News Bytes 20251215: On-Off-On GPU Exports to China, the US-China Power Gap, Pocket-Sized HPC, Regulating AI

The United States has paused a £31 billion tech trade deal with the UK, originally signed in September, due to disagreements surrounding the UK's digital regulations and food safety rules. This decision reflects ongoing tensions in US-UK trade relations, particularly in the technology sector.

Nvidia has acquired SchedMD, the lead developer of the Slurm workload manager, and launched the Nemotron 3 family of open-source AI models. This acquisition and product launch signify Nvidia's commitment to enhancing its open-source offerings in the AI sector.

Korean AI startup Motif Technologies has introduced its latest model, Motif-2-12.7B-Reasoning, which has achieved remarkable benchmark scores, surpassing even OpenAI's GPT-5.1, according to independent assessments by Artificial Analysis. This development highlights Motif's growing influence in the competitive landscape of generative AI.

The United States has paused its £31 billion tech prosperity deal with Britain, citing insufficient progress on resolving trade barriers. This decision represents a significant setback in US-UK relations, particularly as the deal was initially celebrated as a transformative step in bilateral cooperation during Donald Trump's presidency.

Chinese companies are increasingly open about their intentions to replicate SpaceX's Starship technology, with new clones emerging in the market. This trend highlights a growing ambition within China's aerospace sector to compete directly with established players like SpaceX.

Elon Musk has issued a warning about an impending 'all-out war' in the artificial intelligence sector, particularly in light of Nvidia's rapid rollout of its Blackwell hardware, which is intensifying competition among tech companies regarding speed, cost, and scalability.

Nvidia has released the Nemotron 3 open models, which are built on a hybrid mixture-of-experts architecture aimed at facilitating the implementation of multi-agent systems in enterprises. This release underscores Nvidia's ongoing commitment to advancing artificial intelligence technologies.

The Canadian government has announced a funding initiative of up to C$92 million ($66.8 million) aimed at supporting quantum computing firms in Canada as competition from the United States intensifies in this emerging technology sector. This move is part of a broader strategy to retain domestic talent and innovation in quantum computing.