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- 🟠 Trump: without CEOs to China
🟠 Trump: without CEOs to China
Trump in Beijing: the CEO dinner that isn't happening
On May 14, Donald Trump lands in Beijing. It's the first visit by a sitting US president to China since the end of 2017.
Two and a half years ago, Xi Jinping traveled in the other direction. At the APEC summit in San Francisco, November 2023, the most important appointment was a dinner with US business leaders, organized by the U.S.-China Business Council and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
$2,000 per plate, $40,000 for the seat next to the president. Tim Cook took one. Elon Musk too. Marc Benioff too. Apple, Tesla, Salesforce, Blackstone, and dozens more sent their CEOs.
The dinner that isn't happening
This time, Beijing had prepared the same stage. A series of industry meetings between Xi and US CEOs was to accompany the visit. Washington declined.
The explanation to CNBC: American managers shouldn't appear "too close to Beijing."
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also announced that the Iran war will be the central topic at the summit. Economic issues thus slip to the second row.
Confirmed so far are Boeing's Kelly Ortberg and Citigroup's Jane Fraser. On the invitation list but without confirmation yet: Tim Cook (Apple), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone), and about a dozen others.
Half as many as 2017
Trump in Riyadh, May 2025: over 30 US managers.
Trump in Beijing, 2017: around 30 CEOs, 37 deals, $250 billion.
Trump in Beijing, May 2026: around 12 expected.
On Trump's wish list this time: mainly a major Boeing order and soybean purchases.
Engineers and lawyers
Dan Wang puts it in one sentence in his book Breakneck:
"America is governed by lawyers, China by engineers."
The lawyer asks what could go wrong. The engineer asks how it's built.
The summit shows exactly that.
Beijing's engineers want a room full of decision-makers who can place major orders: Boeing planes, soybeans, semiconductors, rare earths. Washington's lawyers see the same room and worry about optics, sanctions risks, Congress photos.
China's Foreign Ministry to CNBC: "China welcomes an expansion of US business operations."
Behind the diplomatic wording lies the older Beijing position: when business is going well, politics can wait.
Xi has already received twelve heads of state in 2026, Trump is number thirteen. Washington has set Iran as the main topic.
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"Move fast and break robots"
Nils's vision: a map that lets robots, drones, and AR glasses know where they are and who's nearby. Without this layer, every device wakes up at coordinate point 0,0,0 and is blind to the real world.
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CHART OF THE WEEK
5 STORIES YOU MISSED LAST WEEK
🇰🇷 Samsung Back Above $1 Trillion: Samsung Electronics jumped more than 15% on May 6 and pushed its market cap back above the $1 trillion mark (first crossed on February 26). In the same move, the Kospi broke above 7,000 points for the first time in history. Samsung's Q1 operating profit hit 57.2 trillion won, more than the company's entire 2025 result. The trigger was a Bloomberg report that Apple is in talks with Samsung and Intel to make iPhone chips in the US, breaking TSMC's long-running exclusivity. Asia now has two tech companies in the trillion-dollar club, both riding the AI memory boom.
🇨🇳 DeepSeek Takes Outside Money for the First Time: China's hottest AI lab is closing in on its first ever external funding round at a valuation of around $50 billion, five times the $10 billion figure floated a month ago. Until now the company has been funded entirely in-house by Liang Wenfeng's quant hedge fund High-Flyer, i.e. straight off the parent's balance sheet. The round is led by state-linked investors, with Tencent also joining in. DeepSeek is deliberately picking strategic investors that can bring AI infrastructure and is turning down pure financial capital. That puts DeepSeek in the same valuation bracket as Anthropic 18 months ago.
🇨🇳 Baidu Spins Out Its AI Chip Arm for a Dual IPO: Baidu's in-house AI chip business Kunlunxin is heading for a dual listing on Hong Kong and Shanghai's STAR Board, with a target valuation of at least 100 billion yuan ($14.7 billion) for the Hong Kong leg alone. That is roughly five times the $3 billion Bloomberg cited in December. Baidu owns 58% and is working with CICC on the Shanghai tutoring process. It is the highest-profile spinout yet in Beijing's drive for AI chip self-reliance, after Biren, Metax, and Moore Threads in 2025. Alibaba is reportedly preparing a similar carve-out of its own chip arm.
🤖 Linkerbot Doubles Its Valuation Within a Month: The Beijing unicorn Linkerbot, the world's biggest maker of dexterous robotic hands, is targeting a $6 billion valuation, double the $3 billion of its just-closed Series B+. Backers include Alibaba's Ant Group, HongShan, and the state-run Zhongguancun fund. Linkerbot says it holds 80% global share in high-degree-of-freedom robotic hands and is scaling production to 10,000 hands per month, up from 5,000. Many customers don't buy a full humanoid; they bolt Linkerbot hands onto their existing robot arms. The robotic hand is the bottleneck where China's humanoid race is being decided.
🇹🇭 Nvidia Chips Routed Through Thailand to Alibaba: US prosecutors suspect Bangkok-based OBON Corp of helping ship at least $2.5 billion of Super Micro servers loaded with restricted Nvidia AI chips into China, with Alibaba named as one of the end buyers. OBON Thailand is a subsidiary of a BVI-registered holding and closely tied to Siam.AI, Thailand's national AI initiative and Nvidia's first official Cloud Partner in the country. Siam.AI's CEO Ratanaphon Wongnapachant is a nephew of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra and hosted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at a Bangkok gala event in December 2024. It is the largest chip smuggling case since US export controls were introduced in 2022.
ALSO LAST WEEK
Sony and TSMC are setting up a new image-sensor joint venture in Japan's Kumamoto region, with Sony holding the majority stake. A non-binding MOU was signed on May 8, Japanese government support already factored in. Sony's first AI-native sensor alliance with TSMC, pulling foundry capacity directly onto its roadmap.
BYD signs a 100,000-vehicle order with China's biggest car rental player Car Inc, including on-site flash chargers across rental stores. The new Blade Battery delivers a 1,500 kW peak charge, 10% to 97% in nine minutes. BYD's "Flash Charging China" plan: 20,000 stations by year-end.
South Korea and the US signed the Korea-US Shipbuilding Partnership Initiative (KUSPI). Scope: workforce training, shipyard productivity, FDI, and joint research. HD Hyundai, Samsung Heavy, and Hanwha Ocean are being invited to help rebuild the US commercial shipyard base, a sector China currently dominates.
Japan's PM Takaichi and Australia's PM Albanese sign agreements on energy, food, and critical minerals. Australia commits up to A$1.3 billion ($830 million) for critical mineral projects with Japanese involvement.
Deep Robotics completed IPO tutoring for a Shanghai Star Market listing and is set to file its prospectus next. The Hangzhou-based maker of quadruped and humanoid robots joins Unitree and Manycore Tech among Hangzhou's "six little dragons" heading public.
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