CBS: U.S. Treasury Secretary and Trump Once Had Heated Debate on Tariff Policy

Beating AI Insight News Brief: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang responded to criticism over the company’s expanded financing support for the AI ecosystem on CNBC’s *Mad Money*, saying critics overlook the AI industry’s unique capital needs. He noted that these are the first startups requiring billions of dollars to launch and tens of billions to turn profitable, with AI development and deployment inherently demanding massive capital. NVIDIA has so far invested in model developers including OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as new cloud service providers that lease NVIDIA’s computing power, and provided financing for data center projects. Among these efforts, the company committed $105 billion to a large Ohio computing campus leased by OpenAI, and is partnering with major Wall Street financial institutions to arrange up to $500 billion in financing for data centers. Some critics argue these arrangements resemble "circular financing," where NVIDIA provides funds to clients that then use a portion of the money to purchase its products, potentially artificially boosting demand and revenue. Huang countered that cutting-edge AI labs represent a "once-in-a-generation" investment opportunity, with NVIDIA aiming to act as their equity investor and partner, supporting these firms to build and expand ecosystems on NVIDIA’s platform. He added that these companies typically lack investment-grade credit and the financial track records needed to access low-cost capital, making NVIDIA’s support necessary. Even if individual supported firms face operational struggles, the underlying computing infrastructure can be transferred to other clients and workloads, keeping NVIDIA’s risks low. He noted that these investments are expected to generate substantial returns.

The Bank of Korea announced a 25 basis point interest rate hike, raising its benchmark rate from 2.75% to 3.0%, marking the second consecutive rate increase at its policy meeting, in line with market expectations.

Beating AI Insight News: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates warned in a recent article that there is currently no global plan to address the "social, political, and economic upheaval" that AI could trigger. He noted that AI could be "the most powerful equalizing tool ever invented by humanity" or "the most severe source of inequality", but leaders, experts, and communities have yet to adequately address these challenges. Gates argued that AI could replace cognitive labor across industries faster than previous technological shifts, leaving unemployed workers insufficient time to transition to newly created roles. White-collar jobs such as sales, customer support, software engineering, and paralegal work are already being impacted, and AI could take on tasks like loan assessment, data analysis, and patient triage in the future. As robotic capabilities improve and costs drop, blue-collar jobs will also face pressure, and young people may enter a labor market with fewer available positions. He warned that after companies use AI and robots to cut costs and prices, competitors will be forced to follow suit, creating a "vicious cycle" of accelerating automation adoption. Policymakers need to rethink employment, education, and social security systems, and establish national-level coordinating bodies to align AI policies across sectors including employment, taxation, energy, elections, public health, financial systems, and national security. Gates also called for the creation of a new international AI governance body to address cross-border risks, with mechanisms modeled on global nuclear weapons inspection regimes, international aviation regulations, and international agreements for protecting the ozone layer. He also noted that AI is expected to accelerate innovation in areas such as clean energy, climate governance, agriculture, and disease prevention and control.

Beating AI Express: According to Business Insider, NVIDIA (NVDA) is in talks to acquire Hugging Face for more than $13 billion.

According to Lookonchain's monitoring, the U.S. government wallet holding seized FTX/Alameda funds transferred 24.41 BTC approximately 5 hours ago, valued at around $1.92 million.

Sui development team Mysten Labs co-founder Kostas Kryptos announced in a post that Havenex is in the final stages of its Series A financing round, having submitted applications for all required licenses plus several additional ones, with the funding nearly fully allocated. Positioned not as another Coinbase, Binance, Bybit, or Kraken, Havenex aims to provide infrastructure for financial institutions, enabling them to offer both digital and traditional financial assets to clients while complying with regulatory, custody, security, and transparency requirements. The project plans to support multi-chain architecture, verifiable custody, continuous proof of solvency, default multi-signature, quantum-resistant keys, hardware two-factor authentication (2FA) wallets, as well as self-custody and key loss protection mechanisms; in jurisdictions where regulation permits, it will also support privacy assets and real-world assets (RWAs). Havenex will leverage Sui technology in appropriate use cases, while integrating assets, bridge protocols, and core components from other blockchain ecosystems. Kryptos, who developed the Havenex concept, is currently participating in an advisory capacity, with Mysten Labs and Sui remaining his primary focus. He noted that the project seeks to establish transparency and security standards distinct from those of FTX and Mt. Gox, and mitigate the risk of critical vulnerabilities stemming from large language model-generated code that has emerged in recent times.