Speaker 1: AI Daily Briefing. I'm ed sharp, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Deep seek seventy one billion dollars valuation. What it signals
Speaker 1: about China's AI ambitions. Deep Seek is reportedly seeking new
Speaker 1: funding at a valuation of around seventy one billion dollars.
Speaker 1: If that holds, it would place a Chinese AI startup
Speaker 1: inside the same tier as the most valuable private AI
Speaker 1: companies in the world, including some that have had years
Speaker 1: of US capital and talent behind them. That matters because
Speaker 1: Deep Seek built its position under real constraints. US export
Speaker 1: controls have restricted access to the most advanced chips. Despite that,
Speaker 1: the valuation signals that investors, likely domestic, see Deep Seek
Speaker 1: as a genuine long term contender, not just a regional alternative.
Speaker 1: The important distinction here isn't the dollar figure. It's what
Speaker 1: the funding round represents. A Chinese AI ecosystem that's increasingly
Speaker 1: self sufficient and increasingly confident. No official announcement has come
Speaker 1: from Deepsic itself. The arms and investors are unverified, but
Speaker 1: the signal is clear enough. China isn't trying to catch
Speaker 1: up to the USAI stack, it's building around it. That
Speaker 1: theme extends to something else that happened this week. China's
Speaker 1: cyberspace regulator approved Apple Intelligence registration for iPhones, clearing a
Speaker 1: regulatory hurdle that's been stalled for more than two years.
Speaker 1: Apple had to localize the feature using Chinese AI providers,
Speaker 1: including Ali, Barber and Baydeo. That's not a minor footnote.
Speaker 1: It means the AI capabilities available on an iPhone in
Speaker 1: China will be shaped by partners operating under Chinese law,
Speaker 1: with content and data handling terms that haven't been disclosed.
Speaker 1: Apple apparently had the technical capability ready earlier, but the
Speaker 1: regulatory approval came separately. The launch timeline is still unclear,
Speaker 1: and the scope of state level content controls over the
Speaker 1: feature remains an open question. In Europe, a different kind
Speaker 1: of regulatory move just landed. On June ninth, the EU
Speaker 1: invoked interim anti trust measures to force Meta to restore
Speaker 1: Chat GPT and rival AI assistance to WhatsApp. This is
Speaker 1: only the second time the EU has used this enforcement
Speaker 1: tool since two thousand and four. The last comparable order
Speaker 1: was against Broadcom in twenty nineteen. The key implication is
Speaker 1: that the EU is no longer just investigating its issuing
Speaker 1: binding compliance obligations. That's a meaningful escalation. If dominant platforms
Speaker 1: can be forced to restore competitor access in real time
Speaker 1: before a final ruling, the leverage shifts significantly toward regulators.
Speaker 1: There are also early reports of account suspensions following the restoration,
Speaker 1: though the cause isn't confirmed. Whether the integration stabilizes matters
Speaker 1: for how durable this kind of enforcement actually is. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing. On the security side. New research has documented
Speaker 1: something that was previously more theoretical than operational. Researchers tracked
Speaker 1: intrusions over a twelve month period where AI ran exploitation
Speaker 1: workflows or topanamously generating thousands of commands with minimal human direction,
Speaker 1: multi stage breaches, real infrastructure, not proof of concept demonstrations.
Speaker 1: The asymmetry this creates is the part worth watching. Attackers
Speaker 1: can now compress the time between vulnerability disclosure and exploitation
Speaker 1: to hours, defenders are still operating at human speed. Patching
Speaker 1: cycles haven't changed. That gap is the real risk, and
Speaker 1: right now it's growing elsewhere. A Dubai based startup called
Speaker 1: one thousand and one raised thirty million dollars in a
Speaker 1: series A to build sovereign AI infrastructure for golf critical systems.
Speaker 1: Japan's largest enterprises, including SoftBank, Hitachi and NTT Data, are
Speaker 1: deploying Nvidia's Mematron open models to build domain specific AI
Speaker 1: tailored the local workforce and infrastructure needs. The pattern is
Speaker 1: consistent across the Gulf, Japan, and Europe. The move is
Speaker 1: toward regional AI independence rather than reliance on US centric platforms.
Speaker 1: Consider this. Inside the US, the political and social reaction
Speaker 1: to AI is intensifying. One hundred and twenty seven data
Speaker 1: center moratoria have now been documented across forty States. Senator
Speaker 1: Sanders has proposed fifty percent nationalization of the largest AI companies,
Speaker 1: and in April, a molotov cocktail attack targeted open AI's
Speaker 1: offices and the home of its CEO. The industry's response
Speaker 1: to all of this has been largely absent. That's a
Speaker 1: strategic gap that won't stay open for long. The signals
Speaker 1: to track from here are straightforward. Whether Deepseak officially confirms
Speaker 1: its funding round and it what terms, Whether Apple Intelligence
Speaker 1: actually lodges in China and under what content conditions, And
Speaker 1: whether the EU's WhatsApp enforcement holds or runs into technical
Speaker 1: and legal friction that softens its impact The broader story
Speaker 1: is geopolitical fragmentation. AI infrastructure is splitting along regional lines,
Speaker 1: and the decisions being made right now by regulators, by startups,
Speaker 1: by governments will define the competitive map for years. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. This podcast was built using AI technology, a
Speaker 1: yes We production