities' remote power panels from Eaton and Schneider. Remote power panels are the last piece of equipment needed before power is delivered to customer racks, said White, who walked me through CoreSite's NY3 complex. Back in February, Eaton's fourth-quarter earnings revealed that its Electrical Americas' order backlog hit an all-time record high, growing 31% year-over-year. "Electrical Americas is seeing unprecedented demand with all-time high backlog and record order intake," said CEO Paulo Ruiz during the call. Shares of Eaton, which reports first-quarter results next week, are within a few percentage points of last week's all-time closing high. The stock has gained roughly 28% year to date. ETN YTD mountain Eaton YTD Chips All of that power leads to the brains of the operation, the server rooms. Inside those rooms, you'll find rows of tall rectangular-shaped racks that house high-performance chips. In CoreSite's case, its clients choose their preferred chip vendors. The all-around gold standard AI chips from Nvidia and the emerging demand for custom chips from Broadcom are at the top of companies' wish lists. Nvidia shares had been in a funk for much of this year. But like many of its peers, the stock has surged since the market's March 30 Iran war lows. Shares have now gained more than 13% year to date — and closed at a record high Monday with a market cap back above $5 trillion . During our April Monthly Meeting , Jim said, " Why do I cling to Nvidia? I think the better question to ask is, why would you sell it?" He added that Nvidia is "still the most important company in the AI universe, no matter what anyone says." Over the past three years, Nvidia has skyrocketed more than 650%. Over that same three-year stretch, Broadcom has surged nearly 540%. So far this year, the stock has gained rouhly 15.5% year to date. Hyperscalers are increasingly looking for custom chips, which is emerging as a test of Nvidia's industry dominance. This month, we trimmed Broadcom three times to right-size the position, which had swelled to an over 5% weighting in the portfolio. We generally like to keep our portion weighting to about 5%. Broadcom co-designs Google's increasingly popular tensor processing chips (TPUs), which will see their eighth generation split into two chips: One for training and one for inference. In addition to Alphabet's Google, Broadcom announced last week a multi-year, multi-generation strategic partnership with Meta to support the company's Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chips through 2029. NVDA AVGO mountain 2022-12-30 Nvidia vs. Broadcom since Dec. 30, 2022 The data centers that hyperscalers are building differ from the CoreSite in a couple of ways — in particular, they're much larger in scale. CoreSite's NY3 facility is 138,000-plus square feet. Amazon's $10 billion data center campus being built in North Carolina will have 20 buildings, each between 200,000 to 225,000 square feet, according to local officials . "We are building at a pace that we haven't seen before in our very long history in this space," Amazon Web Services Vice President Kerry Person told me. Amazon designs its own data centers, networking equipment, and some of its own chips, such as Graviton CPUs and AI-focused Trainium chips. To be sure, Amazon still buys a lot of Nvidia. Chips deployed throughout AI-optimized facilities like the one I toured at CoreSite are used for inference, or the use of pre-trained models. Inferencing is essentially what helps models like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini produce answers to questions. While inference doesn't require the same scale as model training, CoreSite said these facilities still need to support dense clusters of GPUs and the high power demands that come with them. Optical fiber Also critical to data center operations is fiber connectivity. Thousands of fiber connections carry massive amounts of information at extremely high speeds. Optical fiber, like that made by Corning , runs through CoreSite's facility, enabling data to quickly move between servers, cloud providers, and networks. Data centers need more fiber and faster connections than ever before as artificial intelligence workloads grow. Fiber, which runs faster and cooler than copper, is becoming increasingly popular. Faster, cooler runs use less power and reduce the load on the massive cooling equipment at these facilities. Excitement around the growth of fiber has made Corning one of the best stocks in the S & P 500 this year, even including Tuesday's 8.9% pullback in response to earnings. Corning's numbers were strong; the issue is that expectations were too high. That created a good entry point for investors, according to Jim, who emphasized that on Wednesday's Morning Meeting. Corning shares are up more than 70% year to date. In its first-quarter report, Corning said sales grew 18% year over year to $4.35 billion, headlined by a 36% increase in its optical communications segment, which houses its data center business. Notably, Corning also announced two more long-term supply agreements similar to the deal it inked with Meta back in January. Meta agreed to pay Corning up to $6 billion for fiber-optic cables in its AI data centers through 2030. Corning told CNBC it expects about 8 million miles of its latest optical fiber solution, named Contour, to go through Meta's Hyperion, its largest under-construction data center located in Louisiana. GLW YTD mountain Corning YTD The optical connectivity solutions provider is actually expanding its Hickory, North Carolina, cable factory to accommodate demand from others like Nvidia, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Corning is expected to report first-quarter results early next month. Networking As data moves through optical fibers, it still requires direction. Networking equipment is used to direct traffic inside and outside the data center. Network switches and routers ultimately determine where data goes and how fast it gets there. Broadcom is also involved in this part of data centers, producing hardware like network switches that help manage data traffic. In its most recent report on March 4, Broadcom's networking revenue grew 60% year over year, making up one-third of total AI revenues for its fiscal first quarter. According to Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, the company expects its AI networking business to grow to 40% of total AI revenues. Nvidia also has a massive networking business, thanks in large part to its wise acquisition of Mellanox in April 2020. Its networking revenues alone topped $31 billion in its latest fiscal year — more than 10 times larger than where Mellanox was at the time of the takeover. "Demand for our scale up and scale out technologies reached record levels, both growing double digit sequentially, driven by strong adoption of NVLink, Spectrum-X Ethernet, and InfiniBand," Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said during the company's latest earnings call on Feb. 25. "On a year-over-year basis, growth was driven primarily by NVLink 72 scale up switches as Grace Blackwell Systems accounted for roughly two-thirds of data center revenue in the quarter," Kress added. Former portfolio holding Cisco produces hardware such as routers that permit fast data transfer. The Club exited our position in Cisco in late March to replenish our cash reserves following our annual donation to charity. Cooling All of that power, processing, and networking generates an enormous amount of heat. Prime Data Centers said some server racks produce heat equivalent to "hundreds of hair dryers" running at once. Managing that heat has become another monumental problem for modern data centers. Traditional air cooling, which uses computer room air conditioners, is no longer sufficient for many data center server rooms. Instead, facilities like CoreSite's NY3 AI-optimized data center are increasingly turning more to liquid cooling systems, where coolant is delivered directly to servers or even individual chips to prevent overheating. "Probably the biggest innovation that AI has brought to data center design is liquid cooling capabilities," said CoreSite's Font. Probably the biggest innovation that AI has brought to data center design is liquid cooling capabilities CoreSite CEO Juan Font Companies like Eaton and Dover are important to this transition, supplying cooling systems, power management equipment, and thermal connectors that help keep these facilities running efficiently. Eaton last month closed on a $9.5 billion acquisition of liquid cooling leader Boyd Thermal. Jim thinks the Boyd acquisition was an excellent and strategic move by Eaton, which he also called "the best at everything that's electrical." Jim is much more upbeat about Dover after it delivered last Thursday what he called a "shockingly good quarter," which sent the stock up 5.5% in response. "We can look at this and say that [Dover CEO] Rich Tobin earned the right to stay in our portfolio," Jim said during last Thursday's Morning Meeting . It had been on a short leash, but the numbers delivered. Dover, which produces thermal connectors used in data center liquid cooling solutions, said it expects over a $1 billion in revenue this year from applications linked to artificial intelligence and power generation infrastructure. "In data centers, increasing density of thermal requirements are necessitating a shift towards liquid cooling, which directly benefits our connector and heat exchanger businesses," Tobin said during the company's earnings call. DOV YTD mountain Dover YTD Bottom line From power to chips to fiber to networking to cooling, the Club portfolio owns stocks in companies in all five buckets. The rush to build data centers is being funded by technology companies looking for greater and greater computing power in the age of AI, which Jensen from Nvidia has called the fourth industrial revolution. The AI boom is not just transforming our daily lives; it's transforming the fortunes of so all sorts of companies — from the household names like Amazon that also deliver us toothpaste and clothes, to the behind-the-scenes players like Eaton and GE Vernova. As investors, we're riding both sides of the wave. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long GEV, GLW, AVGO, NVDA, META, GOOGL, AMZN, ETN, DOV. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

Blackstone-backed Bagmane Prime Office REIT on Wednesday fixed a price band of Rs 95-100 per unit for its Rs 3,405-crore initial public offering (IPO), which will open for subscription on May 5. View More

Blackstone-backed Bagmane Prime Office REIT on Wednesday fixed a price band of Rs 95-100 per unit for its Rs 3,405-crore initial public offering (IPO), which will open for subscription on May 5. The public issue of Bengaluru-based real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns and develops Grade A+ office assets will conclude on May 7. The anchor investor bidding is scheduled for May 4, according to a public announcement. The proposed IPO comprises a fresh issue of units aggregating up to Rs 2,390 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) of units worth up to Rs 1,015 crore by the selling unitholder. Proceeds will be used to acquire Luxor at Bagmane Capital Tech Park (spanning one million sq ft) as well as part-fund the acquisition of a 93 per cent stake in Bagmane Rio, which owns the 1.1 million sq ft Bagmane Rio Business Park. Bagmane Prime Office REIT's portfolio includes six premium Grade A+ business parks spanning 20.3 million square feet, located in key micro-markets of Bengaluru, including the Outer Ring Road (ORR) and the Secondary Business District (SBD City). Live Events As of December 31, 2025, the REIT reported a committed occupancy of 98.8 per cent, among the highest for listed office REITs in India. Its tenant base includes multinational corporations such as Google, Amazon, Nvidia and Samsung. In addition to office assets, the portfolio also comprises two under-construction hotels with 607 keys and four solar power projects with a combined capacity of 164.4 MW (DC). The company has earmarked up to Rs 850 crore for strategic investors. Accordingly, the net offer stands at Rs 2,555 crore, of which 75 per cent is reserved for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) and the remaining 25 per cent for non-institutional investors (NIIs). Investors can bid for a minimum of 150 units and in multiples thereof. The Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are investment vehicles that own or operate income-generating real estate, enabling investors to earn a share of the income produced without directly purchasing the properties. At present, there are five listed REITs in India -- Sattva Group and Blackstone-backed Knowledge Realty Trust (KRT), K Raheja Corp-backed Mindspace Business Parks REIT, Brookfield India Real Estate Trust, Embassy Office Parks REIT and Nexus Select Trust. Out of the five listed REITs, only Nexus Select Trust is backed by rent-yielding retail real estate (shopping malls), while the other four are office REITs. The units are expected to be listed on the BSE and NSE on May 15. The basis of allotment is expected to be finalised by May 12, with refunds and credit of units slated around May 13. The book running lead managers to the issue are JM Financial , Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, Axis Capital , IIFL Capital Services , SBI Capital Markets, 360 ONE WAM and HDFC Bank . .Pbanner{display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;background-color:#ec1c40;margin-top:20px;padding:5px 10px;border-radius:4px;color:#fff;line-height:10px;} .Pbannertext{display:flex;align-items:center;font-size:16px;font-weight:600;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannertext img{height:20px;margin:0 6px} .Pbannerbutton a{display:flex;align-items:center;background-color:#fff;color:#ec1c40;text-decoration:none;font-weight:600;padding:4px 8px;border-radius:6px;font-size:15px;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannerbutton img{height:20px;margin-right:6px} .Pbannerbutton a:hover{background-color:#f7f7f7} Add as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now! (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel) (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel)

For the second time in two years, rates on the Real Time Market of the Indian Energy Exchange dropped to near-zero— ?0.0003 per unit on the afternoon of 5 April—as excess solar power flooded the market even as demand dipped due to rains and thunderstorms in Delhi and other parts of northern India. View More

Bagmane Prime Office REIT, backed by Blackstone, is launching an Initial Public Offering to raise Rs 3,405 crore. This marks India's sixth listed REIT and fourth focused on office assets. The offering includes a fresh issue and a sale by existing unitholders. The IPO opens on May 5 and closes on May 7. View More

MUMBAI: Blackstone-backed Bagmane Prime Office REIT has filed its Offer Document (OD) to raise up to Rs 3,405 crore through an Initial Public Offering ( IPO ), marking another significant listing in India’s growing office Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) space. The proposed offering comprises a fresh issue of units aggregating up to Rs 2,390 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of units worth up to Rs 1,015 crore by the selling unitholder. The proceeds from the fresh issue are expected to support the REIT’s growth and capital structure. This will be India's sixth listed REIT and the fifth backed by office assets. Bagmane Prime Office REIT owns a portfolio of six premium Grade A business parks , with a total area of 20.3 million sq ft, located in Bengaluru’s key office micro-markets, including the Outer Ring Road (ORR) and the Secondary Business District (SBD City). These markets have consistently remained among the strongest performing office corridors in the country. As of December 31, 2025, the portfolio reported a committed occupancy of 98.8%, the highest among Indian office REITs post-listing. The tenant base includes global technology and multinational corporations such as Google, Amazon, Nvidia and Samsung, reflecting the portfolio’s institutional-grade positioning and strong demand from occupiers. Live Events Beyond its core office assets, the REIT also has diversification through two under-construction hotels with a total of 607 keys, along with four solar power projects with an aggregate capacity of 164.4 MW, adding an infrastructure and sustainability component to its portfolio. Blackstone has strategic equity investment in Bagmane's Holdco Bagmane Developers where Blackstone through one of its entities holds 7% stake; and Blackstone BREP has 7% stake in BRPL Bagmane Rio, one of the special purpose vehicles. JM Financial , Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, Axis Capital , IIFL Capital Services , SBI Capital Markets, 360 ONE WAM , and HDFC Bank are the Book Running Lead Managers to the issue. The IPO comes amid sustained investor interest in income-generating commercial real estate assets, particularly high-occupancy office portfolios backed by global institutional sponsors. India’s office market continues to chart new highs despite geopolitical uncertainties and anticipated AI-led disruption, with gross leasing reaching 21.5 million sq ft in the first quarter, the highest ever recorded for a January-March period. The strong start to the year not only sets a new benchmark for first-quarter performance but also surpasses the quarterly average seen in 2025, pointing to sustained occupier confidence and reinforcing expectations of another robust year for the sector. .Pbanner{display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;background-color:#ec1c40;margin-top:20px;padding:5px 10px;border-radius:4px;color:#fff;line-height:10px;} .Pbannertext{display:flex;align-items:center;font-size:16px;font-weight:600;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannertext img{height:20px;margin:0 6px} .Pbannerbutton a{display:flex;align-items:center;background-color:#fff;color:#ec1c40;text-decoration:none;font-weight:600;padding:4px 8px;border-radius:6px;font-size:15px;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannerbutton img{height:20px;margin-right:6px} .Pbannerbutton a:hover{background-color:#f7f7f7} Add as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now! (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel) (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel)

Blackstone-backed Bagmane Prime Office REIT is poised to hit the capital markets with its Rs 3,405 crore initial public offering (IPO), scheduled to open on May 5. View More

Blackstone-backed Bagmane Prime Office REIT is poised to hit the capital markets with its Rs 3,405 crore initial public offering (IPO), scheduled to open on May 5. The public issue of Bengaluru-based real estate investment trust (REIT), which owns and develops Grade A+ office assets, will conclude on May 7. The anchor investor bidding is scheduled for May 4, according to the offer document. The proposed IPO comprises a fresh issue of units aggregating up to Rs 2,390 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) of units worth up to Rs 1,015 crore by the selling unitholder. Proceeds will be used to acquire Luxor at Bagmane Capital Tech Park (spanning one million sq ft) as well as part-fund the acquisition of a 93 per cent stake in Bagmane Rio, which owns the 1.1 million sq ft Bagmane Rio Business Park. Bagmane Prime Office REIT's portfolio includes six premium Grade A+ business parks spanning 20.3 million square feet, located in key micro-markets of Bengaluru, including the Outer Ring Road (ORR) and the Secondary Business District (SBD City). Live Events As of December 31, 2025, the REIT reported a committed occupancy of 98.8 per cent, among the highest for listed office REITs in India. Its tenant base includes multinational corporations such as Google, Amazon, Nvidia and Samsung. In addition to office assets, the portfolio also comprises two under-construction hotels with 607 keys and four solar power projects with a combined capacity of 164.4 MW (DC). The Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are investment vehicles that own or operate income-generating real estate, enabling investors to earn a share of the income produced without directly purchasing the properties. At present, there are five listed REITs in India -- Sattva Group and Blackstone-backed Knowledge Realty Trust (KRT), K Raheja Corp-backed Mindspace Business Parks REIT, Brookfield India Real Estate Trust, Embassy Office Parks REIT and Nexus Select Trust. Out of the five listed REITs, only Nexus Select Trust is backed by rent-yielding retail real estate (shopping malls), while the other four are office REITs. The book running lead managers to the issue are JM Financial , Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, Axis Capital , IIFL Capital Services , SBI Capital Markets, 360 ONE WAM and HDFC Bank . .Pbanner{display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;background-color:#ec1c40;margin-top:20px;padding:5px 10px;border-radius:4px;color:#fff;line-height:10px;} .Pbannertext{display:flex;align-items:center;font-size:16px;font-weight:600;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannertext img{height:20px;margin:0 6px} .Pbannerbutton a{display:flex;align-items:center;background-color:#fff;color:#ec1c40;text-decoration:none;font-weight:600;padding:4px 8px;border-radius:6px;font-size:15px;font-family:'Montserrat';} .Pbannerbutton img{height:20px;margin-right:6px} .Pbannerbutton a:hover{background-color:#f7f7f7} Add as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now! (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel) (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel)

Despite having over 2.4 crore households, rooftop installations remain low, with most solar capacity coming from ground-mounted projects View More

Rising global oil prices have begun seeping into the domestic economy, squeezing margins for manufacturers dependent on imported raw materials. View More

In this article@LCO.1Follow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT Employees work on the production line of solar panels at a workshop of Jiangsu DMEGC New Energy Co., Ltd. on July 22, 2025 in Suqian, Jiangsu Province of China.Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images Profits at China's industrial firms grew at their fastest pace in six months in March, even as the Middle East war upended global oil markets and sent raw material costs soaring.Industrial profits jumped 15.8% from a year earlier in March, the sharpest growth since September last year, National Bureau of Statistics data showed Monday, quickening from the 15.2% surge in the first two months of this year. In the first three months this year, enterprise profits rose 15.5%, the fastest start to a year since 2017, barring the pandemic-driven spike in 2021.Yu Weining, chief statistician at NBS, highlighted surging profits in the equipment and high-tech manufacturing sectors, which saw profits soar 21% and 47.4% in the first quarter, respectively. The artificial intelligence and semiconductor boom drove outsized profit growth across several subsectors in the first three months of the year. Profits for optical fiber makers surged 336.8% from a year earlier, while manufacturers for optoelectronics and display devices posted gains of 43% and 36.3%, respectively. Read more China newsBehind China's 'active efforts' for an Iran ceasefire: Business trumps politicsAlibaba launches data center with 10,000 of its own chips as China ramps up AI push'The thaw is real': Indian delegation visits China to talk EVs and moreWhy AI isn't replacing jobs in China (yet)Beijing's surprise intervention on Meta's Manus rattles tech founders, VCs eyeing 'China shedding'Three niche commodity prices are surging. What they show about China's grip on supply chains Demand for intelligent products also lifted earnings across emerging industries, including drone manufacturers with a 53.8% profit gain, and other intelligent consumer device makers. Earnings for raw material producers rose 77.9% in the first quarter from a year earlier, as oil refineries swung to a profit. A slew of strategic emerging industries, such as aerospace, new energy, and next-generation information technology, also drove a 116.7% surge in profits at non-ferrous metal firms, according to NBS data. The upswing follows a period of stabilization in 2025 when industrial companies' earnings eked out a modest 0.6% growth after three consecutive years of annual declines. The improved profitability for manufacturers was in part underpinned by robust exports, said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. In the first quarter, China's exports grew 14.7% from a year earlier in U.S. dollars, the fastest pace since early 2022. The Middle East conflict will nonetheless weigh on the economy in the second quarter, as higher energy prices and weakening external demand pose a growing headwind for exporters, Zhang said. Relative resilience amid energy shock The soaring profits came even as rising oil prices started seeping into the global economy, pushing up import costs and threatening to squeeze margins for manufacturers dependent on certain raw materials. Brent crude oil prices have soared about 48% since the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran began at the end of February, driving up costs for chemicals, fibers and plastics across the global supply chain. China's energy mix, heavily anchored in coal and renewables, has provided a structural buffer against oil price volatility, according to Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley. In a survey of 32 sectors, around 70% of companies indicated "smaller cost shocks and fewer production disruptions" than their global peers, Xing said in a note Monday. "China is relatively better positioned and may capture pockets of export market-share gains under a sizeable but not extreme energy shock," Xing said. That said, the economy is not fully insulated from the broader fallout, as slowing global demand could cap its export momentum, while higher energy import costs squeeze margins further down the supply chain. watch nowVIDEO5:1105:11China's economy is actually 'pretty steady' due to AI growth, says KKR's McVeyClosing Bell: Overtime Enterprises' profits were already under strain, as a prolonged property market downturn and a gloomy job market pressured domestic demand, fueling price wars across sectors. The recent rally in metal prices and Beijing's effort to rein in excess production capacity and curb cutthroat competition have helped ease deflationary pressure in the economy. China's producer price growth turned positive in March, driven by higher oil prices, marking the first expansion in more than three years and ending the longest deflationary streak in decades. Morgan Stanley expects the modest inflationary effect to push China's producer price index 1.2% higher this year, after a 2.6% decline last year. Consumer prices are expected to rise 0.8% this year, compared with a flat reading last year. Large onshore inventories of Iranian oil and crude on tankers at sea have also provided some cushion for the world's biggest importer. The Trump administration's naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks, however, could alter Beijing's calculus, with roughly half of China's oil imports transiting the waterway before the war broke out. The Trump administration said on Friday it had imposed sanctions on an independent "teapot" refinery in China for buying billions of dollars' worth of Iranian oil, potentially harming a key energy source that accounts for a quarter of Chinese refinery capacity. — CNBC's Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report. 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The US has slapped a hefty 123.04% anti-dumping duty on Indian solar cells and modules, citing "critical circumstances." This, combined with existing duties, makes US shipments unviable. However, Indian solar firms have already diversified exports to Europe and West Asia, mitigating the immediate impact. The industry plans to challenge the "flawed" findings. View More

It offers a compelling promise: to not only harvest sunlight, but to cultivate opportunity, resilience, and inclusive rural growth View More