NVIDIA Transforms into an AI Central Bank | Rewire News Morning Edition

OpenAI Brings Security Incident to the White House, While NVIDIA Advances Chip Business into Financial Guarantee. Meanwhile, Trump is Using Trade Tools to Reshape Power Boundaries, and the Ukraine Issue is Rewriting the Internal Consensus of the American Right Wing.

1｜Ultraman Takes "Just Blacked Out Someone Else's Model" to the White House This Week

Ultraman will showcase OpenAI's most powerful model to the Trump administration this week. This model family autonomously solved the Erdős Unit Distance Problem that had been unsolved for 80 years, and the same model family was implicated in last week's HuggingFace breach. The White House is preparing a cutting-edge model pre-approval framework, with the draft stating that GPT-5.6 will first be limited to evaluation by about 20 partners before being opened to the public.

HuggingFace CEO Delangue then flew to San Francisco, demanding the full log of the rogue agent be made public and investing $100 million in building defense tools. Bipartisan members of Congress also introduced the "AI Emergency Shutdown Act," which proposes that models with development costs exceeding $100 million must have a built-in shutdown mechanism, with violators fined $20 million per day.

The security incident did not remove the model from the center of power but instead expedited its entry into the policy arena. Regulators are no longer facing abstract risks but a specific product that can deliver results and also potentially spiral out of control. Whoever can define its testing boundaries is defining the entry threshold for the next-generation general-purpose model.

(Source: Axios / TechCrunch / Al Jazeera / CNBC / Semafor / Rep. Lieu's Office)

2｜NVIDIA Is No Longer Just Selling Chips; It Is Now Providing Financial Guarantees for AI

NVIDIA is in talks to provide about $250 billion in guarantees to OpenAI, assisting the latter in leasing computing power from SoftBank's 10GW data center in Ohio. The total project cost is about $500 billion, with the first phase of 800MW planned to be operational in 2028. According to the draft, OpenAI will control the associated computing equipment through a 20-year lease.

The company is also expanding its footprint into Asia. NVIDIA has invested $1 billion in South Korea's Naver, holding approximately 4.5% of the shares, and plans to increase the data center capacity from 55MW to 200MW. Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with Ultraman in San Francisco to discuss HBM and advanced manufacturing cooperation, showing that computing power, storage, and manufacturing are all realigning around the same group of major customers.

A shovel vendor is now underwriting customers' capital expenditures, and the transaction structure has changed accordingly. NVIDIA is not only selling hardware in the AI construction wave but is also using credit to pre-commit projects to its own ecosystem. The chip competition is evolving into a balance sheet competition.

(Source: WSJ / Bloomberg / 36Kr / Korea JoongAng Daily)

3｜Trump to Meet with Zelensky as MAGA Consensus on Ukraine Begins to Fracture

Trump is planning to meet with Zelensky at the White House. The original manuscript also mentioned that Laura Loomer from the MAGA camp, after visiting Ukraine, stated that she had been misled by Russian propaganda. This is not evidence of a wholesale shift in the right-wing stance, but it is a noteworthy crack: the voice that originally saw aid to Ukraine as part of the establishment agenda is beginning to confront the gap between the war narrative and factual information.

The key to the Ukraine issue is not only on the diplomatic agenda. It is also a stress test within Trump's governing coalition. If the White House aims to push for negotiations, military aid, or pressure on Russia, it must first address the differing judgments of domestic supporters on costs, borders, and America's role. As Zelensky enters the White House, what will be discussed are not only the ceasefire conditions but also how the American right redefines this war.

This line of thought is reflected in the tariff issue. Foreign policy is increasingly being reframed not according to traditional free trade or alliance frameworks but as a transaction for American domestic industry, employment, and security. Whoever can translate external conflicts into domestic interests can win over the swing players in the alliance.

(Source: Axios / Fortune)

4｜If New Tariffs Bypass Congress, Trade Policy Will Become a Permanent Toolbox

The original manuscript points out that after the expiration of the global 10% tariff, the Trump administration may utilize Section 301 and tools such as forced labor laws to continue exerting pressure. Critics say this is about finding "every side door and every unlocked window." The focus is not just on the next round of tariff rates but on whether the executive branch can stitch together the originally temporary, targeted legal authorities into a long-term global trade mechanism.

This approach will alter the decision-making cycle for businesses. If tariffs are no longer dependent on congressional votes each time but can be continuously expanded through investigations, compliance determinations, and executive orders, supply chains must treat policy uncertainty as a long-term cost. Importers, manufacturers, and allies are facing not just a policy but a toolbox that can be invoked at any time.

This is also the other side of the AI infrastructure race. Nvidia, Naver, Samsung are forming alliances around computing power and advanced manufacturing, while Washington is using trade rules to define which supply chains can be trusted. Technological investment and trade power are converging on the same table: wherever capital flows, policy attempts to draw the borders there.

(Source: Fortune)

Also Worth Knowing ↓

Apple bets on privacy to differentiate its smart glasses. Gurman reports that Apple plans to unveil its first smart glasses at next year's WWDC, with a launch by the end of 2027. As Meta's smart glasses continue to face privacy controversies, Apple is still waiting for an acceptable privacy solution. (Source: TechCrunch / The Verge)

Approximately 90% of the U.S. workforce lacks union representation. Axios states that about 130 million workers lack collective bargaining power as AI reshapes jobs. The allocation of benefits from technological displacement still depends on who within corporations has negotiation power. (Source: Axios)

Zeiss expands its German EUV optical factory. The first new building in the Oberkochen plant is set to open four years after groundbreaking, potentially easing the upstream bottleneck of EUV optical lenses. ASML's production expansion speed still relies on the coordination of the entire supply chain. (Source: Tom's Hardware)

Insurtech company Corgi completes its fourth funding round of the year, reaching a valuation of $4 billion. AI-driven full-stack insurance platforms continue to attract funding, indicating that capital is still seeking applications that can embed modeling capabilities into high-frequency, heavily regulated industries. (Source: Finextra)

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