ChiNext Index’s gain widened to 2% after an early-session drop of as much as 1.8%. Shenzhen Composite Index rose 0.85% and the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.2%. More than 3,200 stocks advanced across the market. Leading sector gains were lab-grown diamonds, PET copper foil, supercapacitors and PCB-related stocks.

U.S. new single-family home sales fell 6.2% in April from March to a 622,000 annualized pace, below economists' 660,000 forecast, government data showed on Thursday. The drop at the start of the spring selling season indicates builders' incentives and more lower-priced construction have not offset rising mortgage rates, leaving affordability stretched for lower-income buyers. The result underscores that the U.S. housing market remains mired in a roughly three-year slump.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday SpaceX only agreed to lease the Colossus AI training data-center cluster to ANTHROPIC for six months, but he added the agreement "could" be extended to years. "SpaceX did not commit to renting Colossus for years, though that could indeed happen," Musk said. Earlier this year SpaceX reached a deal with ANTHROPIC under which ANTHROPIC would pay $1.25 bln per month to use the Colossus and Colossus II clusters in Memphis, Tennessee; that arrangement was reported as running through May 2029. In a regulatory filing last week SpaceX said both parties could terminate the agreement with 90 days' notice; that filing did not mention a six-month lease. Musk said the deal is a 180-day lease, after which either side can give 90 days' notice, "We will not strand them, and will provide a reasonable exit plan, but if compute resources become extremely tight, I have said we may need at some point to reclaim those resources." SpaceX's IPO application shows the company's AI unit generated $818 mln of revenue in the March quarter and an operating loss of about $2.5 bln.