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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang must feel like a child whose parents are perpetually at war. Weeks after he glimpsed a chance to resume sales of AI chips to China—thanks to approval from President Donald Trump—China has said, “Not so fast.” As our Hong Kong reporter Qianer Liu scooped today, the Chinese government has asked local tech companies to temporarily halt any plans to buy Nvidia’s H200 chips.
China may yet approve imports of the chips, but the volume it will allow could be very limited. Qianer’s story said officials are considering whether to require Chinese firms to buy a certain ratio of domestically made chips alongside any H200 purchases. Basically, China is reminding everyone that it is the decider, not Trump. And China will take its time deciding.
The Chinese government’s approval of the chip imports was never a slam dunk, to be sure, but the timing of this move is interesting. Could the U.S.’s adventure in Venezuela have prompted the Chinese to take a harder line on Nvidia chip sales in China than they might have otherwise? China has been a big buyer of Venezuelan oil but may have a tougher time getting shipments now that the Trump administration is claiming it controls Venezuela’s oil industry, as this Reuters report suggested. In other words, this could be a tit-for-tat exchange.
Semiconductor purchases aren’t the only card China could play—could it try to delay TikTok’s sale of its data security arm to a U.S.-controlled joint venture? That deal is due to close later this month. It’s not clear that China has the legal ability to block it, but TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, surely wouldn’t defy pressure from the Chinese government to hold off for a while. Then there’s Meta Platforms’ purchase of AI startup Manus. The Financial Times reported on Tuesday night that Chinese authorities were reviewing that deal, even though Manus relocated to Singapore from China. Could China try to block it? When two partners have so many entanglements but aren’t getting along, anything can trigger repercussions.
Warner’s Chutzpah
Excuses, excuses. Warner Bros. Discovery, as expected, again rejected Paramount Skydance’s $30 a share takeover offer, preferring to stick with a rival offer for a smaller part of the company from Netflix. WBD previously balked at Paramount’s offer by citing the fact that its shareholder, Larry Ellison, wasn’t personally guaranteeing the $40 billion in equity contributed. So Ellison added a personal guarantee.
WBD now argues that Paramount’s offer is riskier than Netflix’s because it’s effectively a “leveraged buyout.” Paramount “intends to incur an extraordinary amount of incremental debt—more than $50 billion” to get the deal done, Warner said today. Um…someone might want to point out to Warner’s board that Netflix also plans to borrow $50 billion and take on debt of $10.7 billion held by WBD’s studio and streaming operations. You might call that a leveraged buyout as well!
In Other News
• Anthropic has told potential investors it is planning to raise $10 billion at a valuation of $350 billion, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The valuation nearly doubles that of its last round in September.
• Google’s parent Alphabet on Wednesday passed Apple in market capitalization to become the second most valuable company in the world, worth $3.885 trillion, compared to Apple’s value of $3.846 trillion. Nvidia, worth $4.595 trillion, is far and away the most valuable firm.
• Several of Elon Musk’s legal claims against OpenAI will go to a jury trial, the judge overseeing the lawsuit said in a federal courtroom in Oakland, Calif. on Wednesday. More here.
• The chatbot startup Character.AI and Google have reached agreements to settle multiple lawsuits brought by families who alleged that Character’s chatbots contributed to their children killing or harming themselves, according to court papers filed this week.
• JPMorgan has struck a deal to replace Goldman Sachs as the provider of Apple’s credit card program, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• Intel shares jumped 6.5% after one of its executives revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday that the chipmaker is developing a bespoke gaming chip and software for mobile gaming devices, according to Yahoo Finance.
• European data center developer Global Technical Realty has raised $1.9 billion from private investment firms KKR and Oak Hill Capital as it looks to expand across the continent.
Today on The Information’s TITV
Check out our latest episode of TITV in which we speak with Sarah Guo about AI adoption, Nvidia and robotics.
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