Nvidia, Confluent and WBD’s Happy Day

This could be big news: President Donald Trump said he would allow Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 AI chip to China, in exchange for the U.S. government getting a 25% cut of those sales. That could re-open the Chinese market to Nvidia—if the Chinese government allows its local companies to buy the chips. Chances of that are good. The H200s are for training AI models, and the Chinese government is more willing to let local companies buy those chips than those used for inference, when AI models generate answers. (More on this here).

On a separate topic entirely, shareholders in two underperforming companies were surely cheering corporate takeovers today. One is data analytics firm Confluent. Signs that its business was slowing down had sent its stock plunging by almost half to around $16 over the summer from nearly $30 at the start of the year. IBM came to the rescue on Monday with a $31 a share offer, translating to $11 billion overall. The two companies now look set to live happily ever after. Meanwhile, an intensifying takeover battle for entertainment firm Warner Bros. Discovery suggests shareholders in that company can expect a similarly lucrative ending.