Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: China. Even as the US puts a further squeeze on chip sales to China, it’s still a key market for the industry, making it harder to let it go. That’s why Nvidia, despite Washington pressure, plans to build a research center in Shanghai to show its commitment to the country, the Financial Times reports.

➘ BREAK THINGS: China. The Gulf’s AI partnerships with the US puts the region more firmly in the Western tech camp. Meanwhile, worries about Chinese access to American technology could force Saudi Arabia and the UAE to further cut ties, possibly dragging investments their sovereign wealth funds made in startups in the People’s Republic.

AI will start diagnosing patients and prescribing medication at a new clinic in Saudi Arabia, powered by technology from Chinese startup Synyi AI, Bloomberg reported. The interaction is similar to visiting a human doctor. Patients communicate their symptoms to a tablet where the AI-powered “Dr. Hua” lives. They answer questions and take scans with the help of human assistants for the AI to analyze, if necessary. Human doctors review the results, though they don’t visit the patients.

Medical AI bots have so far been marketed as tools that can augment doctors’ grunt work, like notetaking, allowing them to focus on patient care. The Saudi clinic appears to be the first where AI is supplanting a majority of the doctor’s role, and it’s a glance at what the future health care industry could look like as AI becomes more powerful.

The year AI chipmaker Cerebras plans to go public after the startup got the US government’s blessing to sell shares to the UAE’s G42 firm. Cerebras’ IPO has been on hold since last year because of a related review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The planned market debut by the Nvidia competitor would be another gauge of investor appetite for AI startups, as questions swirl about demand and improving model efficiencies that could hurt sales.

As AI continues to evolve at a rapid pace, companies are shifting from experimentation to real-world deployment and practical use within their businesses.

Join Anthropic Co-Founder Jack Clark, World Labs Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Fei-Fei Li, and xAl and Scale AI Advisor and Director of Center for AI Safety Dan Hendrycks for a discussion on the breakthroughs driving AI. Discussions will dive into how global, national, and regional AI ecosystems are shaping the technology’s future, and why building the policy frameworks governing them is more critical than ever for its potential.

May 21, 2025 | San Francisco, CA | Request Invitation

Trump’s dealmaking visit to the Gulf included plans for a UAE-US AI Campus spread out over 10 miles in Abu Dhabi, constructed by AI firm G42. The project will be the biggest of its kind in the world, aimed at helping American AI companies serve customers located within 2,000 miles of the site, the Trump administration said. With 5 gigawatts of planned power capacity by 2030, the plan is “OTT,” one technology analyst told Semafor’s Kelsey Warner.

Patrick McGee’s new book, Apple in China, is the buzzy tech book of the moment and it couldn’t have been published at a better time. Unlike a lot of Apple books that come out, this one focuses very little on predicting Apple’s fate, which is always a fool’s errand. Instead, it thoroughly documents a poorly understood but pivotal component of the company’s meteoric rise: its melding with China.

Apple now finds itself at the center of a global trade war and a technology race with China. As McGee documents well, Apple played a big part in China’s rise, gladly transferring valuable technological know-how for cheap labor and favorable treatment.

Now, as American tech companies eagerly jump into the Gulf region in search of cheap compute power and abundant investment dollars, this book is even more relevant. One lingering question I have is whether Apple’s move to China had to end so badly. Could the company have made different decisions there that would have led to a better outcome? Regardless, within the pages of Apple in China are lessons that might prevent the same missteps from happening again in the age of AI.

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OpenAI abandoning its for-profit plan wasn’t enough for a group that supported the reversal, who said the new plan needs more clarity and governance safeguards, according to a letter sent this week to the California and Delaware attorneys general. The authors consist of law experts and a former OpenAI employee who previously wrote to the attorneys general opposing the nonprofit structure change.

OpenAI now plans to convert its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation under the control of the nonprofit parent, which would be a “large shareholder” in it. The opponents argue the nonprofit wouldn’t have total control over the new arm under such a structure. “OpenAI’s updated proposal might be a step in the right direction,” the group says, “but OpenAI must provide more detail to know whether its updated plans will address any of the concerns raised [previously]” — namely, whether the company is legally beholden to its charitable mission above everything else.

While OpenAI may have deserted its for-profit plan, leadership must now convince stakeholders it is still prioritizing the mission that was at risk of being sidelined just one month ago.

In a statement to Reuters, an OpenAI spokesperson said, “The nonprofit would continue to have control over the PBC, full stop. Any suggestion otherwise is not accurate.”

Fears of an economic downturn and consumer belt-tightening will test Wall Street’s favorite new business model: subscriptions for everything, Semafor’s Liz Hoffman writes.

Fueling this trend is a Wall Street money machine ensorceled by these steady payments. Because those cash streams can be forecast more reliably than episodic sales, they can be borrowed against.

But now two forces are testing that model. First, consumers are terrified about the economy and cutting back on some spending. Second, regulators are cracking down on the mazes of corporate trickery and psychological nudges that make it hard for customers to cancel.