Seeking Alpha’s roundup of statements, announcements, and remarks that could impact the technology sector.
- Meta (META) could slash funding for its metaverse division by as much as 30% for the coming year.
The cuts would likely result in layoffs, which could occur as early as January. The division includes the company’s Meta Horizon Worlds and Quest VR units, according to Bloomberg, which cited people close to the matter.
Bloomberg’s sources said savings from the cuts are expected to be diverted to Meta’s Reality Labs division, which includes AI wearables.
- A bipartisan group of senators has filed a bill that would prevent the Trump administration from easing restrictions on the sale of AI chips to China in the near term.
The SAFE Chips Act, which was filed by Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts and Democrat Sen. Chris Coons, would direct the Commerce Department to deny export license applications for advanced U.S. AI chips to China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea for at least 30 months.
“Denying Beijing access to these AI chips is essential to our national security. Codifying President Trump’s current AI chip limitations on Communist China secures this goal. It will allow U.S. chip companies to continue to rapidly innovate and widen our compute lead exponentially,” Ricketts said in a statement released Thursday.
“As China races to close our lead in AI, we cannot give them the technological keys to our future through advanced semiconductor chips. This bipartisan bill will protect America’s advantage in computing power so that the world’s most next-generation AI models are built at home by American companies, and the world’s infrastructure is built on the American tech stack,” Coons said in the same statement.
The filing of the bill comes as the Trump administration considers allowing the sale of Nvidia’s (NVDA) H200 AI chips to China.