China has approved its first batch of Nvidia H200 artificial ​intelligence chip imports, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters, marking ‌a shift in position as Beijing seeks to balance its ​AI needs against spurring domestic development.

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have been approved to purchase over 400,000 H200 chips in total, with other enterprises now joining a queue for subsequent approvals, said two of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

It was granted during Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang’s visit to China this week, the sources said.

China’s industry and commerce ministries as well as ​Nvidia had not yet responded to requests for comment at the time ⁠of publication. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent had not responded either.

The H200, Nvidia’s second most powerful AI chip, has emerged as a major flashpoint in U.S.-China relations. Despite strong demand from Chinese firms and ​U.S. approval for exports, Beijing’s hesitation to ⁠allow imports has been the main barrier to shipments.

The U.S. earlier this month formally cleared the way for Nvidia to sell the H200 to China, where the company is seeing strong appetite. However, Chinese authorities have the ‌final say on whether they would allow it to be shipped in.

It ‌was unclear in recent weeks whether Beijing would grant approval as the government wants to balance meeting surging domestic demand for advanced ‍AI chips and nurturing its domestic semiconductor industry.

Chinese customs authorities told agents that the H200 chips were not permitted to enter China, Reuters reported earlier this month.

But Chinese ‍technology firms have placed orders for more than two million H200 chips, far exceeding Nvidia’s available inventory, Reuters reported last month.

It remains uncertain how many additional companies will receive approval in subsequent batches or what criteria Beijing is using to determine eligibility.

Huang arrived in Shanghai last Friday for routine annual celebrations with Nvidia’s China employees and has since travelled to Beijing and other cities, Reuters reported last week.

The approvals of H200 suggest Beijing is prioritising the needs of major Chinese internet ⁠companies, which are spending billions of dollars to build data centres needed to develop AI services and compete with U.S. rivals, including ​OpenAI.

While Chinese companies such as Huawei now have products that rival the performance of ⁠Nvidia’s H20 chip, previously the most advanced AI chip it was allowed to sell to China, they still lag far behind the H200.

The H200 delivers roughly six times the performance of Nvidia’s H20 chip.

Still Beijing has discussed requiring companies to buy a certain quota of domestic chips as ⁠a condition for receiving approval to import foreign semiconductors, Reuters previously reported.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees in an internal message that ICE is “going too far” with its immigration crackdown, becoming ‍the latest corporate executive to voice concerns about heavy enforcement actions in Minnesota.

Federal ​agents shot and killed a protester in Minneapolis over ‌the weekend, the second such shooting this month, sparking widespread ​disapproval of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s actions. More than 60 CEOs have signed a statement calling for de-escalation after weeks of silence.

“What’s happening with ICE is going too far,” Altman wrote in a Slack message to employees of the ChatGPT maker, a source familiar with the matter said. “There is a big difference between deporting violent ​criminals and what’s happening now, and we need to get ⁠the distinction right.”

“I love the U.S. and its values of democracy and freedom and will be supportive of the country however I can; OpenAI will too,” Altman said ​in his message, which was ⁠first reported by the New York Times’ DealBook. “But part of loving the country is the American duty to push back against overreach.”

Altman’s comments come as a rift has emerged at Khosla Ventures, an ‌early OpenAI backer. Founder Vinod Khosla and partner Ethan Choi ‌disavowed comments from partner Keith Rabois over the weekend that law enforcement had not shot an innocent person and ‍that illegal immigrants commit crimes on a daily basis.

A number of businesses have been hesitant to criticise U.S. President Donald Trump during his second ‍term.

Since the beginning of “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis in December, major Minnesota corporations had been largely silent about the effects of the immigration enforcement efforts on the city, a liberal Midwestern stronghold as well as a major corporate hub.

Leaders of companies such as 3M, UnitedHealth Group and General Mills have called for de-escalation since the second shooting over the weekend.

More than 450 employees from firms like Google, Meta Platforms, Salesforce and ⁠OpenAI signed a letter on Saturday urging their top executives to pressure the White House to withdraw ICE from ​U.S. cities, cancel all contracts with ICE and to speak out publicly against ⁠ICE’s violence.

“President Trump is a very strong leader, and I hope he will rise to this moment and unite the country. I am encouraged by the last few hours of response and hope to see trust rebuilt with transparent investigations,” Altman added.

Google must provide rival AI services equal access to its features and other search engine platforms access to data, the EU said on Tuesday, as it said it would help the giant over six months to comply with rules.

The EU executive said it would launch proceedings to help Google prepare measures in line with its flagship rulebook, the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Under the DMA, the world’s biggest tech companies must open up to competition to give consumers more options and limit abuses linked to market dominance.

US President Donald Trump’s government has railed against the law and its sister content moderation law the Digital Services Act, accusing Brussels of unfairly targeting US firms.

The European Commission wants to ensure Google gives rival AI service providers equal access to its Android operating system, and demands the American titan grants competing search engines access to search data.

Brussels believes the move will allow rivals “to optimise their services and offer users genuine alternatives to Google Search”.

The EU step is not a formal investigation that could lead to fines.

But if Brussels is not satisfied with Google’s efforts, it can later conclude the company is not complying.

And any DMA violations can lead to fines of up to 10 percent of a company’s total global turnover.

“We want to help Google by explaining in more detail how it should comply with its interoperability and online search data sharing obligations under the Digital Markets Act,” EU competition chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement.

Google pushed back, insisting Android is open by design.

“We’re already licensing search data to competitors under the DMA,” Google’s senior competition counsel Clare Kelly said in a statement.

“However, we are concerned that further rules which are often driven by competitor grievances rather than the interest of consumers, will compromise user privacy, security, and innovation.”

The commission said it would conclude the proceedings within six months.

Google already faces a fine under the DMA for favouring its own services in a probe launched in March 2024.

The giant has also been subject to a separate DMA probe since November over suspicions it pushed down news outlets in search results.

The scrutiny does not end with the DMA. Google also faces cases under the bloc’s competition rules.

In December, the EU said it had opened a probe to assess whether Google breached antitrust rules by using content put online by media and other publishers to train and provide AI services without appropriate compensation.

That came after the EU slapped Google with a 2.95-billion-euro ($3.5 billion) fine in September for breaking competition rules.

Facebook parent Meta Platforms will pay Gorilla ‍Glass maker Corning up to $6 billion over the next several ​years in a deal to provide fiber-optic cables ‌for its AI data centres, the ​companies said on Tuesday.

Corning will supply advanced optical fiber, cable and connectivity products to Meta, while expanding its manufacturing capacity in North Carolina, including at its cable factory in Hickory, where Meta will be the anchor customer.

Corning’s optical connectivity products are among key components ​required to support the massive computing and data transmission ⁠demands at data centres.

Their rising demand from Big Tech customers like Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google drove a more than 84% ​surge in Corning’s shares ⁠in 2025. The stock jumped about 7% in premarket trading.

CNBC, which first reported the news, said Meta will pay Corning through 2030.

Meta has been spending ‌aggressively on building out data centre infrastructure as ‌it races to roll out competitive AI technologies.

The agreement with Corning also builds on ‍tech giants’ push to beef up domestic manufacturing capacity under President Donald Trump’s administration.

The social media giant, which has ‍struggled in Silicon Valley’s AI race, has committed to spend about $600 billion in U.S. tech infrastructure and jobs over the next three years.

Earlier this month, it also announced its “Meta Compute” initiative to expand AI infrastructure and oversee its global fleet of data centers and supplier partnerships.

The agreement will aid Corning’s projection to ⁠boost its employment levels in North Carolina by 15% to 20% and support its workforce of ​more than 5,000 people in the state, the companies said.

“Together ⁠with Meta, we’re strengthening domestic supply chains and helping ensure that advanced data centers are built using U.S. innovation,” Corning CEO Wendell Weeks said.

Both Meta and Corning are due to report ⁠their quarterly results on Wednesday.

Austria’s data protection authority has ordered Microsoft to stop using tracking cookies in education software, a privacy campaign group said Tuesday, marking its latest victory against the US tech giant.

The European Center for Digital rights, which goes by the acronym Noyb, for “None of Your Business,” filed two complaints against Microsoft in 2024, saying its education software that is widely used in schools violates data protection rights for children.

Last year, the Austrian data protection authority DSB determined that Microsoft “illegally” tracked students using its education software and must grant them access to their data.

In the latest ruling, dated January 21 and provided by Noyb, DSB found that Microsoft lacked a “legal basis” to process “personal data” and must therefore refrain “within four weeks from using cookies that are not technically necessary”.

Cookies, which analyse user behaviour for advertising and other purposes, were installed on students’ devices without consent, Noyb said.

“Tracking minors clearly isn’t privacy-friendly,” Felix Mikolasch, a data protection lawyer at Noyb, said in a statement.

A Microsoft spokesperson told AFP the company was reviewing the decision.

“Microsoft 365 for Education meets all required data protection standards and institutions in the education sector can continue to use it” in compliance with the EU’s data protection regulation, the spokesperson said.

Noyb has launched hundreds of legal cases that often prompt action from regulatory authorities against tech giants.

The group began working in 2018 with the advent of the EU’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which aims to make it easier for people to control how companies use their personal information.

Meta’s WhatsApp messaging service is offering users an advanced security mode, ‍joining a growing number of U.S. tech firms that are ​letting users opt into stronger protections against hackers in ‌exchange for a more restrictive experience.

The new ​option, rolling out on Tuesday and called “Strict Account Settings,” is a one-click button in WhatsApp’s settings that activates a series of defences.

These include blocking media and attachments from unknown senders, disabling link previews (the thumbnails that appear when a URL is entered into ​a chat) and silencing calls from unknown contacts. All ⁠three have been identified as potential vectors for surveillance and advanced hackers.

In a blog post, WhatsApp said that while all ​its users’ conversations were protected ⁠by end-to-end encryption, “we also know that a few of our users – like journalists or public-facing figures – may need extreme safeguards against rare and highly sophisticated cyberattacks.”

Meta ‌Platforms is the third major tech firm to offer ‌a security boost for high-risk users.

In 2022, Apple launched “Lockdown Mode,” which it describes as “an optional, ‍extreme protection” designed for the “very few individuals” who might be targeted by advanced digital threats. Available on iPhone ‍and macOS, the feature disables most message attachment types and link previews and includes restrictions on FaceTime calls and web browsing.

Last year, Alphabet’s Android began offering “Advanced Protection Mode,” for users with “heightened security awareness.”

Like “Lockdown Mode”, Alphabet’s more secure option trades some functionality for enhanced security, including restricting users from downloading potentially risky apps from outside ⁠its in-house Play Store.

A researcher who helps defend civil society figures from hacking said WhatsApp’s ​announcement was “a very welcome development.”

The feature will help protect dissidents ⁠and activists while encouraging other tech firms to up their game, said John Scott-Railton, who works at The Citizen Lab, a research group based out of the University of Toronto.

“My hope is ⁠that others follow suit,” he said.

Pinterest plans to lay off under 15% of its workforce, as part of broader restructuring that arrives as the image-sharing platform pivots more of its money to artificial intelligence.

In a Tuesday securities filing, San Francisco-based Pinterest said it was making these cuts to support “transformation initiatives” — which include reallocating the company’s resources to AI-focused roles and prioritising AI-powered products. It said it was also working to reshape its “sales and go-to-market approach.”

Beyond the coming layoffs, Pinterest said it will reduce office space. The company expects to complete its restructuring plan by the end of September, incurring pretax charges of $35 million to $45 million.

Pinterest’s job cuts are expected to impact hundreds of workers. As of the end of last year, Pinterest had a total headcount of about 5,200 employees, the company confirmed to The Associated Press.

Like other tech and social media companies, Pinterest has accelerated its integration of AI recently, particularly in consumer-facing offerings. In October, the company introduced AI-powered updates to users’ in-platform “boards” and unveiled Pinterest Assistant, which is also powered by AI and gives users shopping recommendations.

Pinterest isn’t the first company to turn to job cuts while pivoting spending to AI. Last fall, Amazon, for example, said it would cut about 14,000 corporate jobs (close to 4% of its workforce) as it ramped up AI investments while trimming costs elsewhere.

Shares of Pinterest fell more than 9% as of midday trading Tuesday.