The China-U.S. trade war in the first Donald Trump administration saw Apple CEO Tim Cook go on a charm offensive with the president while maintaining strong relations with Beijing.  

Apple avoided U.S. tariffs and continued to grow in China, while Cook earned the reputation as a skilled policy navigator and prominent American business envoy to Beijing.

But, in Trump 2.0, not only has Apple lost its crown to Nvidia as America’s most valuable company, several tech pundits say the AI darling’s charismatic leader, Jensen Huang, has left Cook far behind in political influence. 

“Huang has become a global figure and taken on a new role politically due to his success in the AI revolution,” said Wedbush’s Dan Ives, adding that the importance of Nvidia’s AI chips has “vaulted him ahead of Cook.”  

“He has found himself in a very strong position to navigate the political landscape … [as] there is only one chip in the world fueling the AI revolution, and that’s Nvidia’s,” Ives said.

The optics of Huang’s political ascendancy have never been stronger, as Nvidia last week announced during its CEO’s latest visit to Beijing that it expected to soon resume sales of its H20 AI chips to China.

The Nvidia CEO has met with Trump many times this year, including joining him on a trip to the Middle East in May, which resulted in a massive AI deal that will see the delivery of hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates. 

The Emirates deal had been seen as a way for America to push its global tech leadership, solidifying its technology stack in a new market over potential rivals like China’s Huawei.

After the trip, Huang increasingly began making a case against U.S. chip restrictions, arguing that they would erode America’s tech leadership to the benefit of domestic Chinese players. 

According to a report from the New York Times, this had also been a narrative Huang had been pushing to Trump and his officials behind the scenes. 

Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China, and technology policy lead at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, told CNBC that Huang’s arguments aligned with the thinking of influential White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, further swaying the administration to lift restrictions on H20 chip exports. 

“Sacks and Huang both argue that limiting exports of U.S. technology such as select and non-cutting-edge GPUs to China risks pushing Chinese companies to use domestic alternatives … At the end of the day, this argument likely carried the day on the H20 issue,” he said. 

It’s unclear when or if Nvidia will restart production lines of the H20, but if Nvidia is simply able to sell existing stocks of H20s, it will still be a “significant revenue boost and beneficial to Nvidia in terms of retaining clients’ goodwill in China,” Triolo added.  Nvidia said it took a $4.5 billion writedown on its unsold H20 inventory in May.

Huang said last week that every civil AI model should run on the U.S. technology stack, “encouraging nations worldwide to choose America,” as Nvidia announced resuming H20 sales soon.

In November, experts told CNBC that Musk’s close ties to Trump and his business interests in China could help soften the president’s aggressive trade stance toward Beijing, while cautioning against putting too much stock into the Tesla CEO.

Meanwhile, under Trump’s second presidency, Apple’s Cook has seen some strong pushback from the administration.

In May, Trump expressed a “little problem with Tim Cook” over Apple manufacturing products in India, despite the iPhone maker’s commitment of a $500 billion investment in the U.S., announced in February.

In response to the latest trade tensions between China and the U.S., Apple has accelerated efforts to de-risk supply chains from China by moving more iPhone production to India.

Earlier this month, Trump adviser Peter Navarro also criticized Cook, saying he was not moving production out of China fast enough.  

Apple and Cook were seen as the most influential company and CEO, respectively, in the first Trump administration, but now its Huang and Nvidia, said Ray Wang, CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. “Almost everything rides on Nvidia’s chips.”

Google announced Monday the removal of nearly 11,000 YouTube channels and other accounts tied to state-linked propaganda campaigns from China, Russia and more in the second quarter.

The takedown included more than 7,700 YouTube channels linked to China.

These campaigns primarily shared content in Chinese and English that promoted the People’s Republic of China, supported President Xi Jinping and commented on U.S. foreign affairs.

Over 2,000 removed channels were linked to Russia. The content was in multiple languages that supported Russia and criticized Ukraine, NATO and the West.

Google, in May, removed 20 YouTube channels, 4 Ads accounts, and 1 Blogger blog linked to RT, the Russian state-controlled media outlet accused of paying prominent conservative influencers for social media content ahead of the 2024 election.

Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson — all staunch supporters of President Donald Trump — made content for Tenent Media, the Tennessee company described in the indictment, according to NBC News.

YouTube began blocking RT channels in March 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The active removal of accounts is part of the Google Threat Analysis Group’s work to counter global disinformation campaigns and “coordinated influence” operations.

Google’s second quarter report also outlined the removal of influence campaigns linked to Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Romania and Ghana that were found to be targeting political rivals.

Some campaigns centered on growing geopolitical conflicts, including narratives on both sides of the Israel-Palestine War.

CNBC has reached out to YouTube for further comment or information on the report.

Google took down more than 23,000 accounts in the first quarter.

Meta announced last week it removed about 10 million profiles for impersonating large content producers through the first half of 2025 as part of an effort by the company to combat “spammy content.”

Astronomer‘s interim CEO said in his first public comment since unexpectedly taking over the role on Saturday that he hopes to move the tech startup past the viral moment that captured national attention last week.

Pete DeJoy was appointed to the top job due to the resignation of CEO Andy Byron, days after he was caught on video in an intimate moment with the company’s head of human resources at a Coldplay concert. Astronomer said over the weekend that it would begin a search for a new CEO.

“The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies — let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world — ever encounter,” DeJoy wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday. “The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.”

Byron was shown on a big screen at the concert in Boston on Wednesday with his arms around Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot. Byron, who is married with children, immediately hid when the couple was shown on screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” A concert attendee’s video of the affair went viral.

DeJoy helped start Astronomer in 2017, according to his LinkedIn profile, and had been serving as chief product officer since earlier this year.

In May, Astronomer announced a $93 million investment round led by Bain Ventures and other investors, including Salesforce Ventures.

“I’m stepping into this role with a wholehearted commitment to taking care of our people and delivering for our customers,” DeJoy wrote. He added that “our story is very much still being written.”

Astronomer is commercializing the open-source data operations platform Astro. DeJoy wrote that customers “trust us with their most ambitious data & AI projects” and that “we’re here because the mission is bigger than any one moment.”

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