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U.S. chip designer Nvidia has signed a letter of intent for a possible $500 million investment in the next funding round at Britain’s Wayve, the autonomous driving technology group said on Thursday. The development comes after Britain and the United States signed a technology pact aimed at boosting ties in artificial intelligence and other fields. Founded in 2017, Wayve raised over $1 billion last year, led by SoftBank Group and supported by Nvidia. Ride-hailing platform Uber had also made a separate investment in the firm in 2024, for an undisclosed sum. Wayve’s technology, unlike conventional systems that rely on detailed digital maps and coding, uses machine learning with camera sensors mounted on the vehicles to learn from traffic patterns and driver behaviour. Its autonomous driving platforms have been powered by a partnership with Nvidia, whose chips are now bolstering a global AI boom. The London-based Wayve currently operates in Britain and the U.S. and has been expanding testing and development to wider markets like Germany and Japan. On Thursday, Nvidia had also pledged 2 billion pounds ($2.70 billion) in investments in the British AI startup ecosystem. ($1 = 0.7411 pounds) Raechel Thankam Job, Reuters
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E-Commerce
U.S. President Donald Trump is talking with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday in a push to finalize a deal to allow the popular social media app TikTok to keep operating in the United States.The call between the two leaders began around 8 a.m. Washington time, according to a White House official and China’s Xinhua News Agency.The call may offer clues about whether the two leaders might meet in person to hash out a final agreement to end their trade war and provide clarity on where relations between the world’s two superpowers may be headed.This is the second call with Xi since Trump returned to the White House and launched sky-high tariffs on China, triggering back-and-forth trade restrictions that strained ties between the two largest economies. But Trump, a Republican, has expressed willingness to negotiate trade deals with Beijing, notably for TikTok, which faces a U.S. ban unless its Chinese parent company sells its controlling stake. Another call for Trump and Xi over trade tensions The two men also spoke in June to defuse tensions over China’s restrictions on the export of rare earth elements, used in everything from smartphones to fighter jets.“I’m speaking with President Xi, as you know, on Friday, having to do with TikTok and also trade,” Trump said Thursday. “And we’re very close to deals on all of it.”He said his relationship with China is “very good” but noted that Russia’s war in Ukraine could end if European countries put higher tariffs on China. Trump didn’t say if he planned to raise tariffs on Beijing over its purchase of Moscow’s oil, as he has done with India.The Chinese Embassy in Washington on Thursday didn’t confirm any upcoming summit between the leaders, but spokesperson Liu Pengyu said “heads-of-state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance for China-U.S. relations.”Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center, predicted a positive discussion.“Both sides have strong desire for the leadership summit to happen, while the details lie in the trade deal and what can be achieved for both sides from the summit,” Sun said. Efforts to finalize the TikTok deal Following a U.S.-China trade meeting earlier this week in Madrid, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the sides reached a framework deal on TikTok’s ownership but Trump and Xi likely would finalize it Friday.Trump, who has credited the app with helping him win another term, several times has extended a deadline for the app to be spun off from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. It is a requirement to allow TikTok to keep operating in the U.S. under a law passed last year seeking to address data privacy and national security concerns.Trump said TikTok “has tremendous value” and the U.S. “has that value in its hand because we’re the ones that have to approve it.”U.S. officials have been concerned about ByteDance’s roots and ownership, pointing to laws in China that require Chinese companies to hand over data requested by the government. Another concern is the proprietary algorithm that populates what users see on TikTok.Chinese officials said Monday that a consensus was reached on authorization of the “use of intellectual property rights,” including the algorithm, and that the two sides agreed on entrusting a partner with handling U.S. user data and content security.Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, says TikTok’s data and algorithm must be “truly in American hands” to comply with the law. More trade issues on the table Top U.S. and Chinese officials have held four rounds of trade talks between May and September, with another likely in the coming weeks. Both sides have paused sky-high tariffs and pulled back from harsh export controls, but many issues remain unresolved.Trump in the call would likely “seek to make it appear that the United States has the upper hand in trade negotiations,” said Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy adviser on U.S.-China issues at the International Crisis Group.Xi would likely “seek to underscore China’s economic leverage and warn that continued progress in bilateral relations will hinge on an easing of U.S. tariffs, sanctions and export controls,” Wyne said.No deals have been announced on tech export restrictions, Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products or fentanyl. The Trump administration has imposed additional 20% tariffs on Chinese goods linked to allegations that Beijing has failed to stem the flow to the U.S. of the chemicals used to make opioids.Trump’s second-term trade war with Beijing has cost U.S. farmers one of their top markets. From January through July, American farm exports to China fell 53% compared with the same period last year. The damage was even greater in some commodities: U.S. sorghum sales to China, for instance, were down 97%.Josh Gackle, chairman of the American Soybean Association, said he would be following the outcome of Friday’s call because China, the biggest foreign buyer of U.S. beans, has paused purchases for this year’s new crop.“There’s still time. It’s encouraging that the two countries continue to talk,” Gackle said. “I think there’s frustration growing at the farmer level that they haven’t been able to reach a deal yet.” Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Paul Wiseman contributed to the report. Didi Tang, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
SoftBank Group will lay off nearly 20% of its Vision Fund team globally as it shifts resources to founder Masayoshi Sons large-scale artificial intelligence bets in the United States, according to a memo seen by Reuters and a source familiar with the plan. The cuts mark the third round of layoffs at the Japanese investment conglomerates flagship fund since 2022. Vision Fund currently has over 300 employees globally. Unlike previous rounds, when the group was saddled with major losses, the latest reductions come after the fund last month reported its strongest quarterly performance since June 2021, driven by gains in public holdings such as Nvidia and South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang. The move signals a pivot away from a broad portfolio of startup investments. While the fund will continue to make new bets, remaining staff will dedicate more resources to Sons ambitious AI initiatives, such as the proposed $500 billion Stargate project an initiative to build a vast network of U.S. data centers in partnership with OpenAI, the source added. A Vision Fund spokesperson confirmed the layoffs without commenting on the details, and said in a statement: We continually adjust the organization to best execute our long-term strategy making bold, high-conviction investments in AI and breakthrough technologies, and creating long-term value for our stakeholders. The restructuring marks a return to Sons classic high-risk, high-reward approach of making massive, concentrated wagers, moving on from the sprawling venture capital model that defined the last era of the Vision Fund, and a period in which the group was forced to de-risk, sell assets and rebuild credibility after incurring billions in losses on its once high-flying bet on the office-sharing startup WeWork. This shift toward capitalintensive AI infrastructure reflects where Son who made his name with outsized bets and was an early champion of AI sees the path back to the top. He is now aggressively pursuing new investments in foundation models and the infrastructure layer, sometimes at premium valuations. In the past 12 months, Son has invested $9.7 billion in OpenAI through Vision Fund 2, which manages about $65.8 billion in total. SoftBank is also plotting a capital-intensive infrastructure strategy centered on its crown jewel, chip designer Arm. It has acquired chip firms Graphcore and Ampere Computing and taken stakes in Intel and Nvidia. These moves aim to build an ecosystem spanning chips, data centers, and models to support future AI adoptions. The capital-intensive strategy carries execution risk, underscored by recent delays in both the U.S. Stargate project and a similar joint venture with OpenAI in Japan, Reuters reported this week. SoftBank CFO Yoshimitsu Goto said the company held a very safe level of cash of 4 trillion yen ($27 billion) on the company’s most recent earnings call in August. Krystal Hu, Reuters
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E-Commerce
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