JD 618 Kicks Off Low-Price Deals; Tencent Speeds Up AI Monetization | Daily News Recap

0519 | Dolphin Focus:

🐬 Macro / Sector

1. Trump said on social media that, at the request of leaders from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the planned May 19 strike on Iran has been postponed. He added the US and Iran are in 'serious talks', with Gulf states worried an escalation could hit their own energy facilities.

He stressed US forces remain on alert and warned that a breakdown in talks would trigger a 'full-scale offensive'. The move keeps a window open for negotiations while applying military pressure on Iran, easing near-term oil and shipping risks in the Middle East and supporting global energy markets and risk appetite. Over the longer run, US‑Iran differences are unlikely to be resolved quickly, leaving room for flare‑ups, and Middle East uncertainty will continue to weigh on markets.

🐬 Stocks

1.$TENCENT(00700.HK)

Tencent Cloud announced that its agent platform models Hy3 preview and DeepSeek‑V4‑Pro will move to commercial availability on May 27, ending the time‑limited free beta and switching to usage‑based pricing. Weekly invocation reached 2.66 tn tokens, up 210% vs. the prior period, topping global model‑call rankings.

2.$NVIDIA(NVDA.US)

NVIDIA said Vera, its first CPU purpose‑built for Agent AI, has shipped to initial customers including Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX AI and Oracle Cloud. Powered by in‑house 88‑core Olympus CPUs and optimized for agent sandboxes and reinforcement learning, Oracle plans to deploy hundreds of thousands of units.

This challenges the GPU‑only paradigm in AI compute as CPUs become a key incremental driver in the agent era. NVIDIA is opening a dual growth curve in 'GPU+CPU', with leading AI labs and cloud providers as early adopters.

3.$JD.com(JD.US)

JD said its 618 campaign will kick off at 8 pm on May 30, highlighting official markdowns with discounts up to 50% and introducing a new 'Hot Low Prices' format. For the first time, JD will embed AI across all scenarios, upgrade its 'double compensation if you overpay' policy, and increase in‑stock supply and price protection.

With low‑price strategy plus AI as twin engines, JD is taking on the price war head‑on, aiming to cement 'real low prices + in‑stock' in users' minds. Short‑term discounts may pressure margins but could lift GMV and share.

4.$Tencent Music(TME.US)

Tencent Music said its acquisition of Ximalaya has closed, making it a wholly owned subsidiary. Consideration is up to $1.26 bn in cash plus 175 mn Class A shares of Tencent Music.

China's SAMR approved the deal with conditions such as no exclusivity, price protection and free content to prevent monopolistic behavior.

5.$Apple(AAPL.US)

Market chatter suggests Apple plans to add AI writing assistance, natural‑language command creation and AI wallpaper generation in iOS 27, deepening system‑level Apple Intelligence. As of May 18, however, Apple has not announced anything regarding iOS 27, and core AI features such as writing tools have already rolled out in iOS 18.

The rumor appears ahead of the official cadence, and any iOS 27 AI features are likely iterations on existing capabilities. We will continue to monitor official disclosures.

6. Dolphin Research is watching earnings and calls

BIDU: 'Baidu: Little else to count on, all‑in on Kunlun chips' and 'Baidu (Trans): Full‑stack AI advantages lie in cost efficiency and deployment stability'

BEKE, Bilibili and Hesai report earnings.