Highlights

• Huawei launches Ascend 910D AI chip, challenging Nvidia amid ongoing U.S. export curbs; Nvidia plans $500B U.S. AI infrastructure investment.1
• Microsoft and Meta beat earnings expectations, citing surging AI demand; both sharply raise capital expenditure for AI infrastructure.2
• Google and Apple in advanced talks to integrate Gemini AI into Siri, with a potential deal announcement at WWDC 2025.3
• Anthropic proposes refinements to upcoming U.S. AI chip export controls, advocating stricter thresholds and enhanced enforcement.4
• Visa and Mastercard unveil AI agent-powered shopping and payment initiatives, launching pilot programs and expanding agentic commerce capabilities.5
• Meta upgrades Ray-Ban smart glasses with live translation and default AI features, sparking privacy concerns over data collection for model training.6
• Study accuses Chatbot Arena (LM Arena) of leaderboard manipulation favoring Meta , OpenAI , Google , and Amazon, calling for transparency reforms.7
• Galaxy Digital to list on Nasdaq May 16, positioning itself as a bridge between digital assets and AI ecosystems.8
• U.S. Senate fails to overturn Trump’s 10% global tariffs, maintaining pressure on tech supply chains and trade flows.9
• Judge finds Apple in violation of App Store antitrust order, referring case for possible criminal contempt and intensifying regulatory scrutiny.10
• Visa launches stablecoin-linked cards in Latin America, integrating AI-driven commerce and signaling plans for global expansion.13
• South Korea’s April exports beat expectations, led by record semiconductor shipments, but U.S.-bound exports drop due to tariffs.15

Commentary

The AI sector continues to accelerate, with hyperscalers and chipmakers doubling down on infrastructure and innovation despite macro and policy headwinds. Huawei’s Ascend 910D chip shipment marks a significant escalation in China’s quest for AI hardware self-sufficiency, directly challenging Nvidia ’s dominance and U.S. export controls. Nvidia ’s planned $500 billion U.S. investment signals confidence in domestic manufacturing and a long-term commitment to AI infrastructure, even as CEO Jensen Huang warns that export restrictions may erode U.S. competitiveness. Simultaneously, Anthropic’s push for more nuanced chip export controls underscores the complexity of balancing national security with global AI leadership.14

Earnings from Microsoft and Meta reinforce that AI demand is not only resilient but accelerating, with both firms sharply increasing capital expenditures to address infrastructure bottlenecks. Their results buoyed tech equities and suggest that AI infrastructure buildout is becoming a core pillar of tech sector growth, even as trade policy uncertainty and tariffs persist. The U.S. Senate’s failure to overturn Trump’s broad tariffs keeps supply chain costs elevated, as evidenced by South Korea’s robust semiconductor exports but declining U.S.-bound shipments.2915

On the consumer and application front, the convergence of AI and commerce is accelerating. Visa and Mastercard ’s parallel launches of AI agent-powered shopping/payment platforms, along with Visa ’s stablecoin card rollout in Latin America, point to a future where agentic commerce and programmable money become mainstream. These moves, backed by partnerships with leading AI and fintech players, could disrupt traditional retail, payments, and even banking, while raising new regulatory and security challenges. Meanwhile, Meta ’s AI-powered Ray-Ban glasses highlight both the promise of ubiquitous AI and the privacy risks of pervasive data collection—a tension likely to shape future product design and policy debates.5613

The competitive landscape is also under scrutiny. The Chatbot Arena study’s allegations of leaderboard manipulation by major AI labs raise questions about benchmarking integrity and the transparency of model evaluation, with potential implications for how the industry signals progress and allocates resources. Regulatory pressure on platform gatekeepers is intensifying, as seen in the Apple App Store ruling and ongoing antitrust actions, which may open new distribution channels for AI-powered apps and services.710

Overall, AI remains the growth engine for tech, but the sector faces a more complex operating environment: geopolitical fragmentation, regulatory scrutiny, and rising infrastructure costs. Strategic priorities for AI businesses now include supply chain resilience, transparent evaluation standards, robust privacy safeguards, and aggressive infrastructure investment. Downstream, expect continued VC and SPAC activity in AI-adjacent sectors, as well as heightened competition for technical talent and policy influence.14