FTI Consulting News Bytes – 18 July 2025

FTI Consulting News Bytes

We begin this week with Jensen Huang’s plans to ‘accelerate’ the recovery of Nvidia’s sales in China after Washington lifted restrictions on the shipping of its H20 chip. We then turn to Meta’s AI efforts as CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledges to spend ‘hundreds of billions of dollars’ on data centres. Continuing with promises, the Trump administration has similarly committed $90 billion in AI and energy investment for the key swing state of Pennsylvania as he seeks to arrest declining approval ratings. Finally, we cover Co-op’s data breach and Roblox’s efforts to protect its users. 

This week’s news

Nvidia set to resume China activity 

The Nvidia chief has promised to kickstart China sales of H20 processor which was specifically designed for the Chinese market. Huang did warn, however, that restarting the supply chain will likely take nine months. After a detente between Washington and China, Nvidia is expecting the export licenses “to come through very shortly”. Huang had led an intense lobbying campaign in the Capitol, arguing that America would lose its leading role in AI technology to Chinese companies if American companies continued to be prevented from exporting hardware to the country. Chinese companies are expected to be eager customers for H20 despite local competition, the Financial Times reports. 

Meta’s AI spending spree continues 

BBC reports that Meta are continuing their expansion into the AI space, pledging hundreds of billions of dollars into the creation of multi-gigawatt data centres. The first data centre, called Prometheus, is expected to come online in 2026, according to Zuckerberg. Meta also commented that the centres were given names, such as Prometheus and Hyperion, “befitting their scale and impact”. This announcement comes after Meta acquired Alexandr Wang’s Scale AI for $14.3 billion in June.  

Trump plays pork barrel politics 

President Trump, in an effort to turn around his declining approval ratings, the Financial Times suggests, hosted an event in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state, in which he announced $90 billion in funding for AI and energy investments. The event featured billionaire business leaders, such as Blackstone President Jon Gray. Gray committed to spending $25 billion on a data centre development in north-east Pennsylvania, as well as commenting that AI “can lead to a manufacturing renaissance in the US”. Trump’s administration has made expanding the nation’s AI capabilities a vital strategic milestone as it seeks to outpace China. Some, however, including a spokesman for Wood Mackenzie, have argued that the US lacks the necessary infrastructure for these data centre investments: “they will increase the load on the grid without investing in the grid itself.” 

Co-op combats cyber crime

Co-op’s CEO, Shirine Khoury-Haq, revealed that the retailer had suffered a cyber incident earlier in the year. During this incident, the Independent reports, the information of 6.5 million members was accessed and subsequently stolen. The news comes as four individuals were arrested in relation to cyber-attacks against M&S, the Co-op and Harrods. As part of Co-op’s efforts to respond to this incident, they have partnered with The Hacking Games, a group dedicated to identifying young cyber talent and channeling it away from cybercrime into ethical and positive careers. Despite this, the Co-op did say that these cyber threats were evolving at an “alarming” rate.

Roblox leans forward on user safety

Roblox announced it is launching new safeguards for people who are between the ages of 13 and 18. The company is introducing “Trusted Connections” to allows these users to connect more freely with people they know, alongside age estimation technology, more privacy tools, and insights for parents of teens. The changes are likely part of Roblox’s efforts to appease both lawmakers and parents who have, in recent times, criticised the company for how it handles child safety. Parents will have access to a suite of tools to understand their child’s usage and presence on the platform and will be able to view who their teen is connected to, as well as how much time their teen spends on the platform and in which games. They can also choose to be notified when their teen makes a certain transaction on Roblox, TechCrunch adds. 

Top Tweets of the Week

• Sundar Pichai, CEO Google and Alphabet tweets: “New from our security teams: Our AI agent Big Sleep helped us detect and foil an imminent exploit. We believe this is a first for an AI agent – definitely not the last – giving cybersecurity defenders new tools to stop threats before they’re widespread.” 
• Mobile Gamer tweets: “How much value am I getting for these fees? They’re just not in balance anymore”: Zynga boss Frank Gibeau is unhappy with Apple’s 30% cut – and is going after D2C “very aggressively.” 
• Anthropic tweets: “We’re announcing a $200M ceiling contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. Through hands-on prototyping and direct collaboration across the Department, we will help enhance U.S. national security and responsible AI deployment.” 

Number of the week

£200mn Meta’s compensation package to poach former Apple engineer, Ruoming Pang (The Times)