Fortune Editors Shockwaves

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (with gray tie) poses for a photo with business leaders during a Saudi-U.S. business investment forum on May 13, 2025, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The U.S. chip deal with Saudi Arabia gives the Middle East region a massive advantage over China in the AI race, according to a prominent tech analyst.

This week Humain, an AI startup backed by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, announced that it would receive 18,000 cutting-edge Nvidia Blackwell chips—the U.S. chipmaker’s newest and most powerful, introduced only in March.

Meanwhile China has had to settle for Nvidia’s H20 chips, which lack the firepower of their Blackwell counterparts.

Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, says new Mideast customers will get preferential treatment over those in other countries outside the U.S. when it comes to chip deals.

“This puts them to the front of the line,” he tells Fortune, adding that the region could add “a trillion dollars to the market opportunity for AI over the next decade.”

And China? “The big loser,” Ives says.

It’s worth noting that Huawei, Nvidia’s closest semiconductor chip rival in China, has thrived despite U.S. sanctions. The company reported a 22% increase in annual revenue for the previous year. 

But Ives isn’t convinced it will be able to go toe-to-toe with its American competition. “Nvidia owns the AI revolution,” Ives said, “and everyone knows that.” —Sasha Rogelberg

Paging tech founders: Two years after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic, banks are still taking big losses thanks to high interest rates. 

That’s cause for major concern, especially if President Donald Trump’s tariffs lead to the dreaded combination of “stagflation,” or rising inflation coupled with slowing growth.

U.S. banks held $482.4 billion in total unrealized losses on securities investments at the end of 2024, according to FDIC data, an increase of $118 billion, or 32.5%, from the previous quarter. 

That number had risen to $515 billion when SVB fell victim to a bank run in March 2023.

The failure of the tech industry’s preeminent lender—SVB remains one of the largest banks to fail in U.S. history—sent shockwaves through the financial system.

Since then, regulators have become much more attuned to problems related to interest-rate risk and depositor flight, says Amit Seru, a Stanford finance professor.

But many of the core issues persist.

“In a stagflation scenario, the risk is that rates will be higher for longer and credit losses will begin to accumulate,” wrote Torsten Sløk, chief economist at private equity giant Apollo Global Management, in a Monday note, “in particular for lenders to tech, growth, and [venture capital], where borrowers are characterized by having no earnings and low coverage ratios.” —Greg McKenna

For generations, it was just “HBO.”

Then it was “HBO Go” and “HBO Now,” then “HBO Max,” then just “Max.” 

Two years later, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery is pivoting back to the home box office—”HBO Max,” to be specific.

The change isn’t just notable for the flip-flopping. (Though the service itself is in on the joke; the bio for one of its “Max” social media accounts reads, “These rebrands are trying to murder me.”) 

It’s also a sign that the strategy to replace the HBO brand—spendy, edgy, acclaimed—with something more broadly appealing didn’t work.

In the two years since the company combined the original HBO Max and Discovery+, WBD improved the profitability of its streaming division by almost $3 billion, adding tens of millions of subscribers along the way. 

But the company has bigger fish to fry. Like so many of its media peers, WBD’s streaming service trails a lead pack consisting of Netflix, YouTube, Disney, and Amazon. Meanwhile the company carries $38 billion in gross debt. Its stock, at under $10, is trading at a third of what it was only three years ago.

Reuters reported last week that Warner Bros. Discovery was on the road to a breakup that would split its cable television assets (e.g. TNT and TBS) from its streaming business à la Comcast and Versant; if CEO David Zaslav succeeds in doing so, the big question will be what happens next.

Just not, you know, “HBO Next.” That would be terrible. —AN