AI Chips for China

Author

Adam Smith
July 16, 2025

Gooooood morning! XAI just bagged a $200 million Pentagon contract to develop “frontier AI technologies for national security missions.” You know, the same week they launched NSFW AI companions that encourage users to roleplay crimes against humanity.

If you ever feel underqualified for your job, just remember: someone looked at that company and said, “Yeah, let’s trust them with national security.”

What’s in store today:

  • Markets are favoring tech, trimming elsewhere

  • Nvidia can sell H20 chips to China

  • Trending AI tools

  • Anthropic wants to replace junior analysts

  • Fresh Business ideas

Read time: 5 minutes

Markets

Stock Data is provided by Google Finance as of market close 7/15/2025.

Markets Summary: The market's split personality showed. Tech-led Nasdaq continued forging ahead, S&P and Dow pulled back under economic pressure from tariffs and inflation, and Bitcoin continues to forge ahead.

Business News

In a dramatic shift in posture, the U.S. has officially greenlit Nvidia’s sale of its H20 AI chips to China. These chips may be slightly scaled down, but they’re still plenty powerful, and the move signals a major change in how the U.S. is managing tech exports to its biggest geopolitical rival.

The Breakdown

  • The H20 chip is back on the menu
    It’s not Nvidia’s most powerful hardware, but the H20 is still a capable AI chip. It was specifically designed to meet export restrictions while keeping China in the customer list.

  • This deal is part of a bigger trade reset
    The U.S. gave the green light in exchange for China easing up on rare earth material restrictions. Think of it as "you sell us magnets, we sell you chips."

  • Wall Street is loving it
    Nvidia shares jumped up to 5 percent. That’s a lot of happy traders with Jensen Huang posters in their offices.

  • Lawmakers are raising eyebrows
    Some in Congress worry that even these toned-down chips could end up fueling China’s military AI ambitions. The debate over national security is far from over.

Why this matters

China now gets access to Nvidia’s software tools, which means they can still train cutting edge models even with slightly weaker chips. For Nvidia, it's a financial win. For U.S. policymakers, it’s a balancing act between economic power and national defense.

For the rest of us, it’s a reminder that global AI development isn’t happening in silos. It’s happening in boardrooms, with spreadsheets, politics, and just enough loopholes to keep the chips moving.

Trending Tools

Felt AI: Uses natural language to make maps, apps, and dashboards in seconds.

Clueso: Turn screen recordings into polished tutorial videos and step‑by‑step documentation in minutes. Complete with voice‑overs, captions, and translations.

Spike Magic AI: Spike’s virtual inbox adds AI‑powered email composition, summarization, translation, and even an AI feed that digests and summarizes your unread messages.

At Work

Anthropic, the AI startup backed by Amazon, just launched a finance-focused version of its Claude chatbot.

The Breakdown

  • Plugged into your favorite data tools
    Claude for Financial Services connects with PitchBook, Morningstar, FactSet, S&P Capital IQ, and more. This means users can pull insights across platforms without switching tabs or logging into five different dashboards.

  • Purpose-built for finance pros
    The new Claude comes with higher usage limits, pre-built prompt templates, and tools for building custom workflows. It runs through AWS and will be available soon on Google Cloud Marketplace.

  • Amazon’s big bet is looking smart
    After sinking up to $8 billion into Anthropic, Amazon is already seeing returns. Analysts project AWS could generate over $5 billion annually from its Claude partnership by 2027.

  • Junior analyst jobs in the hot seat
    Anthropic says this tool will make finance teams more efficient. But let’s be real, it could also replace a lot of early career roles. Their own leadership predicts that as much as 50 percent of entry level office jobs might be handled by AI in the near future.

Why this matter

Claude is not just answering questions, it’s pulling multi-source reports, updating VC pipelines, and doing the work of an entire junior analyst team. This kind of tech could completely reshape how research and reporting get done.

It also signals Amazon’s growing dominance in AI infrastructure. With Claude baked into AWS and soon Google Cloud, financial firms will have little excuse not to explore it.

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