AI Takes Center Stage Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit

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Bloomberg Tech is live from the heart of Silicon Valley with Ed Ludlow in San Francisco.

Ed Ludlow (0:22)

This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, all eyes on the Trump-G summit later this week, and AI's role in those upcoming talks. We'll discuss what to expect. Plus, Bloomberg reports that Paramount reaches a settlement with California and other states who had sued to block its proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. And as data shows more disruption to US data centers, we get to the political debate with US representative Suhas Subramanyam from Virginia. Welcome to the program. The story is technology stocks are pushing higher. In the background over the weekend, diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict between the US and Iran and constructive talks between the US and China ahead of that summit between President Trump and President Xi later in the week. All pushing technology higher. Outperformance in particular in semiconductors. Speaking of semiconductors, I want to talk about AMD. The stock's up almost 10%.

And as it stands with that gain of 10%, if it closes at that level, AMD will reach $1 trillion of market cap. It will become the 16th company to reach $1 trillion of market cap worldwide based on the data I got in front of me on the Bloomberg. Really interesting. There's no specific catalyst in the news cycle. It's up for a fifth straight day. It's longest run of gains going back to April. There is some chat out there about Meta's Muse agent and AMD gear being used for both the running and training of that model or some of the underlying open weight models. Maybe that's it. We're going to get to it throughout the hour. Let's get to our top story. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson is calling the latest U.S.-China talks very successful, with the two sides now agreeing to launch a new dialogue on AI risks. It comes just days before President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet here in the United States. Bloomberg's Senior Tech Editor Mike Sheppard is with us.

Constructive over the weekend. Let's recap what Treasury Secretary Besson had to say and what was actually discussed in those kind of like prelim meetings, Mike.

Mike Sheppard (2:22)

Well, this is an important warm up to the sit down on Thursday between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. And while it is a warm up, having the tone in the right place is essential for the two leaders to have a successful meeting. And so far, what we're hearing from both sides is that the talks not only had an upbeat tone, but they saw them as making some progress and in particular an artificial intelligence that they have agreed to this dialogue between the US and China. And then also a notification mechanism for whenever there might be an event related to AI that has some national security implications for either side. Now, look, Ed, this is not a grand bargain by any stretch of the imagination, and it certainly falls far short of the kind of larger coordination on safety, regulation and other matters that we have heard world leaders, including the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, call for. And yet, it is a step in the right direction for the world's two largest economies and two largest developers of artificial intelligence.

Ed Ludlow (3:26)

OK, so, Shep, set us up for this week. President Trump will hold talks with President Xi. What's the timeline? What are the key moments? And again, reiterate the agenda that's on the table.

Mike Sheppard (3:37)

Well, we don't have the minute-by-minute agenda, but Xi Jinping arrives in Washington on Wednesday evening, and then I'll have a full day of meetings with President Trump, and then there will be that high-profile state dinner, of course, where a number of Silicon Valley's elite will be present. We all know that Jensun Wang will be there, but we confirmed last night that Microsoft's Satya Nadella will be there as well. Sam Altman from OpenAI. And really, they all have such a stake in these negotiations between the US and China over AI.

There has been a lot of tension between Washington and Beijing over this competition. We've seen US officials and agencies increasing their accusations that Chinese AI developers are behaving unfairly, siphoning data from American AI labs, to then try to build their own rival generation of chatbots. And yet, all of those tensions seem to be papered over, at least, in the discussions yesterday between Scott Besson and his Chinese counterpart, with each side offering some positive signals from the exchanges. Although, we don't have very many details, Ed. We have to be fair to our audience that we don't know exactly what this dialogue will look like, who will take part, what will the principles be, how will this notification system actually work. We're hoping to find out more about this as the week progresses, and we would expect some sort of final outcome on Thursday or Friday once they start wrapping those talks and issuing some deliverables.