AI, Chips, and Policy: Nvidia’s Forecast, LeCun’s Exit, Fed Tensions, and Nexperia Update

20th November 2025

Nvidia eased AI bubble fears with strong earnings and $500B in chip bookings, though analysts warn of concentration risks. AI pioneer Yann LeCun will leave Meta to launch a new Advanced Machine Intelligence venture, with Meta as a partner. President Trump criticized Fed Chair Powell, urging a faster search for a successor amid a divided Fed and incomplete labor data. The Dutch government paused intervention at Chinese-owned Nexperia after talks with Beijing, aiming to protect European chip supplies. All this and more in today’s Read It and Eat! 

Major News 

• Nvidia’s Strong Forecast Eases AI Bubble Jitters, For Now

Nvidia’s latest earnings report helped quiet some of the growing anxiety around a potential AI bubble. CEO Jensen Huang pushed back on fears Wednesday, pointing to massive and sustained demand for Nvidia chips as the company delivered stronger-than-expected third-quarter results and an upbeat fourth-quarter outlook. After several quarters of slowing sales, Nvidia surprised investors with renewed momentum, calming markets that had been questioning whether the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure had gotten ahead of reality.

Huang emphasized that Nvidia’s technology is deeply embedded across the industry, highlighting how widely its chips are used from cloud platforms to robotics, edge devices, and PCs. He reiterated that Nvidia has roughly $500 billion in chip bookings through 2026, underscoring long-term demand. The strong results sent Nvidia shares up 5% in after-hours trading, potentially adding $220 billion in value, and boosted tech peers like AMD, Alphabet, and Microsoft. For the upcoming quarter, Nvidia expects about $65 billion in revenue, far above Wall Street’s estimates, and plans to keep gross margins in the mid-70% range through fiscal 2027.

Still, even with the upbeat numbers, analysts warn that concerns about the sustainability of AI spending aren’t going away. Nvidia’s business is increasingly concentrated among just a few large customers, and the company has been investing heavily in AI startups that also buy its chips sparking questions about a circular AI economy. In the third quarter, Nvidia also ramped up how much it spent renting back its own chips from cloud partners. Some critics argue this dynamic could artificially prop up short-term results, especially as cloud giants like Microsoft and Amazon extend the useful life of AI hardware to boost earnings.

Nvidia’s growth path also faces challenges outside its control. With U.S. export restrictions limiting sales to China, the company is turning to the Middle East, where U.S. officials recently approved shipments of up to 35,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But analysts say physical constraints like power availability, land, and grid capacity could slow down how quickly AI data centers can expand. When asked about the biggest barrier to growth, Huang didn’t name one specific factor but stressed that the scale and complexity of the AI industry require careful coordination across supply chains, infrastructure, and financing. Reuters 

• Yann LeCun Leaves Meta to Launch New AI Venture Focused on “Advanced Machine Intelligence”

Yann LeCun, a pioneer of modern AI and one of Meta’s most influential researchers announced on Wednesday that he will leave the company at the end of the year to start a new artificial intelligence venture. LeCun, who joined Meta (then Facebook) in 2013, has spent the past decade shaping the company’s most important AI breakthroughs and building the foundation of its research culture.

LeCun created Facebook AI Research (FAIR), Meta’s flagship AI lab, and led it for five years before becoming the company’s chief AI scientist. Over his 12-year tenure, he helped drive major advances in deep learning, computer vision, and large-scale language models the technologies behind everything from Instagram’s recommendation algorithms to Meta’s suite of generative AI products. Long before AI went mainstream, LeCun helped invent early neural network architectures inspired by how the human visual system works, laying the groundwork for modern image recognition and, eventually, today’s GenAI models.

Now 65, LeCun says his next chapter will focus on what he calls Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) , a long-term research direction he has been developing with collaborators at FAIR and New York University, where he also teaches. While he isn’t sharing many specifics yet, he confirmed that Meta will be a partner in the new venture, underscoring what he described as the company’s ongoing interest in the ambitious goals of AMI research.

In announcing his departure, LeCun said that building FAIR remains his “proudest non-technical accomplishment,” noting the lab’s outsized impact on Meta, the broader AI field, and the global research community. Meta leaders, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CTO Andrew Bosworth, echoed that sentiment, crediting LeCun with shaping the company’s AI strategy and helping lay the foundation for its open-source Llama models. Widely known as one of the three “godfathers” of deep learning alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio LeCun leaves Meta as one of the most influential figures in AI, with his next chapter poised to attract major attention across the industry. Finance.Yahoo

• White House Tensions Rise as Trump Targets Powell and Pushes for New Fed Chair

President Donald Trump has once again taken aim at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, criticizing him for not cutting interest rates quickly enough and doing so in trademark blunt fashion. Speaking at a Saudi Arabia backed investment forum in Washington, Trump remarked, “I’d love to fire his ass,” while urging Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to speed up the search for Powell’s replacement. Powell’s term as chair ends in May, though he remains a Fed governor until 2028.

During the event, Trump kept up the pressure and even joked that Bessent himself could be fired if rates weren’t lowered soon. Behind the humor, though, the message was clear: the administration wants new leadership at the Fed. The next 14-year governor term begins February 1, currently held by Stephen Miran, who is on unpaid leave from the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Bessent confirmed that the search is moving quickly. He told Fox News that Trump plans to meet with the three finalists for the Fed chair role shortly after Thanksgiving, with an announcement likely before Christmas. Although Trump has publicly praised Bessent and floated him as an ideal candidate, Bessent has made it clear he intends to stay at the Treasury and the IRS. Still, Trump said his administration has “great names” ready for consideration.

Trump’s frustration with Powell stretches back years. He has repeatedly criticized the Fed chair’s leadership, even labeling him incompetent and questioning his oversight of a renovation project at the central bank. Powell has rejected those claims, arguing that Trump is lumping in costs from a separate project completed five years earlier. The renewed tension highlights the ongoing divide between the White House and the Fed as interest-rate decisions remain front and center heading into 2026.

The Federal Reserve remains deeply divided on its next steps, with minutes from its last meeting revealing splits over whether to prioritize a weak labor market or inflation, and uncertainty about the need for further rate cuts. This division clouds expectations for a potential December cut. Complicating matters, Fed officials won’t have complete October data to guide their decision: the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced it will not release a full jobs report for October due to the government shutdown, providing only partial labor market information with the November report and no unemployment figures, while the full November data will be delayed until six days after the Fed’s December meeting. Reuters 

• Dutch Government Pauses Intervention in Nexperia After Talks With China

The Dutch government has announced it will suspend its planned intervention at Nexperia, a Chinese-owned semiconductor maker based in the Netherlands, following what it described as “constructive talks” with Beijing. The intervention had been initiated in September over concerns about governance failures and the European supply of critical chips used in cars and other electronic goods. China welcomed the Dutch decision, calling it “a first step in the right direction towards a proper resolution.”

Nexperia plays a crucial role in supplying basic chips to the automotive industry, and shortages have posed risks to global supply chains. Vincent Karremans, Dutch Minister for Economic Affairs, said it was prudent to pause action under the Goods Availability Act while further discussions continue with the Chinese government. He added that China had already taken measures to ensure chip supplies to Europe and beyond, which influenced the decision.

The Dutch government initially invoked the Act over alleged actions by Nexperia’s former CEO, Zhang Xuezheng, which were said to involve improper transfers of assets, technology, and funds to foreign entities steps deemed contrary to the interests of shareholders and Europe’s strategic autonomy. In October, a Dutch court ordered Zhang’s removal, citing mismanagement. These moves were part of broader tensions around Nexperia, including U.S. national security sanctions on parent company Wingtech and the forced sale of its UK chip plant in Newport.

Following the Dutch announcement, Wingtech and Beijing expressed caution. Wingtech rejected allegations against its CEO, calling for formal withdrawal of Dutch government support for the court proceedings, while Beijing stressed that underlying issues affecting global semiconductor supply chains remain unresolved. Both parties underscored the need for a stable resolution to prevent further disruptions in chip availability. BBC 

Minor News 

• Major music labels ink licensing agreements with AI-driven streaming startup Klay. Reuters 

  
  

• Qualcomm to Launch Engineering Hub in Saudi Arabia, Expanding AI Initiatives. Finance.Yahoo

  
  

• US Trade Deficit Falls 24% Amid Impact of Trump-Era Tariffs.Finance.Yahoo 

  
  

• Trump approves Epstein files legislation after contentious GOP split. Finance.Yahoo

  
  

• Judge dismisses sexual assault lawsuit against Vin Diesel on procedural grounds. Finance.Yahoo

  
  

• Dr. Martens expects pricing and sourcing changes to soften impact of tariffs. Reuters 

  
  

• Larry Summers steps down from roles at Harvard and OpenAI following Epstein email revelations. Reuters

  
  

• Barclays boosts forecast, predicts S&P 500 will rise 11% by end of 2026. Reuters 

  
  

• Adobe to Buy AI Software Firm Semrush for $1.9 Billion to Expand AI Capabilities. CNBC