New: Chinese firms aim to install ~115,000 advanced Nvidia chips in dozens of AI data centers. Construction is underway. DeepSeek wants to collaborate What’s unclear is how they plan to get hardware that the US has effectively banned from sale to China 🧵 https://t.co/R9MhZhK5RR

Scoop: OpenAI is seeking to build a massive new data center in India that could mark a major step forward in Asia for its Stargate-branded artificial intelligence infrastructure push https://t.co/jzcKTjGJAl with @mackhawk

Lutnick confirmed talks between the admin & Intel for the US to take a stake in the chipmaker, casting the plan as a bid to turn Chips Act grants into equity “It’s not governance, we’re just converting what was a grant under Biden into equity,” Lutnick told CNBC. “Non-voting.”

This was almost exactly a year ago btw:

Trump admin is in talks for a 10% stake in Intel that would involve converting some/all of the company’s Chips Act grants into equity. Nothing finalized Intel has been in line for $7.9b in grants for commercial manufacturing & $3b for military production

Trump has dialed down his confrontational tone with China in an effort to secure a trade deal & a meeting with Xi, according to people familiar with internal deliberations: https://t.co/8CAqr0vuCY @jendeben

Jensen says Nvidia hasn’t yet gotten any licenses to sell H20 chips in China but expects those approvals soon: https://t.co/mLt29453RD Still unclear what volume of approvals Nvidia (or AMD) will receive, as we wrote yesterday: https://t.co/tOEz7a443t

Fuller Bessent remarks from today here: https://t.co/syMjhlbsrl

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last month: “There is no quid pro quo in terms of chips for rare earths” And on Bloomberg TV just now, asked whether the US is allowing Nvidia H20 sales to China as a quid pro quo for rare earths: “Yeah, I think it was all part of a mosaic.”

AMD also expects export licenses for MI308 sales to China — restricted in April alongside Nvidia H20 sales — to move forward for review, based on conversations with US officials, the company confirms AMD plans to resume shipments as licenses are approved, company says

Here's some stuff Trump officials have said about Nvidia's China sales over the past few months Note that today's news doesn't mean the H20 controls are gone -- but rather that, per Nvidia, the US said it will approve licenses which are still required: https://t.co/TLXuvLMcXD

Nvidia says it plans to resume H20 sales to China & that the US government has assured the company those shipments will be approved https://t.co/ETNsZ7sjBg

Malaysia's controls seek to "close regulatory gaps" while the trade ministry undertakes further review Washington has separately drafted (though not finalized) export controls on AI chip sales to Malaysia and Thailand over China diversion concerns

Malaysia will require permits to export advanced American AI chips if companies/individuals know or have "reasonable grounds" to suspect those chips will be misused US is worried about potential smuggling of AI chips to China via Malaysian intermediaries https://t.co/IeZqPclgyQ

Here's how this fits into the ongoing debate over Nvidia/AMD sales to the Gulf (which, despite big project announcements in May, haven't been licensed) Talked w @TheStalwart & @tracyalloway about this topic (& Malaysia's maybe Huawei project) last month: https://t.co/fOXhvgyaFQ

Huawei is trying to sell small numbers of its older AI chips to parties in the UAE, Saudi Arabia & Thailand Also offering remote access to more advanced hardware that it won't export because production capacity is limited No deals finalized w @GaoYuan86 https://t.co/xP92sCoKfm

A thing you often hear about China is that despite its vast size, it doesn't have a lot of great land. But maybe people start re-thinking that from the perspective of AI. Good piece here about all the solar powered data centers being built in the desert. https://t.co/JAfXSzL4xy

The US plans to restrict shipments of AI chips from the likes of Nvidia to Malaysia and Thailand, part of an effort to crack down on suspected semiconductor smuggling into China

This story was a big team effort & wouldn't exist at all without @imandylin2's incredible data work The link below is free for a week. If you know something we should know, I'm @/mackhawk.71 on Signal, which I treat as off-record unless you say otherwise https://t.co/R9MhZhK5RR

A couple takeaways: 1. Despite Huawei’s progress & Beijing’s push for firms to use domestic chips, at least some companies still want Nvidia 2. Even if they pull it off, these projects would be dwarfed by US AI infra (though there’s of course additional investment in China) 8/

We asked > a dozen people familiar with US probes for an estimate of how many banned Nvidia chips are in China Most didn’t have one. Two senior Biden officials said 25,000 None said they know of a smuggling network capable of procuring 115,000 for a centralized location 7/