Andrew here. We’ve got a full rundown below of the Jimmy Kimmel-Disney free speech vs. business soap opera. But first I want to focus on Nvidia’s $100 billion investment in OpenAI, an eye-watering deal that will probably accelerate the A.I. boom. The idea that Nvidia is now taking its winnings and investing them back in one of its customers deserves our attention, and raises some thorny questions.
While it represents a huge bet on OpenAI, now valued at roughly $500 billion, it also is indicative of a dilemma that much of the industry faces: Many customers of Nvidia — like OpenAI — are burning through cash, and yet need to continue buying more and more chips. Nvidia needs companies like OpenAI to succeed. When is it good or bad for a business to prop up its customer? Meanwhile, how will Nvidia prioritize to which companies it sells its chips? Will OpenAI get its next-generation chips first? Will OpenAI’s competitors try to use other chipmakers? Can they — especially if Nvidia’s chips are more advanced? Something to think about.
Jimmy Kimmel, live once more
Jimmy Kimmel’s show is expected to return on Tuesday, and a lot of people — in New York, Washington, Hollywood and beyond — will be watching.
The big question is what Kimmel’s reinstatement will mean for Disney and other media companies whose programming has drawn President Trump’s ire. Will administration enforcers like Brendan Carr of the F.C.C. follow through on suggestions that they may crack down on content?
How Kimmel’s return came about: Discussions between the late-night host and Disney management — including Bob Iger, the company’s C.E.O., and Dana Walden, its TV chief — started last week after the company pulled his show. The move came in the face of threats from Carr and two major ABC affiliate owners.
Conversations continued through the weekend, The Times reports, with Iger, Walden and Kimmel discussing when the show would return and what the host would say.
What will the fallout be?
Sinclair, one of two ABC affiliate owners that expressed intentions last week to pull Kimmel’s show after Carr’s comments, said it would not air Tuesday’s show and would instead show news programming. It’s in “ongoing” discussions with ABC as it evaluates “the show’s potential return.”
Nexstar, the other affiliate owner, hasn’t commented.
There’s concern about entertainment talent’s willingness to work with Disney, The Wall Street Journal notes, which could drastically hurt the company’s movie and TV studios. (Another source of criticism was unexpected: Michael Eisner, who preceded Iger as C.E.O.)
Some customers protested Disney’s move by canceling their Disney+ subscriptions and their theme park vacations.
Prominent Democrats hit out at Disney, too: “I always believed that if push came to shove, those titans of industry would be guardrails for our democracy,” Kamala Harris told Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. (Harris implicitly criticized Nexstar and Sinclair as well.) Of note: Harris and Walden are longtime friends.
What will the Trump administration do? At an event on Monday, Carr sought to minimize his role in Kimmel’s suspension, arguing that Disney had made a “business decision” and that the show’s ratings played a factor. (The Times reports, citing unnamed sources, that ratings were not involved in the decision making.)
Remember that what Carr had threatened last week was to consider scrutinizing broadcasters’ licenses if they were seen as airing objectionable content. Trump praised that tough talk, and suggested that NBC should also take Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers off the air.
But some Republicans have said that Carr has gone too far. “I like Brendan Carr, but we should not be in this business,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on his podcast last week.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Supreme Court lets President Trump fire an F.T.C. commissioner. The justices allowed, for now, the president to fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner. (Trump first ordered that Slaughter and another Democratic member, Alvaro Bedoya, be fired in March.) The court is also set to decide on whether to revisit a previous court decision that established limits on executive branch authority over independent agencies.
Tylenol’s maker braces for a legal barrage. Shares in Kenvue fell sharply on Monday after the Trump administration linked acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, to autism. Several medical experts disagreed with the move as the connection remains unproven, and the company has tried to reassure customers and administration officials that Tylenol is safe. Still, Kenvue is preparing for a potential wave of lawsuits, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Argentina’s president is set to meet on Tuesday with Trump. The Argentine leader, Javier Milei, is expected to pitch greater U.S. investment in his country, leaning on his close ties to Trump. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that “all options” — including bolstering the flailing peso and buying some of its debt — were being considered, suggesting that Argentina could get preferential treatment in time for the country’s midterm elections next month.
The economics of a blockbuster A.I. deal
Nvidia has been on an astounding spending spree to try to solidify its dominance in artificial intelligence chips. Its latest commitment, to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, has thrilled investors.
The numbers announced so far are staggering, but there are plenty of questions, too.
Consider:
Nvidia not only locks in a key customer in OpenAI, whose ChatGPT has more than 700 million active weekly users, but it also gets a stake in a roughly $500 billion start-up.
The deal involves some astonishing amounts of energy demands: “at least 10 gigawatts” for data centers. That amounts to about four million to five million Nvidia G.P.U.s, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s C.E.O., told CNBC; 10 gigawatts could also power at least seven million to eight million homes.
“This is the biggest A.I. infrastructure project in history,” Huang added.
Investments by A.I. suppliers are becoming common. OpenAI has already raised billions from Nvidia and Microsoft. The chipmaker in particular has been opening its wallet for select customers, including CoreWeave and Lambda.
Such vendor investments have worked out well so far for the tech giants: Their shareholders have applauded landing fast-growing customers to cement their dominant positions in the A.I. boom. (Shares in Nvidia jumped nearly 4 percent on the news.)
Worth asking: Will antitrust enforcers — at least in the future, given Huang’s close relationship with the Trump administration — want to scrutinize these arrangements?
What about the A.I. industry’s economics? Bain & Company estimates in a new research note that the sector must spend $500 billion per year on data centers to fully meet their A.I. systems’ computational needs.
But to recoup that investment, companies would need to achieve $2 trillion in A.I. sales. That means that the industry is facing a roughly $800 billion revenue.
More fallout for H-1B visas
Corporate America is still grappling with President Trump’s big changes to the H-1B visa program, including steep new fees for applications.
But the upheaval could change how U.S. companies meet their labor needs — and perhaps not in ways the Trump administration and its allies want.
H-1B visas face more than just a higher application fee. The Labor Department said it would investigate “abuse” of the program. As part of what it calls Project Firewall, the agency is looking to ensure that pay and working conditions for skilled foreign workers meet the law. Penalties for companies could include back wages and civil fines, The Washington Post adds.
Some experts told The Post that big outsourcing companies, including Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, that make heavy use of H-1Bs could face scrutiny. (That said, some Indian companies have already been reducing their reliance on H-1Bs, The Times reports.)
A split is emerging between corporate giants and start-ups. Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder, applauded Trump’s move, calling it a “great solution.” But start-ups that are hard-pressed to afford the $100,000 fee are far more concerned: Selin Kocalar, the C.O.O. of an artificial intelligence start-up, told The Times that her company probably would make it difficult to hire more H-1Bs if the fee sticks.
“This will be a disproportionate hit on smaller companies because we cannot compete with OpenAI and Meta,” Aizada Marat, the C.E.O. of Alma, an immigration legal services start-up, told The Times.
Some alternatives to H-1Bs are emerging. One route that companies are exploring is the extraordinary talent visa program, known as O-1, which doesn’t have a cap on how many can be issued. But unlike H-1Bs, O-1s don’t allow visa holders’ spouses to work.
There’s another possibility, Bilal Zuberi of the venture capital firm Red Glass Ventures, told The Times: start-ups setting up offices in other countries to hire remote employees. “I don’t think the answer for these companies is going to be ‘Oh, why don’t we just hire Americans?” he said.
Trivia: Guess which major U.S. corporate leaders were themselves H-1B recipients earlier in their careers.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
The real estate brokerage Compass agreed to buy Anywhere Real Estate, a rival, for about $1.6 billion, potentially creating a home sales giant in the U.S. (NYT)
Botswana is in talks with a sovereign wealth fund in Oman and others to help fund a bid for a majority stake in De Beers, the diamond miner in which it holds a minority holding. (Bloomberg)
Politics, policy and regulation
“Trump’s Tax Cut Is Underwater. Can a ‘Refund Boom’ Save It?” (NYT)
The O.E.C.D. has raised its global growth forecast for this year. But it sees President Trump’s trade war most likely hitting economies harder next year. (Bloomberg)
Best of the rest
“Sorority Girls Are Cashing In Big for Their Viral Rush Videos” (WSJ)
The billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has made one of her biggest donations: $70 million to U.N.C.F., a major provider of scholarships to minority students. (AP)
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