💸 Nvidia & AMD to hand over 15% of China AI chip sales to the US
A peculiar arrangement - part export-license compliance, part diplomatic backchannel - means the two chip giants will pass along roughly 15% of their toned-down China AI accelerator sales back to Washington. This applies to Nvidia’s H20 and, according to whispers, AMD’s matching lineup.
Nvidia says it’s just following the rulebook; AMD… well, they’re playing it close to the vest. Detractors call it a “tax without calling it a tax,” though it keeps the China market door slightly ajar. A strange dance - more bureaucratic tango than trade war.
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🇨🇳 Beijing nudges for looser AI chip rules in bigger trade talks
China’s negotiators are angling for the US to ease curbs on high-bandwidth memory - the stuff that makes high-end AI GPUs actually hum. In plain English: let companies like Huawei integrate without tripping over regulatory tripwires.
No official confirmation yet - very much a “trial balloon” scenario - but the signal is loud enough that you don’t need spy satellites to notice.
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🔒 Chinese state media slams Nvidia’s H20 as “unsafe”
A CCTV-linked channel claimed the H20 could hide backdoors or even allow remote shutdowns - allegations landing with perfect dramatic timing.
Nvidia says nope, not even close. No backdoors, no funny business. Still, the move feels like theater - security posturing meets semiconductor politics - and nobody’s eager to blink first.
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⭐ Rumble mulls $1.2B deal for German AI-cloud heavyweight
Rumble is weighing a $1.17B bid for Germany’s Northern Data, scooping up its GPU-dense Taiga unit (about 20,480 Nvidia H100s and more than 2,000 H200s) plus the Ardent data center operation.
The proposal involves a share-swap that’d leave Northern Data’s investors holding roughly a third of Rumble. Tether - already a big backer - would step into the role of heavyweight GPU customer.
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🇮🇩 Indonesia’s “sovereign AI fund” idea takes shape
A newly floated white paper outlines Indonesia’s plan to launch a sovereign AI fund sometime between 2027 and 2029 - designed to make the country a regional AI nerve center. It’d be run by Danantara Indonesia with a public–private investment model, and local investor perks baked in.
Still, the road’s uphill: talent shortages, patchy infrastructure, and thin research budgets all stand in the way.
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🤖 “Fake friends” in the uncanny valley
AI-driven virtual companions are creeping toward unsettlingly lifelike - fine-tuning emotional responses until they start to feel like actual human interactions. Vanderbilt researchers point to China’s GoLaxy, allegedly using these AIs for propaganda in real time.
The virtual therapy trend is also booming, but some mental-health pros are flagging a risk they’re calling “AI psychosis.” The name alone sounds like a dystopian Netflix pitch.
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