What's up: Nvidia's business is booming; The AI experience is going from ‘50 First Dates’ to ‘Cheers;’ Musk tried to block Altman’s big AI deal in the Middle East. 

Good morning, CIOs. Nvidia on Wednesday answered any doubts that the AI chip maker and by extension AI adoption were in danger of slowing down. The chip titan posted another quarter of record-breaking sales, with revenue of $44.06 billion, WSJ reports.

The company’s data-center business saw revenue surge 73% year-over-year to $39.1 billion.

Granted, limits on sales of chips to China add uncertainty and Nvidia projected $8 billion in lost revenue for the current quarter due to the policy. More on that below.

But AI spending on its home turf remains strong, says the WSJ, noting that Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta Platforms have all affirmed plans to boost capital spending on AI infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Middle East is also emerging as a major Nvidia customer.

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The AI express continues to accelerate, but to where ultimately?

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a recent interview with Axios, warned of a potentially bumpy road ahead, not for the technology, of course, but for people. 

Amodei said AI in the next one to five years could be responsible for wiping out half of entry-level white-collar jobs. "I don't think this is on people's radar,” he says.

There are certainly signs that something is up. As AI companies, Anthropic among them, churn out increasingly powerful large language models, companies have been more vocal about linking hiring decisions to AI. 

For Anthropic, founded in 2021 by ex-OpenAI employees who believed it wasn’t taking safety seriously enough, safety is part of their pitch and Amodei shares with Axios ways to mitigate worst-case scenarios. 

But as Nvidia results show, that train is moving pretty fast. It might be too late to throw the switch. Read the Nvidia news.

The artificial intelligence experience is going from its “50 First Dates" era, where the protagonist in the 90's flick forgets every day she spends with her beau, to its “Cheers” era, where everyone (or every chatbot) will know your name, according to WSJ Columnist Steven Rosenbush.

For companies, that ability to create a shared, accessible memory capability of institutional knowledge will be powerful.

The impact will be just as profound for individual users: "AI’s growing powers of recall will make the technology feel like a companion that knows us well enough to take unprompted, proactive action," says Rosenbush. 

It will also ramp up the need for privacy, security and responsible use. No one likes a gossip at their favorite hangout. Read the story.

Salesforce raised its full-year sales outlook after first-quarter earnings and revenue came in ahead of expectations, WSJ reports​. The customer-relationship management platform posted a profit of $1.54 billion in the quarter ended April 30, compared with $1.53 billion a year earlier. Revenue rose 8% to $9.83 billion.

Salesforce on Tuesday it would acquire data-management software provider Informatica in an $8 billion deal, its largest since it bought Slack Technologies in 2021.

HP said it is getting ready to raise prices on certain products and accelerating efforts to move more of its production out of China as the computer and printer maker grapples with tariff pressure. 

The company posted a profit of $406 million for the three months ended April 30, down from $607 million a year earlier. Lores noted that HP is on track to meet its goal to have AI PCs account for more than 25% of total shipments by the fourth quarter.

The facility “raises significant national security and economic security issues that warrant serious review,” they said in the letter.

News emerged earlier this month that the company planned for the new Shanghai facility to house its China workforce. Critics like Banks and Warren argue that the office could still be a gateway for the company’s most advanced products to end up boosting the Chinese AI industry.

Elon Musk worked hard to derail a deal OpenAI made last week to build a data center in Abu Dhabi. WSJ reports that Musk, on a call with officials at an AI firm controlled by the brother of the United Arab Emirates’ president, warned that the plan had no chance of President Trump signing off on it unless his company xAI was included. White House officials tell the WSJ that Musk didn’t want a deal that seemed to benefit OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman.

Bell Canada tells Bloomberg it plans to build AI data centers in six Canadian cities, with the first site, in Kamloops, British Columbia, hosting chip maker Groq as its main tenant.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said the messaging platform struck a year-long, $300 million partnership with xAI, CNBC reports. Telegram on Tuesday said the company was set to raise $1.5 billion in a bond issue.

Apple plans to introduce a new naming strategy for its various operating systems, swapping out version numbers for years.  Thus, today’s iOS 18 could soon be identified as iOS 26, people familiar with the matter tell Bloomberg.

A federal trade court ruled President Trump didn’t have the authority to impose sweeping tariffs on virtually every nation, voiding the levies that have sparked a global trade war and threatened to upend the world economy. (WSJ)

Resignations and retirements are building across the Federal Aviation Agency, potentially affecting divisions that oversee everything from air traffic to legal matters and space launches. (WSJ)

Lebanon’s army has largely disarmed Hezbollah in its southern strongholds—in part with the help of Israeli intelligence—as the country’s new government moves to enforce a cease-fire that halted an intense wave of fighting with Israel last year. (WSJ)

In 2023, Novo Nordisk was the most valuable company in Europe, surpassing LVMH on the back of soaring demand for Ozempic and Wegovy. Today, the Danish company has lost its grip on the anti-obesity market it carved out. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.