While the normies were resting, we mainlined tech discourse all weekend to bring you the latest trends, rumors, fights, and innovations from the most manic corners of the internet. This week: The Jensen Huang meltdown, Billy Evans’ wrestling skills, and Apple’s weird AI play.
This is Manic Monday.
The spy who loved me
By far the biggest story of the weekend, AI chipmaker Nvidia announced yesterday that it is opening an investigation into its CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang for having an affair with a suspected Chinese spy. As if cheating on your wife of 41 years isn’t bad enough, it appears that Huang may have gotten honeypotted in the most obvious way possible. Whoa, a rich old guy having a younger mistress who ends up destroying his reputation? Shocking stuff! Regardless of whether Alice Huang (no relation) is actually a spy or not, I imagine President Xi Jinping is laughing his ass off over this fiasco. Donald Trump’s AI-obsessed administration made a deal with Huang to clear Nvidia chip sales to Chinese computer manufacturers, but in a “directed by M. Night Shyamalan” plot-twist, it turned out those “manufacturers” were shady Chinese "businesses" that may not even exist.
Trump, who knows a thing or two (or three) about cheating on his spouses, is sticking with his pal, declaring to the press today that Huang deserves to stay on as CEO. Other Republicans are apparently breaking with Trump to potentially investigate Huang and Nvidia; Democrat Sen. Chris Coons also called for an investigation on Monday. Wow, Talafreako takes Texas and there’s already bipartisan cooperation? You love to see it.
I’m guessing the vibes at Nvidia HQ in Santa Clara are absolutely rank right now, especially around Huang’s two nepo babies, Spencer and Madison, who currently work in director-level jobs despite their job histories as bar owner and chef-in-training, respectively. (Okay, they got business degrees before joining Nvidia, but still.) Huang’s son-in-law Nico Caprez is also a powerful exec at the company — he got the job shortly after marrying Madison Huang, naturally — and all three are being discussed as part of a succession plan. This appears to be a great time to rewatch Succession, in which a powerful billionaire father has a weird affair with a younger woman, announces he’s stepping down, and leaves his kids scrabbling to seize power. —E.K.
The Huang time to joke
The Jensen Huang news is a genuinely big deal for the AI industry and national security, but I’m over here hoovering up AI-generated memes of the affair.
My favorite jokes are the ones that recall already famous memes. Consider this gem from AI founder Peter Dedene, which portrays Huang and Alice Huang (again, no relation) as the unfortunate CEO and mistress caught on camera at a Coldplay concert. Another is a remix of the classic “Democracy Manifest” video, in which an Aussie man delivers an all-time quote while being dragged into a police cruiser: “What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?” (Nice double entendre.) Other AI content depict Huang and Huang getting “caught in 4k,” and I laughed out loud at an image of tech billionaires rushing to pull Huang away from a mic as he leans in to declare that he “would.”
One wonders how many Nvidia chips were used to make all these AI-generated memes: Live by the slop, die by the slop, as they say. —E.K.
Engagement bait triple threat
It was a perfect storm of things that are divisive on social media: Tech journalist Taylor Lorenz (that’s one) went to a data center convention (that’s two) on a freelance assignment for the tech money-backed new media company Soon Technology (and that’s three), sparking some heated discourse about the line between real independent journalism and advertorial-style PR campaigns.
On Sunday, Lorenz posted a short clip from her visit to DCD Connect in Virginia, in which she asks the convention’s attendees what they think the public gets wrong about data centers. “Insiders explaining what the public gets wrong. Cool,” one person responded on X. “Who is paying you for this ad campaign?” commented another. Lorenz — always quick to wade into a messy comment section — defended herself, writing, “This is not an ad this is journalism… Media literacy NOW!”
As Gazetteer SF reported in March, Soon Technology is a media company that produces videos about AI startups and subcultures. It was founded by a Vice Media alum and is funded by Eoghan McCabe, the founder of software company Fin who has an extensive tech investment portfolio and a history of donating to Trump. Lorenz, whose own politics don’t map neatly left or right and therefore confuse and enrage many people, claimed in the comments that she had “total editorial independence on this video.” While I’m skeptical of Soon, its backer, and its often flattering coverage of AI companies, Lorenz is right that many other media outlets (The Washington Post, The Atlantic, our own San Francisco Standard) are funded by tech and venture capital and still produce real, high-quality journalism. In this case, I think the crux of the issue mostly lies in the fact that people just really hate data centers and are put off seeing them discussed in Soon’s bright and chirpy style. —C.H.
So, we didn’t see everything?
Since it hit theaters last month, Nathan Fielder’s trippy Elizabeth Holmes documentary You Can See Everything has been discoursed into the ground, every last detail dissected, examined, and transformed into endless think pieces on the objective observer and the mystery of other people. I truly didn’t think there was anything left to say about the movie until yesterday, when Billy Evans, Holmes’s husband who (spoiler, sorry) emerges as the ultimate antagonist of the film, tweeted about one very odd-sounding scene that was apparently left on the cutting-room floor.
“I really wish they’d kept the scene where I wrestled Nathan, Borat style. Full top mount. His little Canadian frame struggling beneath me,” Evans wrote on X. (His little Canadian frame — what a string of words!) Sure to inspire a new subgenre of romance novels set against the backdrop of our increasingly tense US-Canada relations. Why exactly Evans wrote this tweet so erotically is the main question among the comments. To me it looks like a last grasp at relevancy before the movie fades from view, and one last reminder that Evans is Big Dog, you know, in case anyone had forgotten the shower scene. —C.H.
A fruitful AI flip-flop
Apple has been a tech innovator for decades, which makes it all the more curious that they’ve been so passive with AI development in recent years. Now it’s looking to slash AI costs… while simultaneously emphasizing AI innovation as a critical short-term goal. The directive is led in major part by new CEO John Ternus, who is trying to cut costs at the Cupertino juggernaut and slashing AI budgets for rank-and-file engineers as the price of critical memory chips continues to rocket upward. (That’s a big reason why iPhones and iPads are getting more expensive.)
Ternus, a longtime Apple engineer who oversaw hardware, has already been the subject of much speculation about his leadership chops, including criticism last week for an awkward “scripted” earnings call that puzzled some observers. His newest move represents a roughly 20 percent reduction in overall AI costs for Apple; I’d bet those savings will go right back to AI development in some shape or form.
While its hardware is still selling like hotcakes, Apple leadership has acknowledged that it’s fallen behind in the AI race, and Siri remains widely mocked for lagging behind other AI-assistant tools. This is an uncomfortable situation for Apple, which rose to dominance by tightly integrating its hardware and software into coherent, innovative devices people love to use. There are already reports of internal stress over the development cycle of hardware (years) being out of alignment with Ternus’ software cycle (12-18 months). Other observers worry that AI use could open a Pandora’s Box of issues for the famously security-focused company. Last but not least, it’s only a matter of time before OpenAI drops its first consumer hardware product. Maybe the company will consider acquiring existing AI companies for a jump-start? Apple’s gotta do something with the $2.7 billion in taxes it avoided by routing profits through Singapore. —E.K.
The week ahead: Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim hop a flight to London to quietly shoot a doc about Russell Brand’s last days of freedom that we’ll all be obsessed with in 2029.
