Author: Jaxon Bennett

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldThe writer is the author of ‘Chip War’What does the return of Donald Trump imply for the global chip war? Trump didn’t start the subsidy race — credit here goes to Chinese leader Xi Jinping — but his first administration focused the US on tech competition with China. Biden then extended Trump-era policies regarding tariffs, subsidies, and export controls. Now Trump is returning just as artificial intelligence intensifies demand for computing power.For the chip industry, the immediate focus is tariffs.…

The abrupt departure of Intel’s chief executive removes the biggest obstacle to a radical reshaping of the iconic Silicon Valley company, including scaling back its chip manufacturing business in spite of multibillion-dollar incentives from the US government.Pat Gelsinger, an engineer who spent the first 30 years of his career at Intel, returned in 2021 with a bold mandate to restore its chipmaking prowess at the same time as taking on its faster-growing rivals Nvidia and AMD in designing PC and data centre chips. Key to his plan was agreeing to accept some $8bn from Washington in Chips Act funding. That deal,…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldPresident-elect Donald Trump has named venture capitalist David Sacks as the White House’s artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency tsar, the latest confidant of Elon Musk to receive a top appointment in the new government.Sacks, who was an early employee alongside Musk at PayPal, is a co-host of the All-In podcast and emerged as one of the earliest and most vocal Silicon Valley supporters of Trump, hosting a fundraiser for the candidate in San Francisco in June.“David has the knowledge, business experience,…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Is anyone prepared to step up and take on part of the huge costs of ensuring the US has a position at the forefront of the world’s most advanced manufacturing industry?That question looms large at the end of a week of turmoil at Intel, the world’s leading chipmaker for decades until its recent struggles. The abrupt departure of chief executive Pat Gelsinger is the clearest sign yet that the company’s board is having second thoughts about the trajectory of its ambitious, $100bn…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Silicon Valley visionaries dream of making mega-money out of cool, futuristic products that thrill consumers, such as the metaverse, self-driving cars or health-monitoring apps. The duller reality is that most venture capitalists generate the best returns from investing in boring stuff sold to other businesses.Over the past two decades, Software-as-a-Service has emerged as one of the most lucrative fields for VC investment, generating 337 unicorns, or tech start-ups valued at more than $1bn. But typical SaaS businesses, such as customer relationship management…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldMarc Andreessen, one of the world’s most powerful venture capitalists, is playing a central role in recruiting for Elon Musk’s US government cost-cutting unit, in a sign of the deepening ties between Silicon Valley and Donald Trump’s incoming administration. The billionaire co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz is helping interview and identify candidates for the Department for Government Efficiency (Doge), a new advisory body created by the president-elect and co-chaired by Musk, according to two people with knowledge of the talent search.While having…

Dario Amodei has worked in the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence labs: at Google, OpenAI, and now Anthropic. At OpenAI, Amodei drove the company’s core research strategy, building its GPT class of models for five years, until 2021 — a year before the launch of ChatGPT. After quitting over differences about the future of the technology, he founded Anthropic, the AI start-up now known for its industry-leading chatbot, Claude.Anthropic was valued at just over $18bn earlier this year and, last month, Amazon invested $4bn, taking its total to $8bn — its biggest-ever venture capital commitment. Amazon is working to embed…

China has finally said aloud what was once only discussed behind closed doors: the country must rid itself of US chips.Four government-backed industry associations, representing the bulk of China’s semiconductor demand, issued co-ordinated statements this week urging member companies to rethink purchases of American silicon that three of them deemed as “no longer safe or reliable”.“Be cautious when purchasing US chips,” the four associations said, urging their members to look for Chinese or other foreign suppliers instead.The directives came amid the latest tit-for-tat salvo between Beijing and Washington over the foundational technology, an exchange that has laid bare their intensifying…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up xAI has pledged to expand its Colossus supercomputer tenfold to incorporate more than 1mn graphics processing units, in an effort to close the gap with rivals such as Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.Colossus, built in just three months earlier this year, is believed to be the largest supercomputer in the world, operating a cluster of more than 100,000 interconnected Nvidia GPUs. The chips are used to train Musk’s chatbot Grok, which is less advanced and has fewer users…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Does Elon Musk really need more money? Tesla shares are up 42 per cent this year, much of that since the election of the billionaire’s new best friend Donald Trump as president last month.As it happens, one reason Musk’s $56bn pay package was rescinded by a Delaware judge earlier this year was that the court said the sum was far too much money for a guy who had plenty of Tesla stock to motivate him (His 13 per cent stake is worth…