Nvidia, AMD Set to Resume Some AI Chip Sales to China | Bloomberg Tech 7/15/2025

Key Concepts

• AI Chip Sales to China: Resumption of sales of modified AI chips by NVIDIA and AMD.
• US-China Trade Negotiations: The role of AI chip export curbs in broader trade talks.
• Poly Market Investigation: Dismissal of DOJ and CFTC investigations into Poly Market.
• Crypto Regulation: Legislative momentum and bipartisan support for stablecoin regulation.
• Energy Demand and AI: Surging energy demand driven by AI and data centers.
• American Energy Policy: Focus on unleashing American energy production.
• Tariffs and Energy Infrastructure: Impact of tariffs, particularly on copper, on energy infrastructure.
• Next Door Redesign: Launch of a redesigned Next Door app focused on safety, local news, and recommendations.
• AI Acquisitions: Cognition's acquisition of Windsurf following Google licensing confirmation.
• American Technology Stack: The vision of making American technology the global standard in AI.

NVIDIA and AMD Resume AI Chip Sales to China

• NVIDIA and AMD are set to resume selling some AI chips to China after receiving signals from the U.S. government that licenses and approvals would be secured.
• NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, is currently in China. AMD's stock is trading at its highest level since October.
• This announcement comes shortly after Jensen Huang met with officials at the White House.
• Huang has argued that U.S. export controls have been a failure and put U.S. competitiveness at risk.
• NVIDIA aims to sell modified, slower versions of its AI chips to China to prevent Huawei from dominating the market and potentially exporting AI technology.
• NVIDIA wants the global rollout of AI to be defined by the "American stack of technology" rather than the Chinese one.
• The curbs on shipping the H20 chip to China were projected to result in up to $8 billion in lost sales for NVIDIA this quarter.
• Scott Bessent suggested that the chip export curbs were a "negotiating chip" used in trade talks between the U.S. and China.
• U.S. officials indicated that the chip export curbs emerged as a point of negotiation, potentially helping the U.S. gain access to rare earth exports from China.

Poly Market Investigation Dismissed

• The DOJ and CFTC investigations into whether Poly Market was accepting trades from U.S.-based users in violation of previous settlement agreements have been dismissed.
• These investigations, initiated during the Biden era, have been terminated, according to a Bloomberg source.

Crypto Regulation and Institutional Capital

• Katherine Downing, Chief Compliance Officer at Bitwise, discussed the dismissal of investigations into Poly Market and the broader regulatory landscape for crypto.
• She noted that a significant amount of time and resources have been spent on Biden-era lawsuits and investigations in the crypto space.
• Downing believes there is a "tectonic shift" towards getting back to fundamentals and ensuring that investigations are warranted.
• She emphasized that the crypto industry has been seeking clarity for years, and this is a step in that direction.
• Downing highlighted the potential for institutional capital to enter the crypto market, contingent on regulatory clarity.
• She noted that the complexity and regulatory insecurity surrounding crypto have kept capital out.
• Downing expects the House to vote on bills to regulate stablecoins this week, with the expectation that the stablecoin bill is "headed toward signature."
• She believes there is bipartisan agreement that centralized intermediaries in the stablecoin space should be regulated.

Energy Demand and AI in Pennsylvania

• The inaugural Pennsylvania Energy Summit is being held in Pittsburgh.
• Tyler Kendall interviewed U.S. Energy Secretary Christopher Wright about the future of energy and technology.
• Wright acknowledged the surging demand for energy to power artificial intelligence.
• He stated that the administration's agenda is to "unleash American energy" and enable private businesses to build and invest in energy infrastructure.
• Mark Zuckerberg's pledge of billions on energy centers is raising concerns about energy sources.
• Wright mentioned that the Energy Department has spoken with Meta extensively and is excited about their plans.
• He described AI as the "newest energy-intensive industry."
• Wright stated that Pennsylvania is a massive energy producer and could massively grow energy production if it had enough infrastructure to move natural gas out of the state.
• He suggested that more of the additional gas will be consumed in Pennsylvania, turned into electricity, and generated intelligence, keeping the United States ahead of China in the AI race.
• U.S. oil account has dropped 13% since February and it is in the midst of its longest contraction since 2020.
• Wright said that the Biden administration had an "in all of government approach to try to end fossil fuels."
• He stated that the U.S. is growing so fast, as have other places in the world, prices might be at the low end of profitability year, so there has been a pullback in activity.
• Wright discussed the potential impact of a 50% tariff on copper, which is essential for data centers.
• He believes the biggest impact will be a speedup of copper mining in the United States.
• Wright stated that the President plans no carveouts for the energy industry and wants to re-industrialize the United States.
• He acknowledged that incrementally raising the costs of projects hurts the economics.
• Wright said that Trump's threat of 100% secondary tariffs on countries that import Russian energy supplies would likely drive oil prices up.

Next Door Redesign and Strategy

• Next Door has launched a redesigned app aimed at making the platform more useful, including safety, local news, and service recommendations.
• Next Door CEO Nirav Tolia described the redesign as an entirely new app grounded in safety alerts, local news, and recommendations from trusted neighbors.
• Tolia stated that the metric for success is engagement and that Next Door has the potential to have over one billion users.
• The company's ambition is to turn Next Door into a daily habit for users.
• Tolia believes that Next Door's greatest competitor is themselves and that they need to build a better product and enable stronger local communities.
• He emphasized that no one else has built an entire geospatial platform based on where people live.
• Next Door is inviting local publishers to come to the platform to use it as a distribution mechanism for their journalism.
• 3500 local publishers are publishing 50,000 articles every weekend.
• Tolia stated that the company is 100% focused on achieving its potential as a standalone independent entity.

Cognition Acquires Windsurf

• Cognition has agreed to purchase the remainder of Windsurf.
• Scott, CEO of Cognition, stated that there is a clean fit between the products, with Windsurf being a leading IDE and Cognition building the first software agent.
• Jeff, interim CEO of Windsurf, said that the investors on both sides might have played a role in this brokering.
• He stated that the Google situation was meant to be a clean-cut and that everything at Windsurf was intact.
• Scott stated that they are in the AI code space and have tried the Windsurf product themselves.
• Jeff said that the Windsurf employees have an immediate consideration as a part of the deal and that they are all just one team.
• Scott stated that Windsurf allows a developer at the keyboard to go faster and produce code faster, while Devon is a software engineering agent you can delegate tasks to.
• Cognition has announced that both Goldman Sachs and Citibank have been rolling out DEV into their teams.
• Jeff said that they might have just invented a new model for what's going on in the market.

White House AI Policy

• David Sachs, White House AI and Crypto Czar, discussed the NVIDIA and AMD possibility to sell chips back into the Chinese market.
• He stated that the U.S. still has a policy of not selling state-of-the-art advanced semi conductors to China, but H20 is not that, is a heavily deprecated chip.
• Sachs said that Jensen Huang has been making the case publicly for competing in China and there are a lot of merits to the argument.
• He stated that Huawei has advanced very rapidly and have a new technology called Cloud Matrix that networks together 384 of their chips.
• Sachs said that there is a compelling argument that you don't just want to hand the entire Chinese market to Huawei when NVIDIA is capable of competing for a big slice of it with a deprecated chip.
• He stated that the President went to the Gulf States on that trip was to encourage business relationships between the U.S. and the Gulf State.
• Sachs said that these nations, like the Gulf States, have two choices, they can go with American technology or Chinese technology and if you don't let them by the American technology, you are pushing them into the arms of China.
• He stated that it is important that we enable our American companies to compete in the global market, that we don't tie their hands or hobble them.
• Sachs said that the chips that we are talking about are really mainframe computers that are eight feet tall, 36 hundred pounds.
• He stated that the American technology stack should be akin to the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.
• Sachs said that the winning technology companies are always the ones who create the biggest ecosystem and have the biggest developers.
• He stated that the President will be giving a keynote in Washington, D.C. on July 23, cohosted by All In and the Hill and Valley Forum, a D.C. Silicon Valley policy group and he will be giving his first address on the topic of artificial intelligence.
• Sachs said that Pennsylvania is our second biggest energy producing state and they have abundant natural gas, which I think in the near term be the power source for these data centers.
• He stated that the one area where America is a little behind is the size of our power grid that hasn't increased much in the past decade.

Synthesis/Conclusion

The broadcast covers several key areas: the resumption of AI chip sales to China amidst trade negotiations, regulatory developments in the crypto space, the energy demands of AI and related policy considerations, the redesign of Next Door, and the acquisition of Windsurf by Cognition. A central theme is the strategic competition between the U.S. and China in technology, particularly in AI, and the importance of maintaining American competitiveness through both trade policy and domestic investment in energy infrastructure. The discussion also highlights the evolving regulatory landscape for crypto and the potential for institutional investment, as well as the ongoing consolidation and innovation in the AI software development space.