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Abridge in Talks to Raise at $5 Billion Valuation as AI Health Startups Draw Investors
The Takeaway
• Abridge recently passed projections for contracted revenue
• Rival Ambience Healthcare in talks to raise at a $1 billion valuation
• Both startups aim to reduce manual work for physicians
Abridge, a seven-year-old startup that sells artificial intelligence software for transcribing physicians’ conversations with patients, is in discussions with investors to raise hundreds of millions of dollars at around a $5 billion valuation before the investment, according to two people with knowledge of the plans. The funding would nearly double Abridge’s last private valuation, announced three months ago.
At the same time, younger rival Ambience Healthcare is raising capital that would value the company at more than $1 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, or more than triple its 2023 valuation. The discussions reflect investors’ interest in AI software that can reduce the time physicians and nurses spend writing visit notes and improve experiences for patients—say, by translating a patient’s responses in another language to English.
The startups, which include healthcare model maker Hippocratic AI and clinician assistant Freed, are also competing with Microsoft-owned conversational AI company Nuance.
Pittsburgh-based Abridge, which sells its AI software to hospitals and health systems such as Kaiser Permanente, has become a popular AI tool since 2023, when healthcare software giant Epic Systems began incorporating Abridge into its software.
The startup hit $117 million in contracted annual recurring revenue as of the first quarter, one of the people involved in the round said. This metric refers to sales expected over the next 12 months from signed contracts, although investors are sometimes skeptical of this metric because it’s possible for those contracts to fall through. Abridge’s annual recurring revenue—which investors view as a better measure of the state of the business—may be closer to $100 million.
That pace would give it a revenue multiple of 50, not far from where other AI apps such as legal AI firm Harvey and enterprise search startup Glean have raised money. It also suggests that Abridge was able to double its annual recurring revenue in less than six months from October, when it was generating $50 million.
Abridge told investors it was expecting to hit $200 million in contracted annual recurring revenue by the end of this year and $400 million by the end of next year, the person involved in the round said. It takes about a month for the company to generate sales from a signed contract, they said.
The company has already raised over $400 million from investors including Elad Gil and IVP, according to PitchBook. It has more than $400 million in cash, the person involved in the round said. Its last round valued the startup at $2.75 billion. A spokesperson for Abridge declined to comment.
San Francisco–based Ambience Healthcare, which is also integrated with Epic and recently started working with Cleveland Clinic, recently passed $30 million in annual recurring revenue, according to a person with knowledge of the financials. That’s up from about $1 million at the start of last year, according to that person and a second person familiar with the matter.
A new round valuing the startup at $1 billion would amount to 33 times revenue. The company has raised capital from AIX Ventures, Optum Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI’s Startup Fund and Kleiner Perkins.
New York’s Wealthiest All Want to Live Downtown Now
Rich buyers are following tech and finance firms to downtown Manhattan, paying tens of millions to live in neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Tribeca and West Chelsea
Nearly a decade ago, financier Harsh Padia and his wife, Purvi Padia, spent $29.1 million for an apartment in Manhattan’s West Village, paying top dollar for a duplex at the 150 Charles Street condominium. In March of this year, they sold the unit for $60 million, more than twice what they paid and a record figure for downtown Manhattan.
The buyer’s identity was telling: He works at Jane Street Capital, a quant trading firm that recently expanded its headquarters at nearby 250 Vesey Street in Battery Park City, according to people familiar with the deal.
A seismic shift is taking place in downtown Manhattan. Traditionally, the city’s most expensive real estate has been uptown, on Billionaires’ Row, Central Park West and the Upper East Side. But with a spate of big-ticket sales and listings below 14th Street, downtown prices are starting to rival the city’s most expensive uptown enclaves. As finance and tech firms have migrated downtown—alongside new retail, parks, and cultural institutions—a new wave of luxury condo development along the West Side Highway is luring wealthy buyers to neighborhoods like the West Village, Tribeca and Chelsea.
“There’s a whole bunch of very wealthy people working in the vicinity, meaning they often want to live in the vicinity,” said real-estate agent Clayton Orrigo of Compass. “They’re buying up the West Side Highway.”
There were more $30 million-plus home sales below 34th Street in the past five years than in the previous decade, according to data from Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group. Since 2023, the area has seen more than $1 billion worth of home sales above $20 million.
In February, a penthouse at 67 Vestry Street in Tribeca sold for $41.4 million, while a unit at West Chelsea’s One High Line sold last year for $49 million. A penthouse at 150 Charles tied to former Credit Suisse executive Robert Shafir sold for $52 million in 2023; Shafir had paid $29.38 million in 2016.
Asking prices have also shot up. At Aurora Capital’s under-construction condominium 140 Jane Street in the West Village, a penthouse is on the market for $87.5 million and three units have gone into contract for more than $40 million since sales launched last year. In the West Village, Zeckendorf Development is building 80 Clarkson, where a full-floor residence is asking $75 million. A garage-to-condo conversion at 125 Perry has a $57.5 penthouse in contract. In West Chelsea, former Howard Hughes Corp. CEO David Weinreb has listed his 551 West 21st Street penthouse for $75 million.
“These are new levels that we’ve never seen before,” said Orrigo, who has the listing for Weinreb’s apartment.
Downtown has long drawn wealthy buyers, with condominiums like 150 Charles and 70 Vestry fetching high prices. But in recent years, office and retail development in the Meatpacking District and Hudson Yards has led financial and tech firms to opt for office space downtown, bringing even more deep-pocketed buyers with them.
Companies like Deloitte, StubHub and Jane Street Capital have signed major leases at Hudson Yards and near the World Trade Center.
In February, Google opened its newest Manhattan office space at the old St. John’s Terminal on Washington Street in Hudson Square. “It’s one of the wealthiest corporations on the planet,” said Leonard Steinberg of Compass. “That changes the profile of the neighborhood.”
In mid-May, the sports merchandising company Fanatics signed a lease in Hudson Square; founder and CEO Michael Rubin owns a $43 million penthouse at nearby 160 Leroy Street.
Demand for the area’s many historic brownstones is strong—a $72.5 million Greenwich Village townhouse sold in 2024—but few renovated houses are available. Meanwhile, wealthy buyers are clamoring to buy large units in newer condo buildings, agents said, but inventory is limited. There are few development sites left and new buildings face height restrictions in historic areas, so many of the new condos downtown are boutique buildings with fewer units than those on Billionaires’ Row.
“There’s just a backlog of buyers that haven’t been able to buy ultraluxury apartments downtown,” said Peter Zaitzeff of real-estate brokerage Serhant, who listed the Padias’ unit.
Zaitzeff was part of the sales team at 70 Vestry when it launched sales in 2016, and he still gets near-weekly phone calls asking if he has anything in the 47-unit building. “I have clients in the building who can basically name their price,” he said, but most aren’t motivated to leave. “You’re not getting into that building.”
New downtown condominiums are angling for wealthy buyers with larger units than the area has seen in the past, and with luxe amenities comparable to those on Billionaires’ Row.
“In the past, you just couldn’t get that scale—whether a townhouse or apartment,” Steinberg said, noting that buyers have an “obsession with new” and will pay a premium to avoid renovating. “It really is an arms race in luxury to out-luxe your neighbor.”
There are only 14 units at 140 Jane, whose amenities include automated parking, a pool, gym, sauna, porte-cochere and even a private park, said Aurora’s Bobby Cayre. As of mid-May, 12 units had been sold since sales launched in August 2024. “We didn’t have a sales gallery, to be honest with you,” Cayre said. “We were selling off of Zoom meetings.”
With 112 units, 80 Clarkson is one of the largest of the new projects. The building, located adjacent to Google’s new outpost at St. John’s Terminal, was initially priced from $6.755 million for a two-bedroom unit to $63 million for a five-bedroom. Since February, the developer has raised prices four times, and the $75 million residence—which will measure about 7,368 square feet with five bedrooms—was released in May. Amenities include a private restaurant, pool and library. Residents also have the option of buying private wine cellars. The cost? Up to $1 million each.
Total’s risky bet on a natural gas megaproject in southern Africa
The French energy giant was forced to pause a huge LNG scheme in Mozambique after Islamist militants launched a deadly attack. Is the region safe enough for it to restart?
On March 24 2021, Agostinho Carlos was sitting in the bustling marketplace in Palma, a small coastal town in northern Mozambique, when a convoy of pick-up trucks drove by. At first, he assumed they were providing security for the huge gas facilities being constructed by TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil some 10 kilometres along the coast.
But he was wrong. “A bunch of them got out, screaming, ‘Allahu akbar,’ and started shooting at everyone,” says Carlos. As he watched, the militants, who called themselves al-Shabaab, beheaded their captives with machetes. The violence went on for four days. According to estimates by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, over 800 people were killed in what became the worst terrorist attack in Mozambique’s history.
Beyond the grim human toll, the attacks also put a stop to the fossil fuel investments that many hoped would transform Mozambique’s economic fortunes.
After the Palma attack, French oil major Total froze its $20bn plan to process liquefied natural gas project on the Afungi peninsula, a scheme known as Mozambique LNG — at the time the largest foreign direct investment that Africa had ever seen. Total is the operator of the project and owns 26.5 per cent, but companies including Japan’s Mitsui also have important stakes and Mozambique’s national energy company holds 15 per cent.
Four years later, the megaproject is coming back to life. In March, at the behest of the Trump administration, the US Export Import Bank (Exim) unblocked $4.7bn in frozen loans for Mozambique LNG, the biggest package in the bank’s history.
On Tuesday, Total chief executive Patrick Pouyanné said that he was asking Mozambique’s government for approval to lift its force majeure freeze, a process that requires the agreement of other stakeholders in the project. Total is now aiming to restart construction by the middle of the year.
The new push raises the question about whether the southern African country, which has long been one of the world’s poorest, has the political stability to become a major player in the booming global LNG industry.
Mozambique’s discovery in the early 2010s that it had enormous gas reserves acted as a magnet for oil and gas companies like Total and created a huge sense of excitement. According to a 2016 IMF forecast, if the project had gone ahead the country might now have a GDP of $76bn, almost four times larger than its current $21bn.
But the discoveries have already triggered a multibillion-dollar debt crisis and added to continuing regional insecurity — a cycle of corruption and failed development related to the discovery of natural resources that some economists call a “resource curse”.
The investment has also involved immense financial and reputational risk for Total. Other potential investments in the region, including Exxon’s nascent attempts to develop an even larger field on the Afungi peninsula, also hang on the project’s success.
They could determine what role Mozambique plays in the dash by gas producers to meet rising LNG demand since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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Estevão Pale, Mozambique’s energy minister, says he is optimistic that projects can resume “soon”, without specifying a timescale. “Mozambique is a player in the [energy] field, something the government is trying to show the world,” he adds. “It’s a question of having investors that can [see through] the risk.”
One person familiar with the Afungi project describes the situation as a “catch-22”. “You need the LNG to get the economic development to make the country boom,” he says. “But . . . if security holds back the return to the site and you don’t get the development, that perpetuates the poverty, which makes it more unstable.”
Since its founding in 1924 as the Compagnie Française des Pétroles, Total has established a buccaneering reputation for taking risks to exploit cheap resources and doing business in places other companies would not.
Other recent bets include a $10bn oil project in Uganda that involves drilling wells in the country’s largest national park. But in recent years, the company has been forced to withdraw from Venezuela, while it has also declared force majeure on projects in Yemen and Russia.
“We’ve done that for a hundred years . . . going to some places where others maybe do not go,” Pouyanné told analysts in April. “We are well equipped to do that. It can come today with controversies, but you’re bringing value [and] development potential to the country.”
The discovery of gas reserves off the coast of Cabo Delgado in 2010 by the US oil and gas company Anadarko and the Italian major Eni, together totalling 180tn cubic feet, opened up a fertile new opportunity. Nine years later, Total paid €3.9bn to acquire the rights to develop and operate an onshore LNG plant on the Afungi peninsula from Anadarko.
Mozambique looked like a promising bet. Its location on the Indian Ocean gives it good access to India and China, where demand for LNG is set to rise dramatically. If extraction can work and the profits shared, Mozambique could be transformed into one of the richest nations in the region.
“People at the time thought it was an OK deal,” says Alastair Syme, an analyst at Citi. “With the benefit of hindsight, clearly their assessment of country risk wasn’t quite right.”
There were already signs of a “resource curse”. Soon after the IMF released its projections, Mozambique’s government was forced to admit that it had hidden $2bn in debt from the fund.
Under the guise of developing the fishing and maritime security industries, the Frelimo government — which has been in power since independence from Portugal in 1975 — capitalised on news of the gas discovery to arrange state-backed loans from banks including Credit Suisse and Russia’s VTB Bank.
But costs were vastly inflated, and an estimated $200mn disappeared in bribes. The so-called “tuna bonds” scandal, as the fraud became known, resulted in large fines for Credit Suisse and forced Mozambique to default on its debts in 2016, pushing millions into poverty. The IMF did not lend directly to the country again until 2022.
With the emergence of armed insurgents linked to Isis, the security situation deteriorated. In 2017, an attack on three police stations in the town of Mocímboa da Praia resulted in the deaths of 16 people, according to local media reports.
In March 2021, Total declared it was satisfied with site security and announced that work at the Afungi site would restart. The militants attacked Palma within hours.
Nick Alexander, a South African whose business was contracted to provide temporary office infrastructure, says that he was not warned by Total or other lead contractors of the imminent risk of attacks.
Alexander and others barricaded themselves in a hotel building for two days before managing to flee, he recalls. “I went from thinking, ‘We’ll be OK, there’s a big multinational involved,’ to thinking, ‘We might not get out of this.’”
While the private military company Dyck Advisory Group evacuated some of the almost 200 people holed up in the hotel by helicopter, it soon ran out of fuel. Alexander and other survivors of the attack allege that Total declined to provide DAG with more.
Total denies wrongdoing and says that Mozambique LNG had chosen to support rescue efforts by the Mozambican government rather than using DAG.
Following accusations by Alexander and others that Total failed to take “sufficient measures” to protect their safety, in March French prosecutors launched a judicial investigation into the company for alleged manslaughter and non-assistance to people in danger. Total has said it “categorically rejects” the allegations, insisting it helped evacuate 2,500 people from the Afungi site.
The company has also been embroiled in accusations of complicity in human rights abuses, which it denies. Internal documents uncovered by Le Monde show that Total was aware of allegations that had been made against Mozambican soldiers who were protecting the site, including that they had used violence against civilians and extortion as early as 2021.
The company commissioned a report from the former diplomat Jean-Christophe Rufin, published in 2023. It criticised the “direct link” between the project and these troops, which it said could make it “a party to the conflict” with insurgents.
In March, the Mozambican Attorney General’s Office opened an investigation into potential abuses by its forces.
These legal investigations could take years to advance and will not prevent Mozambique LNG restarting. But they underline the seriousness of the security and reputational risks for Total.
“There was nothing wrong with the potential of the project the first time around,” says the person familiar with the scheme. “The issue was the postcode.”
In the years since the 2021 attacks, northern Mozambique is more secure than it was, not least because 4,000 Rwandan troops have been deployed to the region under a deal brokered with Paul Kagame’s government. Considered more professional than Mozambican forces, they have helped secure key parts of the Cabo Delgado region and regained territory from insurgents. Crucially, they have also reduced attacks in Palma, near the Afungi peninsula, and Mocímboa da Praia, a key port for the project, says Peter Bofin, a regional expert at Acled.
“It’s hard to disconnect the presence of the Rwandans from the LNG,” says Bofin. “They are there to protect the LNG project.”
Insisting that the security situation is now under control, Pouyanné has been working to convince financial backers to throw their weight behind it once again.
The force majeure froze Total’s obligations towards contractors, but also put vast debt agreements on hold.
In the intervening years, the UK, which had pledged more than $1bn in loans, has decided to no longer finance fossil fuel extraction overseas. The FT reported earlier this year that the Labour government is taking legal advice on whether it can pull its money out.
NGOs opposed to the project on environmental and human rights grounds are also threatening legal action if the UK continues to support the project, according to a letter seen by the Financial Times. The Dutch government is also reviewing €1bn it has loaned the project on security and human rights grounds.
But the most important piece of the financing puzzle has always been the US Export Import Bank’s $4.7bn in loans, first agreed in 2019.
Pouyanné lobbied the Biden administration to make the funds available last year. But after Biden had issued a moratorium on new LNG exploration ahead of the US election, the project stood little chance of advancing, says the person familiar with the project. “If you’re doing an LNG pause in America, it’d look a bit odd to approve a foreign LNG project.”
Pouyanné appears to have found a more willing interlocutor in the Trump administration. He flew to Washington in the days around the inauguration, according to flight records analysed by Data Desk, a consultancy that investigates the oil and gas industry.
Companies, including engineering contractors McDermott, TechnipFMC and CB&I also wrote to the new administration to call for financing to be restarted, along with other US businesses that stand to gain from the project.
In March Exim announced that it would approve the project, saying that it was reassured about the security situation. The bank also said that its decision was influenced by the fact that 16,400 US jobs were at stake.
“All the financing is back on track, thanks to the US Exim decision,” Pouyanné told analysts in April. “We are still expecting one or two answers, but in fact, we could finance [the remaining sums] with our equity.”
International companies appear to be committed, at least for now. Kenichi Hori, the chief executive of Mitsui, which owns 20 per cent of the project, told analysts: “Mozambique’s competitiveness, gas quality and reserves have great potential, so we are proceeding with the project while controlling risks on site.”
In a sign that its output remains attractive to buyers, just one company has dropped out — Indonesia’s state-owned Pertamina Gas. Total says that other buyers, including Centrica, EDF and Tokyo Gas, are still committed to the project. But the company has yet to tell financiers when force majeure will be lifted, two people familiar with the project say.
Borges Nhamirre, an independent analyst based in Maputo, says a secure “green zone” has been created around Afungi, but the situation remains fragile. This month, three Rwandan soldiers were ambushed and killed.
“This is not something that will end with just a military response,” he says. “Even if [the insurgents] are weakened, a political resolution is needed because you cannot kill all of them.”
Last month, Pouyanné said that Total’s aim was to restart “by the middle of the year”. This could involve bringing in huge machinery to build out Total’s part of the project as well as shared infrastructure on the Afungi peninsula.
Because of what they describe as “security concerns persist[ing] in the northern Cabo Delgado province”, analysts at Rystad Energy now expect production to begin in 2032.
Delays such as this could have big ramifications. Even if demand from Asia continues to grow, other major LNG projects in Qatar and the US are set to come on stream by the decade’s end.
“The market’s going to be oversupplied, even when you factor in our view of a slower build-out of Qatari capacity and no return of Russian LNG gas due to sanctions,” says Tom Purdie, a gas analyst at Energy Aspects. “Adding 30mn tonnes [per annum] from Mozambique in an oversupplied market is going to add even further pressure to prices.”
For Mozambique, further delays could be costly in other ways too. After receiving a $456mn credit facility from the IMF in 2022, Maputo asked for a new bailout in April, the fund said. The request is being considered.
Even when the LNG finally comes on stream, the proceeds are unlikely to flow immediately. ENH, Mozambique’s state gas company, has had to take on debts to fund its stake in LNG development. It used a sovereign guarantee of over $2bn to cover its share of funding for the Total project, and guarantees from Eni and other partners for the Coral South project — a floating platform operated by Eni that sent Mozambique’s first LNG to world markets in late 2022.
These debts will have to be repaid from initial LNG revenues, Mozambique’s Centre for Public Integrity think-tank has noted.
Meanwhile, Mozambique is paying $81mn a year in interest on a $900mn bond that covered the remnants of the tuna debt. It falls due for repayment in 2031. The bond currently trades at around 15 per cent, suggesting that investors doubt whether Mozambique will be able to pay it off.
Last year, the IMF issued a fresh set of forecasts. If Mozambique LNG does finally go ahead, Mozambique’s GDP growth could hit 10 per cent in 2028, it estimated. But this year LNG sales will contribute just half a percentage point to overall revenues, it said, and by 2029 they would still only contribute 1.5 per cent of GDP. All this is far removed from the rosy picture painted a decade ago.
In the meantime, the simmering conflict will have an impact of its own. “Total has a reasonably high tolerance of instability as long as it doesn’t come too close to the project,” argues Bofin, of Acled. “But the insurgency will keep rumbling on for some years to come.”
Donald Trump considers order to open US retirement plans to private equity
Move would pave the way for savers to access funds focused on corporate buyouts and other high-octane deals
Donald Trump’s administration is debating an executive order that could open the nearly $9tn US retirement market to private capital groups focused on corporate takeovers, property and other high-octane deals.
The order would instruct agencies such as the departments of labour and Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission to study the feasibility of opening 401k plans, a primary vehicle for US retirement savings, to the private funds, according to four sources familiar with the talks.
Trump opened the door for private capital access to American retirement savings in his first term, but few firms have moved ahead with the offering out of concern for liability risk. The order, if issued, would give retirement fund managers more cover to expand access to private investments — while opening a source of funding long coveted by the world’s largest private capital groups, including Blackstone, Apollo and KKR.
Top industry executives predict that offering their funds to 401k retirement plans could attract hundreds of billions of dollars in new industry assets.
While Trump administration officials are discussing the potential order, no decisions have been made and any move could be far off. The White House declined to comment, and the Treasury did not respond to a request for comment.
Still, top regulators in the administration have already taken action to open individual retirement plans to private equity funds.
On Monday, Paul Atkins, chair of the SEC, said the regulator would “reconsider” prior restrictions on certain funds holding more than 15 per cent of their assets in private investments. The effort, he said, would “give all investors the ability to seek exposure to a growing and important asset class, while still providing the investor protections afforded to registered funds”.
In the US, 401k plans are among the most popular ways working Americans save for retirement, allowing them to invest a portion of their salaries in publicly traded securities tax free.
Americans have little exposure to private capital funds in these plans, which tend to focus on stocks, bonds and mutual funds. At the same time, the private capital industry has struggled to raise new money in recent years from institutional investors such as pensions and endowments.
The push to plough savings plans into less liquid private assets carries risks such as higher fees and overall leverage, in addition to less transparency on the valuation of fund assets.
However, private equity bosses such as Apollo’s Marc Rowan have said the potential to earn higher returns from less liquid private investments and exposure to a broader mix of assets is a good match for the time horizon of retirement savers, who aim to grow their assets over decades.
In the final months of Trump’s first presidency, the Department of Labor issued a policy allowing private equity investments to be a part of certain retirement-oriented funds with long investment horizons.
While the guidance amounted to a watershed shift from prior restrictions, large asset managers that oversee retirement funds hesitated to adopt the change. Industry executives, lobbyists and legal advisers said retirement fund managers are fearful of being sued over potential violations of laws that impose fiduciary duties on such plans.
But further policy directives under Trump’s federal regulatory agencies such as the SEC, or legislation from the US Congress, could give added protections to asset managers to offer private equity investments to 401k plans, industry executives said.
The private capital industry’s largest groups have already begun partnering with asset managers relied on by millions of retirement savers.
Blackstone, KKR and Apollo have in recent months formalised partnerships with large asset managers including Vanguard, Capital Group and State Street aiming to offer private investments to a greater swath of investors. Last week, Empower, one of the largest 401k plan sponsors in the US, also struck a deal to begin offering Apollo, Partners Group, Goldman Sachs and other alternative funds to retirement plan participants.
Nvidia chief Jensen Huang condemns US chip curbs on China as ‘a failure’
World’s top AI semiconductor maker says export controls have accelerated Chinese rivals’ advances
Nvidia chief Jensen Huang has condemned US export controls designed to limit China’s access to artificial intelligence chips as “a failure” that spurred Chinese rivals to accelerate development of their own products.
In strongly worded criticisms of chip policies pursued by successive US administrations, the chief executive of the world’s leading AI processor maker also criticised Washington’s decision to ban an Nvidia product designed specifically for the Chinese market.
He told a news conference at the Computex tech show in Taipei on Wednesday that export controls had turbocharged Chinese rivals, led by tech giant Huawei, to build competitive AI hardware.
“Four years ago, Nvidia had 95 per cent market share in China. Today, it is only 50 per cent,” he said. “The rest is Chinese technology. They have a lot of local technology they would use if they didn’t have Nvidia.”
Huang added: “Chinese AI researchers will use their own chips. They will use the second best. Local companies are very determined, and export controls gave them the spirit, and government support accelerated their development. Our competition is intense in China.”
Washington’s restrictions on sending advanced AI chips to China have prompted Chinese tech giants, including Tencent and Alibaba, to accelerate their purchases of domestic AI chips. The Financial Times has previously reported that Beijing has issued guidance to its tech companies to buy local AI chips in a bid to reduce dependence on imported technology.
The Trump administration in April effectively banned Nvidia from selling the H20, its watered-down AI chip tailored to align with former export controls, prompting a $5.5bn writedown by the company. Huang reiterated that Nvidia had no plans to roll out another product in its “Hopper” series for the China market, saying the company had already “degraded the chip so severely”.
Huang also slammed the Biden-era AI diffusion rule, which was set to take effect on May 15 and would have created a three-tier licensing system for AI chips used in data centres.
“The fundamental assumptions that led to the AI diffusion rule in the beginning have proven to be fundamentally flawed,” said Huang. “If the US wants to stay ahead, we need to maximise and accelerate our diffusion, not limit it.”
His comments come after the US and United Arab Emirates last week announced a plan to build the largest group of AI data centres outside America, which will be supported by Nvidia’s chips.
The Trump administration has said it is rescinding the planned diffusion regulation and is drafting a new rule that would allow US technology to flourish, but without enabling adversarial nations to access its technology. It is not clear when the rules will be finalised, but an administration official has cautioned they would take some time to implement.
In a bid to halt the global spread of Chinese AI tech, the US government has warned companies against using AI silicon from China, including Huawei’s Ascend processors. The Chinese commerce ministry lambasted the move on Monday, calling on the US to “immediately correct its wrongdoings” and stop “discriminatory” practices.
Tesla: Elon Musk inteviewed by David Faber on CNBC
- Musk sees no need to buy Uber (UBER). Tesla owners will be able to add cars to the autonomous fleet to rent out like AirBNB when not using their car.
- Musk would like increased control at Tesla, enough control to not get ousted by activist investors. He has said this before.
- Did you damage the company going to DOGE? He says Tesla did a massive retooling of its lines. Shares have rebounded.
- Expects autonomous cars to grow rapidly.
- He expects to buy a lot of GPUs from NVDA for xAI "big time."
After Hours Summary: PANW -4.2% lower on earnings; WOLF -58.2% on WSJ report it's preparing to file for bankruptcy; TOL +5.4% higher on earnings
After Hours Gainers:
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: FINV +6.9%, TUYA +5.9%, KEYS +5.5%, TOL +5.4%, EVLV +2.9%, MOD +1.8%, JHX +1.1%, XP +0.5% (also authorizes new R$1 bln share repurchase program; also approves cancellation of existing treasury Class A shares), ZTO +0.3%
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: KHC +2.2% (has been evaluating potential strategic transactions; also Berkshire will no longer hold Board seats), SDHC +1.5% (two directors disclose insider buys), GD +0.3% (awarded a $199 mln US Navy contract), ORKA +0.2% (first participants dosed in Phase 1 Trial of ORKA-002), NOC +0.2% (increases dividend), RBC +0.1% (RBC to acquire VACCO Industries from ESE for $310 mln), SWX +0.1% (SWX offering 9 mln shares of CTRI)
After Hours Losers:
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: PANW -4.2%, VSAT -0.8%
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: WOLF -58.2% (preparing to file for bankruptcy within weeks, according to WSJ), QXO -10.2% (launches stock offering totaling $1 bln), CTRI -6.7% (SWX offering 9 mln shares of CTRI), CRI -6.7% (lowers dividend), GRDN -6.4% (announces launch of 7.5 mln share offering, comprised of 6,059,553 shares by selling stockholders and 1,440,447 newly issued shares offered by Guardian), CIFR -6.3% ($250 mln convertible notes offering), GTX -5.5% (announces 17 mln share offering by selling shareholders; 2 mln share concurrent repurchase by GTX), TTWO -3.9% ($1 bln stok offering), TPG -3.8% (DB Holdings to offer 21 mln shares), NU -3.8% (COO stepping down), IONQ -0.8% (partners with Sweden's Einride to develop quantum supply chain), VLY -0.6% (stock offering by selling shareholder), LOGI -0.4% (increases dividend), UBER -0.3% (Musk says Tesla sees no need to buy UBER, according to CNBC), ESE -0.1% (RBC to acquire VACCO Industries from ESE for $310 mln), NIC -0.1% (increases dividend), BAM -0.1% (files for $2.5 bln mixed securities shelf offering), TSLA -0.1% (Musk confirms Tesla plan for robotaxis, says Tesla has seen seen a major rebound in demand, sees no need to buy UBER, according to CNBC)
Closing Stock Market Summary
The S&P 500 had a six-session win streak going, but on the seventh day it rested. There were no gains today as the stock market operated in consolidation mode following the massive run from the April 7 low. The Dow and Nasdaq followed suit, posting modest losses of their own, while the Russell 2000 was flat.
There wasn't any U.S. economic data of note to drive things, and the corporate news was limited. There was some added attention on President Trump's visit to Capitol Hill to discuss his objectives for the reconciliation bill with House GOP members. Reportedly, he told them not to mess with Medicaid cuts and rebuked the efforts by the SALT Caucus to raise the deduction limit beyond the $30,000 currently proposed, telling them to "let it go."
There was some chatter that neither camp was fully swayed by the president's exhortations, so there was a component of uncertainty around the reconciliation bill that contributed to the consolidation effort.
Overall, there wasn't much conviction in today's selling action. Eight S&P 500 sectors finished lower, but only one -- energy (-1.0%) -- declined at least 1.0%. Losses for the remaining sectors ranged from 0.2% to 0.8%. The three winning sectors -- utilities (+0.3%), health care (+0.3%), and consumer staples (+0.2%) -- reflected a more defensive-minded tape.
Market breadth skewed negative. Decliners led advancers by an 8-to-5 margin at the NYSE and by a roughly 11-to-10 margin at the Nasdaq.
Dow component Home Depot (HD 377.05, -2.21, -0.6%) was among the decliners, losing ground after a mixed Q1 report that featured an EPS miss, a revenue beat, a reaffirmation of FY26 guidance, and a declaration that the company does not plan to raise prices due to tariffs.
Alphabet (GOOG 165.32, -2.55, -1.5%) was another decliner amid its I/O event; meanwhile, Tesla (TSLA 343.82, +1.73, +0.5%) slotted into the advancers column but finished well off its session high of $354.98. Mega-cap stocks, in general, were softer today, which fit with today's consolidation bias, but they showed some vigor in the closing stages to help the indices come back from lower levels as the closing bell approached. The Vanguard Mega-Cap Growth ETF (MGK) declined 0.5% after being down 1.2%.