Author: Jaxon Bennett

Hi everyone, this is Lauly, waving hello from drizzly Tokyo, where I am on a short business trip.It’s been a while since I last visited this vibrant city. That was in spring 2023, shortly after the lifting of Covid quarantine controls. We had a company team-building event that almost every overseas correspondent attended. We took a dinner cruise on a traditional boat in Tokyo Bay and later sang karaoke. Touching down in Haneda Airport yesterday reminded me how joyful it is to see colleagues that you work closely with despite living far away.I am hosting this week’s #TechAsia from Tokyo…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The US Federal Communications Commission is poised to introduce a ban on companies that use certain Chinese technology and equipment from building submarine communication cables that connect to America.The US telecoms regulator will next month vote on a new rule aimed at tackling potential Chinese espionage by ensuring that new cables that land in the US are less vulnerable to threats from Beijing and other adversaries. “Submarine cables are the unsung heroes of global communications, carrying 99 per cent of all Internet…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.OpenAI plans to take a cut from online product sales made directly through ChatGPT, as the Sam Altman-led group looks to further develop ecommerce features in the hunt for new revenues.The San Francisco-based company currently displays products on the platform with an option to click through links to online retailers. It also announced a partnership with payments group Shopify in April, shortly after it launched an enhanced shopping experience on the platform to better display products and reviews. According to multiple people…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldThe writer is a fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and the Cyber Policy Center. She is the author of ‘The Tech Coup’Look at the news cycle and it seems as if everyone is talking about AI and technology regulation. That is certainly the case in my bubble. But despite dominating headlines, technology barely ranks among voters’ top policy priorities and many politicians remain reluctant to engage with tech policy. The gap between the societal impact of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Nvidia chief Jensen Huang said it would “accelerate the recovery” of its China sales, after a détente between Beijing and Washington allowed the leading AI chipmaker to resume shipments of a key processor specifically designed for the Chinese market.Huang told a press conference in the Chinese capital on Wednesday that the company had not yet received export licences from Washington to restart shipments of its H20 product, but he expected them “to come through very shortly”. Nvidia had reported a $4.5bn writedown…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Chipmaking equipment supplier ASML said the impact of US tariffs was “a bit less negative than we anticipated”, as artificial intelligence drove strong orders for its lithography machines. Sales in the Netherlands-based company’s second quarter rose 23 per cent to €7.7bn, just ahead of analysts’ forecasts. Net bookings, a closely watched metric that includes orders for chipmaking gear placed by customers but not yet delivered, were €5.5bn, better than the €4.4bn analysts had expected, according to Visible Alpha, a research company. Surging orders for…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Technology sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Nobody loves a good bandwagon like a venture capitalist. Among European start-up investors, “resilience” and “sovereign” tech are giving even artificial intelligence a run for its money as the hottest new buzzwords. Led by Germany’s Helsing, which pulled in another €600mn in a fundraising led by Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek’s investment group last month, defence tech companies making drones, submarines and other battlefield systems have taken the place once occupied by e-scooters, grocery apps and the metaverse in investors’ hearts. Many European…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldDonald Trump has claimed more than $90bn in investments in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday, as he sought to deliver on his economic promises and turn around his faltering approval rating.Speaking at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, the US president pledged “lots of jobs”, speedy permits for electric plants and billions of dollars in new investment in energy and artificial intelligence infrastructure.“We’re back in Pittsburgh to announce the largest package of investments in the history of the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said the US’s reversal of restrictions on sales of chips to China followed recent trade negotiations with Beijing over rare earths.President Donald Trump curbed exports of Nvidia’s H2O artificial intelligence chips to China in April as part of an escalation of his trade war with Beijing.But a person familiar with the situation said the commerce department would start approving export licenses for these chips, after Nvidia on Monday said it expected to restart sales to Chinese companies.Lutnick said…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Brandon Lutnick, son of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, is nearing a roughly $4bn deal with an early bitcoin supporter to buy billions of dollars in the digital tokens using a vehicle backed by Cantor Fitzgerald.Cantor Equity Partners 1, a blank cheque vehicle that raised $200mn in cash in an initial public offering in January, is in late-stage talks with Adam Back, founder of crypto trading group Blockstream Capital, to buy more than $3bn in the digital currency, according to two people…