Markets
markets
Luke Kawa
8/22/25

Nvidia reportedly halts H20 production after Chinese security decree clouds demand outlook

Shares of Nvidia are down in premarket trading after The Information reported that the chip designer has told two suppliers that put the finishing touches on its H20 processors — the chips it recently received licenses to sell to China once again — to suspend production work.

This news follows a report earlier this month that China’s internet regulator told major domestic tech giants like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent not to purchase these chips because of data security concerns. Per The New York Times, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he already made it “very clear” to Chinese regulators that their worries about backdoor access to these chips are unfounded.

The H20 has been a giant, multibillion-dollar headache for Nvidia and a flashpoint for the confusing geopolitical, commercial, and technological crosscurrents in the US-China relationship this year.

This nerfed version of Nvidia’s H100 chip was developed specifically for sale to China in response to export controls introduced by the Biden administration. Near the height of trade tensions with China in April, the Trump administration enacted fresh export restrictions on the sale of these chips. Nvidia took a $4.5 billion impairment charge in its Q1 earnings tied to this export ban, and said that its Q2 sales guidance would have been $8 billion higher if not for this change to trade policy.

After an intense public and private lobbying campaign, Nvidia (and Advanced Micro Devices) managed to receive assurances that they would be able to sell their tailor-made AI chips to China once again in mid-July. But the chip designers formally received those export licenses only after striking a novel deal to send 15% of revenues from those sales to the US government.

Nvidia had planned to sell down only its existing H20 inventory to China after it got the initial all-clear, but then reportedly elected to order more H20 chips from TSMC because demand for these processors was so hot — only to then see it seemingly doused by Chinese regulators.

Who knows what the twists and turns for the H20 mean for its successor model that’s in development, as China’s data security concerns surrounding the US chip designer’s products may be also colored by a desire to help promote domestic champion Huawei’s offerings.

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Luke Kawa
38m
Negative US payroll revisions as bad as 2009 add to fears of consumer spending slowdown

Reconciling the spending versus jobs trends is the key question for US economic analysts.

Yellow traffic light against an office building
markets
Matt Phillips
2h

Planet Labs slips after big post-earnings gain

Smallish midcap satellite imagery and data company Planet Labs is giving back a chunk of the nearly 50% gain it racked up after posting earnings early Monday.

No tears, though: the shares, which seem to have a fairly robust retail following, are still up roughly 340% over the past 12 months.

Retail darling Planet Labs soars on earnings pop for second straight quarter

Retail darling Planet Labs soars on earnings pop for second straight quarter
markets
Luke Kawa
3h

CoreWeave soars as Microsoft’s deal with Nebius shows unrelenting demand for AI compute

CoreWeave is soaring as Microsoft’s $17.4 billion deal with Nebius shows the immense value and continued demand for all parts of the AI data center ecosystem.

One additional reason for CoreWeave’s jump may be that its pending acquisition of AI data center infrastructure company Core Scientific looks like a great deal compared to Microsoft’s renting of (more broad and advanced) AI data center capacity from Nebius.

CoreWeave’s all-stock deal to buy Core Scientific was initially valued at ~$9 billion, but with the subsequent decline in its shares, it’s worth about 40% less. And in purchasing Core Scientific, CoreWeave is saving $10 billion in what it would have paid the company to lease data center infrastructure over the next 12 years.

As it stands, Microsoft is getting about 300 megawatts in data center power capacity from Nebius, while Core Scientific boasts that its footprint is in excess of 1,300 megawatts. So, on the surface, it looks like an absolute steal for CoreWeave.

But again, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison; not all access to AI computing infrastructure is created equal.

There are differences in the type of AI infrastructure provided by the two: Nebius owns GPUs, while Core Scientific doesn’t, and what it provides in the software layer isn’t offered by Core Scientific as a stand-alone entity. This is the difference between the “full stack” approach (Nebius) and a “colocation” approach (Core Scientific).

That being said, CoreWeave’s acquisition of Core Scientific, once completed, will make the combined entity’s business model look more like Nebius’ model, which, as Microsoft just told us, is something that top hyperscalers are willing to pay a pretty penny for.

markets
J. Edward Moreno
3h

UNH rises after preliminary data shows most Medicare Advantage enrollees will be on more lucrative, top-rated plans

UnitedHealth rose more than 4% in premarket trading on Tuesday after the company disclosed that it expects the majority of its Medicare Advantage enrollees will be on plans rated four stars or higher in 2026.

Though the data is only preliminary, about 78% of UNH’s Medicare Advantage members are in plans rated four stars or higher, the company said in a regulatory filing Tuesday morning. On Monday, the company said it plans to reiterate its full-year guidance when it meets with investors this week.

Insurance companies that provide government-sponsored plans, like Medicare Advantage, have struggled this year amid unexpected rising costs. Plans that are rated four stars or higher earn bonus payments and are typically more lucrative for healthcare insurance providers.

Nia Warfield, Luke Kawa
19h
US stocks grind higher as volatility dissipates

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% in what was is fourth-smallest intraday range of 2025, as did the Russell 2000, while the Nasdaq 100 gained 0.5%.

Germany, Bull running on field

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