Alibaba (9988.HK, BABA)

Shares in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba closed 8.4% higher in Asian trading hours on Thursday, as investors cheered news of developments in the company's AI reasoning model.

The QwQ-32B model, released as a competitor to market disruptor DeepSeek's R1, has 32 billion parameters. Alibaba said it can achieve performance comparable to DeepSeek's R1 model that has 671 billion parameters.

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The development is the latest in an increasingly hot AI race, with US-based OpenAI gaining an early mover advantage with its ChatGPT.

Newer models, such as DeepSeek's R1 have claimed to use less processing power, throwing into doubt global investment bets on computing chips made by companies like Nvidia, as well as plays for data centres.

Moderna (MRNA)

On Wednesday, a German court ruled that Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) had violated a Covid vaccine patent held by Moderna (MRNA), sending the pharma giant's stock nearly 16% higher for the session.

The Duesseldorf court said Pfizer and BioNTech would need to provide information related to earnings derived from the use of that patent and that the pair owes Moderna compensation.

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Pfizer and BioNTech had argued that they were authorised to use the technology behind the patent via a press release until the World Health Organization declared that there was no longer a global health emergency.

The ruling can still be appealed by a higher court.

Pfizer's stock was relatively unmoved by the news.

JD.com (JD, 9618.HK)

Another e-commerce giant — JD.com — also saw its shares rally on Thursday after it posted its fastest revenue growth in almost three years. The growth spurt comes as a result of policies by Beijing that helped shore up consumer spending.

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The company saw a better-than-projected 13% rise in sales to 347bn yuan ($47.9bn) for the December quarter. Its net income also more than doubled to 9.9bn yuan.

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Admiral (ADM.L)

FTSE 100 (^FTSE) heavyweight admiral reported a profit jump for 2024, with earnings-per-share nearly doubling to 216.6p from 111.2p from 2023. Meanwhile, pre-tax earnings were p by 90% to £839.2m.

It also increased its dividend by 86%, from 121p to 192p.

Its motor division looks to be broadly back on track, following a period of higher claims and costs.

"Admiral’s ability to cut prices has attracted drivers in their droves and the changes in the Ogden rate — which dictates the level of compensation in personal injury cases — have helped support a big increase in profit," " said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.

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“UK motor insurance was the main engine of growth but most other areas of the business contributed decent growth too, bar the Italian arm where the company has a job to improve performance.

“Finishing the integration of pet insurance specialist More Than also means Admiral has another string to its bow which should now be firing on all cylinders.”

Stock popped around 7.3% in morning trade in London.

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