Andrew here. With President Trump set to arrive back in Washington on Friday, we\u2019re taking a hard look at what his high-stakes summit in Beijing actually achieved. The TL;DR: It didn\u2019t lead to the \u201cgrand bargain\u201d many had anticipated.<\/p>\n
While there were optics of cooperation between Trump and Xi Jinping, concrete deals \u2014 including on Nvidia chips or tariffs \u2014 were few. Trump just said that he rejected a proposal from Xi, China\u2019s leader, to help broker a peace between the U.S. and Iran, leaving the critical Strait of Hormuz effectively shut.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the president is coming home to rising oil prices and a slumping bond market.<\/p>\n
What was gained (and wasn\u2019t) in Beijing<\/p>\n
President Trump departed Beijing a few hours ago, hailing \u201cfantastic trade deals<\/a>\u201d struck during his two-day summit<\/a>. <\/p>\n Still, many analysts and investors appear underwhelmed by a lack of details or breakthroughs<\/a> on key issues like tariffs, Iran and tech restrictions. The summit seems to have fallen short of already diminished expectations<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the 17 business leaders who accompanied Trump on the trip, the deal flow also appeared thinner<\/a> than what was announced on his last presidential trip to China, in 2017.<\/p>\n Here are the highlights so far, Grady McGregor writes.<\/p>\n Nvidia and Citi apparently scored wins. Shares in Nvidia, the chipmaker, hit a record on Thursday on reports<\/a> that Washington had cleared 10 Chinese companies to buy its H200 semiconductors.<\/p>\n That said, Beijing, which is looking to champion domestic rivals like Huawei, has not signaled it would be open to permitting the sales \u2014 an issue echoed on Friday by Jamieson Greer<\/a>, the U.S. trade representative.<\/p>\n And on the eve of the summit, Beijing approved<\/a> Citi\u2019s application to operate a securities business in China, ending a yearslong regulatory application process. It is unclear whether the presence of Jane Fraser, the bank\u2019s C.E.O., on the trip played any role in Beijing\u2019s decision. Citi shares gained on Thursday.<\/p>\n Boeing landed an order for 200 aircraft, a deal Trump highlighted<\/a> in a Fox News interview last night.<\/p>\n But shares in the plane maker fell sharply in premarket trading on Friday: The number was short of analysts\u2019 forecasts of at least 300 planes<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Board of Trade looks like a go. The Washington-Beijing body would manage trade in sectors such as aviation, energy, medical equipment and agriculture. Greer said it would aim to reduce tariffs<\/a> on roughly $30 billion worth of goods.<\/p>\n He added that he expected the tariff truce the countries struck last fall in South Korea to be extended.<\/p>\n What\u2019s still unclear:<\/p>\n HERE\u2019S WHAT\u2019S HAPPENING <\/p>\n Major cryptocurrency regulation clears a key hurdle. The Senate Banking Committee passed the Clarity Act<\/a>, which has been promoted by crypto companies and investors like the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The bill heads to the full Senate, where it faces a less certain fate.<\/p>\n Federal prosecutors will drop criminal charges against India\u2019s richest man. The move to end the case<\/a> against the businessman Gautam Adani came after one of his lawyers \u2014 Robert Giuffra, who is also one of President Trump\u2019s personal lawyers \u2014 met with Justice Department officials, The Times reports. (A presentation by Giuffra said that Adani was willing to invest $10 billion in the U.S., though sources told The Times that the withdrawal of charges wasn\u2019t tied to the offer.) A settlement in a parallel case by the S.E.C. was announced Thursday in which Adani agreed to pay $6 million.<\/p>\n Bill Ackman bets big on Microsoft. The billionaire financier said on Friday that he had acquired a major stake in the tech giant<\/a> and that he believed in the long-term prospects of its productivity software and its spending on A.I. Other hedge fund managers have bet the opposite: TCI, the firm run by Chris Hohn, recently sold off an $8 billion stake<\/a> in Microsoft.<\/p>\n The OpenAI trial heads to a conclusion<\/p>\n The high-stakes legal showdown between Elon Musk and OpenAI is finally headed to the nine-person jury.<\/p>\n Over more than seven hours of closing arguments<\/a>, lawyers for each side sought to paint the other as untrustworthy.<\/p>\n Here are some of the highlights of Thursday\u2019s proceedings.<\/p>\n Can anyone trust Sam Altman? That was again the central attack by Steven Molo, Musk\u2019s lead lawyer, who has argued that Altman, the OpenAI chief, deceived Musk, a fellow founder, about plans to convert the company from nonprofit to for-profit.<\/p>\n Molo told jurors that five witnesses had called Altman a \u201cliar,\u201d and he hammered home his point with a creative metaphor:<\/p>\n Imagine that you\u2019re on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail, and it\u2019s over a gorge. There\u2019s a river that\u2019s 100 feet below and it looks a little scary, but a woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, \u201cDon\u2019t worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman\u2019s version of the truth.\u201d Would you walk across that bridge? I don\u2019t think many people would.<\/p>\n Can jurors trust Musk\u2019s version of events? OpenAI\u2019s lawyers, from the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, argued that the billionaire knew about the company\u2019s plans for for-profit conversion earlier than he admitted to and that the statute of limitations for his claims had passed.<\/p>\n Referring to Musk\u2019s claim that he hadn\u2019t read most of a 2018 email about OpenAI\u2019s plans to seek outside investment, Sarah Eddy, a lawyer for OpenAI, said:<\/p>\n Here you have one of the most sophisticated businessmen in the history of the world and he claims he didn\u2019t read a four-page summary term sheet.<\/p>\n The outcome of the trial could drastically alter the A.I. landscape. If OpenAI loses, its operations could be disrupted at a time when rivals are gaining steam.<\/p>\n Figma\u2019s C.E.O. on surviving the \u201cSaaSpocalypse\u201d<\/p>\n The artificial intelligence boom has been a tale of haves and have-nots. Some companies have benefited mightily, most recently the chip maker Cerebras, whose stock shot up 68 percent in its debut<\/a>. But many enterprise software providers have been walloped.<\/p>\n One of them was Figma, the design-software maker whose shares have tumbled since it went public<\/a> last year. But as it reported strong quarterly earnings<\/a> on Thursday, its C.E.O., Dylan Field, spoke with Michael de la Merced about why he believed his company was poised to survive, and even thrive. Here are our takeaways after the conversation.<\/p>\n Remember the \u201cSaaSpocalypse\u201d? Referring to \u201csoftware-as-a-service,\u201d it referred to investors\u2019 worries that tools like Anthropic\u2019s Claude Code would devastate the entire category<\/a> of subscription-based software companies, like Figma.<\/p>\n Figma appears to have dispelled at least some of those worries:<\/p>\n The company\u2019s results held up after an A.I.-related change in pricing. For most of its existence, Figma charged companies per user (known as seat-based pricing). But A.I. agents that can do work once reserved for humans promise to drastically reduce how many \u201cseats\u201d customers need to pay for.<\/p>\n In mid-March, Figma switched to a system in which it charged users for how much A.I. they used past a certain amount. The company said that more than 75 percent of its business users kept using A.I. tools despite the cap.<\/p>\n The result: Shares in Figma are up more than 10 percent in premarket trading since the report.<\/p>\n \u201cMarket narratives are market narratives,\u201d Field said to DealBook about the SaaSpocalypse sell-off, playing down the investor concern while pointing out Figma\u2019s strong performance. <\/p>\n \u201cThe way we see it, A.I. is going to create more software than ever,\u201d he said. He added, \u201cDesign matters.\u201d<\/p>\n But Field remains on guard. Makers of A.I. models have muscled into Figma\u2019s territory, notably Anthropic, which in March introduced Claude Design, a tool seen as a competitor of sorts. (Only three days before, Mike Krieger, a senior Anthropic executive, resigned<\/a> from Figma\u2019s board; Field reportedly complained<\/a> about the situation.)<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to take a company like Anthropic seriously,\u201d Field told DealBook.<\/p>\n Picture of the day <\/p>\n The musical playlist for Thursday\u2019s state dinner in Beijing for President Trump drew big buzz on social media<\/a>. It contained some Trump favorites, including the Village People hit \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d<\/p>\n Talking A.I. with Circle\u2019s C.E.O. <\/p>\n Every week, we\u2019re asking a leader how he or she uses artificial intelligence. This week, Jeremy Allaire, who leads the stablecoin issuer Circle, told Sarah Kessler that he had built a \u201cC.E.O. prioritizer.\u201d The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.<\/p>\n How do you personally use A.I. at home or work?<\/p>\n One interesting one is a C.E.O. prioritizer. If there\u2019s a request for me to meet someone or do something, you go to the agent and it interrogates you about it and does background research. Then it assigns a one-to-five score, with one being \u201cCompletely ignore it\u201d and five being \u201cThis is a highly strategic use of your time.\u201d<\/p>\n Circle wants to be part of the infrastructure that helps A.I. agents spend money. Tell me more about that.<\/p>\n The primary units of work in the economic system are going to be executed by A.I. agents. And increasingly, it\u2019s going to be agents that are operating in teams.<\/p>\n You need an economic system to support that. We need a way for one agent to access and use the services of another agent. For example, you might have research data in a particular domain of biology, and I want to make that available to A.I.s to consume. And it\u2019s going to be 5 cents, 10 cents. Whatever it is, you receive that payment, and the A.I. then can consume that data and use it.<\/p>\n And this transaction would take place via stablecoin and not dollars, because there is less friction and these are tiny transactions?<\/p>\n There\u2019s no payment system in the world except for something like USDC that can conduct a transaction for a fraction of a penny. Or even 5 cents or 10 cents. And it\u2019s all programmable.<\/p>\n You said on your latest earnings call that 85 percent of your employees are using A.I. coding and automation tools. What does that look like?<\/p>\n We\u2019re able to basically go through the entire software life cycle with A.I. agents conducting work. Agents are seeing feature requests, picking them up, coding and submitting the code for review. We have other agents that perform code review. Humans then obviously come in to do subsequent reviews.<\/p>\n What about outside of engineering?<\/p>\n It\u2019s in every single function. If you want to build a creative strategy for a campaign, there\u2019s a whole agentic workflow. If you are creating public communications content \u2014 we\u2019re a regulated company, so we have very strict guidelines \u2014 there\u2019s an A.I. that will vet all of your content and point out the issues with it.<\/p>\n THE SPEED READ <\/p>\n Deals<\/p>\n Investors led by Egon Durban, a C.E.O. of the tech investment firm Silver Lake, have reportedly struck a deal to buy 25 percent of the Las Vegas Raiders<\/a> at a $9.9 billion valuation. (CNBC)<\/p>\n Michael Carr<\/a>, a longtime top M.&A. banker at Goldman Sachs, died on Tuesday. He was 68. (Bloomberg)<\/p>\n Politics, policy and regulation<\/p>\n Best of the rest<\/p>\n Boeing and Toyota are said to have donated $1 million each<\/a> to fund a reality-TV video series starring the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy. (WSJ)<\/p>\n \u201cIn a City of Big Dreams, Many Young Adults See a Cloudy Future<\/a>\u201d (NYT)<\/p>\n