Trump Apple Announcement In The Oval Office with Tim Cook

President Donald Trump speaks behind an engraved glass disc presented to him by Apple CEO Tim Cook during an investment announcement at the White House (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Apple jumps after Trump says Apple and other firms that build in the US will avoid 100% chip tariff

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced an additional $100 billion investment in US manufacturing at the White House.

Rani Molla

8/7/25 9:14AM

It looks like Apple CEO Tim Cook’s latest $100 billion US manufacturing investment was enough to get the president off his back.

“We’re going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors,” President Trump said during the announcement at the White House yesterday. “But the good news for companies like Apple is if you’re building in the United States or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge.”

The stock was up 3% premarket.

Cook unveiled Apple’s American manufacturing program to encourage production of more iPhone parts in the US, as well as agreements with a number of American companies, including Texas Instruments, Applied Materials, and Corning.

“For the first time ever, every single new iPhone and every single new Apple Watch sold anywhere in the world will contain cover glass made in Kentucky,” Cook said, after presenting the president with a 24-karat gold and glass statue with an Apple logo that he said was made in the US.

When asked about making the whole iPhone in the US — something analysts have said is impossible without raising the price substantially — Cook punted.

“Well, if you look at the bulk of it, we’re doing a lot of the semiconductors here. We’re doing the glass here; we’re doing the face ID module here. And so there’s a ton of it, and we’re doing these for products sold elsewhere in the world. And so there’s a lot of content in there from the United States,” Cook said. “The whole thing is just the final assembly.”

Apple said on its latest earnings call that it expects a $1.1 billion hit from tariffs this quarter, after spending $800 million in its June quarter.

While Apple will still likely have to pay other tariffs, including those for shipping finished iPhones from India, and anything related to the ongoing Section 232 investigation, the chip exemption was welcome news for Apple investors.

TSMC, Nvidia, Micron, and other companies that have made similar pledges to invest in US manufacturing during Trump’s term are also up this morning.

Jon Keegan59m

Anthropic’s Claude can now control your computer through prompts from your phone

Anthropic has added a new feature to let Claude control your computer and accept prompts from your phone — and investors think this is extremely bad news for traditional software companies.

The ability to remotely control your AI agent (which has full access to your computer) is one of the key features of OpenClaw (aka MoltBot) that AI enthusiasts are currently obsessing over.

Anthropic’s Claude Code is already a huge hit with enterprise customers and software developers, and adding these remote agent features will be pretty significant.

Software stocks are tanking on the news, as the prospect of millions of people employing powerful agents to run 24/7 on their computers from their phones may very well mean fewer humans will pay to use those software products. Mainstays like Adobe, Atlassian, Hubspot, Figma, and Microsoft were all down significantly in early trading, with the iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF currently down nearly 4%, significantly worse than the wider market, and the S&P 500 Index off only 0.4%.

That puts IGV’s return relative to the S&P 500 over the last week back into negative territory — a reversal from earlier in March, when software had actually proved to be something of a safe haven during the volatility of the US-Iran war. This morning, at least, it seems to be back to being a punching bag.

Anthropic says Claude can now use your computer to finish tasks for you in AI agent push

Anthropic’s Claude Code is already a huge hit with enterprise customers and software developers, and adding these remote agent features will be pretty significant.

Rani Molla2h

Amazon’s Zoox to increase San Francisco and Las Vegas footprint and expand service to Austin and Miami this year

Amazon’s self-driving unit, Zoox, has plans to debut its robotaxi service in Austin and Miami this year, where it’s currently testing, the company announced today. It also said it would be expanding its footprint in existing service areas in San Francisco (where there is limited public use) and adding more stops along the strip in Las Vegas, where it’s currently open to the public. In San Francisco, that means quadrupling coverage to include the Marina, North Beach, Chinatown, and Pacific Heights in addition to the SoMa and Mission districts where it is currently operating.

The news follows a spate of other announcements from the purpose-built, steering-wheel-less robotaxi company, including expansions into a total of 10 markets for testing and a partnership with Uber, in addition to its longtime tech relationship with Nvidia. Like many robotaxi companies, Zoox is teaming up with other self-driving tech companies and platforms in order to grow.

Rani Molla3h

Tesla’s European sales rise for the first time in more than a year but still lag BYD

New Tesla registrations jumped 12% in February from a year earlier to 17,664 units across the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the European Free Trade Association, according to new data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. China’s BYD once again beat out the American EV maker, posting 17,954 registrations in February, up 162% from a year earlier. BYD and Tesla each represented 1.8% of the European new car market last month.

The February data is a notable shift for Tesla, which saw its first monthly jump in the region since December 2024. Tesla has struggled in Europe since CEO Elon Musk’s ascension to the Trump administration and his forays into European politics in support of far-right parties. Tesla also posted gains in China in February, which is a much larger market for the carmaker.

Jon Keegan19h

Jensen Huang: We have achieved AGI now... sort of

Lots of AI leaders are thinking about a big moment looming over the current AI boom: when will we have achieved artificial general intelligence?

There’s no shortage of predictions, but we haven’t yet seen a full-throated declaration that this slippery milestone has been achieved.

Until now. On Lex Fridman’s podcast Monday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was asked what he thought the timeline looked like for “an AI system that’s able to essentially do your job. So, run — no, start, grow, and run a successful technology company.”

Huang confidently answered: “I think it’s now. I think we’ve achieved AGI.”

Huang then hedged, noting that Fridman was talking about running a $1 billion dollar company, but he didn’t specify for how long. Huang elaborated, “It is not out of the question that a Claude was able to create a web service, some interesting little app that all of a sudden, you know, a few billion people used for $0.50, and then it went out of business again shortly after.”

So maybe it will be a while before Jensen Huang can get help running Nvidia by eating his own dog food.

Updated to correct the spelling of Lex Fridman’s last name.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says ‘I think we’ve achieved AGI’

Huang confidently answered: “I think it’s now. I think we’ve achieved AGI.”

So maybe it will be a while before Jensen Huang can get help running Nvidia by eating his own dog food.

Updated to correct the spelling of Lex Fridman’s last name.

17.5%

Jon Keegan20h

OpenAI is trying to woo private equity investors with a sweet offer: a guaranteed minimum return of 17.5% on their investments, which is “significantly higher than typical preferred instruments,” as well as early access to new models, according to a report from Reuters.

The deal aims to build joint ventures to raise capital amid OpenAI’s intense competition for a bigger slice of the enterprise AI market. The minimum return offer is something that its competitor Anthropic is not currently offering, per Reuters.