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Nvidia H20 Chip Production

Nvidia (NVDA) asked some of its component suppliers, including Samsung (SSNLF) and Amkor (AMKR), to stop production related to its H20 AI chip after Chinese officials urged local firms to avoid using it, The Information's Qianer Liu reported.

The order came weeks after the Chinese government told companies to stop buying the chips due to alleged security concerns, the report noted. Additionally, Reuters said that Nvidia also asked Foxconn (HNHPF) to stop working on the chip.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been in talks with China to quell their concerns about potential security risks associated with the company's AI chips. The company was recently granted permission by the U.S. to sell its H20 semiconductors in China, but China's internet regulator, Cyberspace Administration of China, said U.S. AI experts told them of "backdoor" functions that would track chips or shut them down remotely.

"There are no such things," Huang said, according to the Times. "There never has been. And so hopefully, the response that we've given to the Chinese government will be sufficient. We are in discussions with them."

Meta Hiring Spree Halted

Following a Wall Street Journal report saying that Meta (META) has frozen its AI hiring spree, the company's chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said via X, formerly Twitter, "We are truly only investing more and more into Meta Superintelligence Labs as a company. Any reporting to the contrary of that is clearly mistaken." The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Meta froze its hiring spree for its AI division after hiring over 50 AI researchers and engineers, which also prohibits employees from moving between teams inside the division."

Meanwhile, Meta hired Frank Chu, an Apple (AAPL) AI executive, who will join Meta Superintelligence Labs, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Chu is the latest Apple employee working on AI models to join Meta, following several colleagues, including the head of Apple's AI models team.

Meta has been slowing its recruitment, with a memo stating that the company will be "temporarily pausing hiring across all MSL teams, with the exception of business critical roles," according to Bloomberg.

Musk & Zuckerberg

According to a court filing, Microsoft-backed OpenAI said Tesla (TSLA) founder Elon Musk tried to enlist Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for the $97.4 billion bid that his consortium made for OpenAI earlier this year, but Zuckerberg did not come on board, Reuters reported.

OpenAI requested a judge to order Meta to produce documents and communications related to any bid for the company. "Meta's communications with other bidders, or internal communications, including those reflecting discussions with Musk or other bidders, would also shed light on the motivations for the bid," OpenAI said.

OpenAI Deal

Meanwhile, OpenAI has been in talks to sell $6 billion in shares owned by its current and former employees in a deal that would value the company at about $500 billion, making it the world's most valuable privately held company, according to The New York Times' Cade Metz and Natallie Rocha, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.

OpenAI saw its valuation jump from $157 billion in October to $300 billion in March, and potentially to $500 billion in this latest secondary market sale, the report noted.

Crusoe In Talks

Meanwhile, Crusoe, the developer behind OpenAI's first Stargate data center, has been in talks about raising funds at a $10 billion valuation, which would represent a value more than three times where it was pegged less than a year ago, two people with knowledge of the talks told The Information's Anissa Gardizy and Natasha Mascarenhas.

The company, which wants to raise at least $1 billion to help become a more formidable player in cloud computing, bought a Tel Aviv-based cloud computing startup, Atero, which develops software to improve the utilization and efficiency of graphics processing units, the report also noted.

Anthropic Agreement

AI startup Anthropic may be close to an agreement to raise as much as $10 billion in a new funding round, a higher-than-anticipated amount and one of the biggest megarounds to date for an AI startup, Bloomberg's Ryan Gould and Shirin Ghaffary reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Talks have been ongoing and the final sum could change, the authors said, noting that Bloomberg previously reported Anthropic was in talks for a $5 billion fundraiser at a $170 billion valuation, but the amount increased due to strong investor demand.

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