Dan Ives says the United States is ahead of China in technology for the first time in thirty years, and that nothing announced this weekend changes the capital being spent to keep it that way.
Anthropic and OpenAI have promised to rein in the pursuit of frontier models, and the market read it as a safety event. Ives reads it as a competitive one, and says it will not remove a dollar from the data center build-out.
"But the reality is China is not slowing down. And if China doesn't slow down, this is all words because US tech's not going to slow down."
Ives covers the technology sector as a partner at Yorkville & Ives and took this call from Los Angeles before the New York open.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 6 calls that matter.
👤 Guest: Dan Ives, a Partner at Yorkville & Ives, who covers the technology sector
🎙️ Hosts: Tom Keene and Paul Sweeney, who anchor Bloomberg Surveillance on Bloomberg Radio
👥 Also on: Lori Calvasina of RBC Capital Markets, David Tinsley of Bank of America and Naomi Fink of Amova Asset Management, in separate segments of the same programme
📰 Published: 14 September 2026 on the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast feed
🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ length not available
Key Takeaways
The slowdown pledge does not remove a dollar from AI capital spending, and the stock reaction is a knee-jerk
He reads the announcement as a competitive move as much as a safety one
His image for it is taking the elevator to the penthouse and then stopping the elevator
The models themselves get commoditized; the value moves to the data and to the second, third and fourth derivatives
Sovereign AI is where he thinks the money ends up, and he named Nvidia and Palantir as the companies positioned for it
He expects Jensen Huang to say the bark is worse than the bite
1. A Step Toward Safety
His first reaction was to give the announcement credit on its own terms. "This is a step in the right direction relative to safety because it's our view. Self-regulation is going to be the ultimate path."
His second reaction was to name what he thinks it actually is. He called it regulatory capture — when Washington starts calling for more and more rules, the two companies moved first and said themselves that there should be a slowdown
The conclusion he keeps returning to is that none of it binds anyone. "But the reality is China is not slowing down. And if China doesn't slow down, this is all words because US tech's not going to slow down."
Paul Sweeney put the strongest version of the opposite case to him. "This is coming from the companies themselves, Dan, and presumably they have a lot more knowledge than I do, than Tom does, and most folks out there do." If the people building it are telling everyone to brake, how does this play out
Sweeney's own framing of the incentive matched Ives's. "Then when you talk about Anthropic and OpenAI, it comes down to like these companies are essentially the top of the mountain. Do they want others not to come up?"
2. Stopping the Elevator
The metaphor is his answer to why the timing matters. "Well, I think part of the problem is that you can take the elevator to the penthouse and then stop the elevator so others can't come."
He expects investors to read it that way too, and to price it accordingly. He said the sovereign AI work Palantir and others are doing will be viewed skeptically relative to what OpenAI and Anthropic are proposing
He drew a line between the frontier labs and everyone else. His argument is that the industry has to be split into the core frontier model players and the rest, and that the rest are not who this is about
Ives took Sweeney's self-deprecation on the chin. Told the question had been put more politely than he deserved, he answered: "Well, Paul was too kind on how dumb I am. That was an accurate statement."
3. Not One Penny of Capex
His clearest market call is that the spending does not move. "Two, this is not stopping one penny of money that's going into the data center and the AI capex."
What does move, he said, is sentiment, briefly. He expects a knee-jerk reaction in the stocks, and then a repricing as investors digest that the underlying spending is unchanged
The reason the spending is unchanged is the same reason the pledge is words. China is not slowing, so US technology will not either
4. China Has One Plan
Tom Keene's question was about weekend domesticity and then about geopolitics. He said he had spent the weekend deep in AI working out whether a turkey should be cooked at 3.30 or 3.40, and that when he looks at AI all he can think about is China.
The framing he put to Ives was an asymmetry of coordination. "I got a massively split Washington, but I have a China with one plan." Is this simply the dawning reality of a Chinese product that is cheaper, better distributed and not quite as good
Ives agreed and added the policy direction. China has a government pouring gasoline on the effort to accelerate, where the United States may be doing the opposite
His single strongest claim came next. "Because for the first time in 30 years, the U.S. is ahead of China when it comes to tech."
His objection to Washington writing the rules is about competence, not principle. "You don't want people in the Beltway that are still using BlackBerrys to then regulate that AI."
5. Models Get Commoditized
Keene narrowed the horizon deliberately, saying every smart person he talks to is adamant they do not know where things are in six months, and asking instead where they are in six weeks.
His answer is that the model layer stops being the differentiator. "Tom, I think it's also the models over time will become more commoditized." What matters instead is the data
He pointed at where the earnings show up next. "You're now going to the second, third, fourth derivative because of the trillions of dollars being spent." He named software and cybersecurity infrastructure as where that is already visible
The models still improve — that is not the argument. "Claude, when you see ChatGPT, those models are going to continue to get better and better. But it's about the data."
Sovereign AI is the destination he named, and the companies with it. He said Nvidia and Palantir have talked about it front and center, and then: "That ultimately is really the golden goose."
6. Bark Worse Than the Bite
Asked what Jensen Huang is saying about the big-picture questions, given that Nvidia sits in the middle of every diagram of the AI ecosystem, Ives answered by predicting the line rather than reporting one.
His forecast of the Nvidia response was four words. "He's going to say the bark's worse than the bite."
His reason is that the guardrails are already in the products. He said the industry has put the safety guardrails in
He pointed at Nvidia's own acquisition as evidence of where the industry is going. The Hugging Face deal, and open source with it, is why he thinks the frontier labs have to be distinguished from the rest of the industry
The executives he rates on this are the ones not raising the alarm. He named Huang, Satya Nadella — citing what Nadella said over the weekend — and CrowdStrike's George Kurtz as more realistic and, in his words, very good words of wisdom
His characterization of the other side was unflattering and unnamed. He described some of the commentary as the sort of thing you shout in a crowded theater
Ives's bottom line is that the safety announcement changes the narrative and not the capital expenditure, and that the returns migrate away from the models themselves toward data and sovereign deployments.
Bonus Insights
The hosts opened by thanking him for the hour. Keene called him Daniel Ives and noted he was doing this out of Los Angeles at a way too early hour
Keene signed off by booking the next appearance in advance, saying they have to get him back soon to talk about Apple and what matters heading into the fourth quarter and the third-quarter earnings season
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Anthropic and OpenAI (The two companies whose slowdown promise the segment is about, and which he says moved first to pre-empt Washington)
Nvidia and Palantir (The two he names as positioned for sovereign AI, which he calls the golden goose)
CrowdStrike (Its chief executive is one of the three technology leaders whose measured response he praised, alongside Huang and Nadella)
Microsoft (Nadella's weekend remarks are the second example he gave of a realistic response to the safety debate)
Hugging Face (Nvidia's acquisition, which he used to argue that open source makes the frontier labs a special case rather than the whole industry)
Claude and ChatGPT (The products he expects to keep improving even as the model layer itself is commoditized)
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