The Rundown - Trump to Take 15% Cut of Nvidia & AMD China Sales, Paramount Buys UFC Rights for $7.7B

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Stock market update for August 11, 2025.This video is for informational purposes only and reflects the views of the host and guest, not Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. Mentions of assets are not recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For full disclosures, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Public.com/disclosures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadmani, and today is Monday, August 11th. In today's episode, we'll get you ready for a big week, including an inflation report and a tariff deadline with China. We'll also tell you about a very unusual agreement that Nvidia and AMD made with the U.S. government to sell their chips to China. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how much Jensen Huang's iconic leather jacket It's cost. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

Markets are coming off their best week since June, with the S&P 500 jumping 2.4% last week and the NASDAG adding nearly 4% to close at record highs. And don't look now, but the crypto markets are also rallying. Bitcoin is back above $120,000. And Ethereum hit $4,200 the first time that's happened since 2021. You know, it seems like the markets have brushed off the weak jobs report from earlier this month and the jump in tariffs too. And it's the big tech names that continue to be the source of this rally. In fact, Apple's stock was up 13% last week alone, thanks to a trade exemption they received from the Trump administration on semiconductors.

And it probably helps that corporate earnings continue to come in strong with 82% of the S&P 500 companies topping analyst estimates for Q2. Now, looking ahead to this week, we are gearing up for another big one. The July CPI report drops on Tuesday morning, and this report will give us another data point on if Trump's tariffs are impacting inflation. Wall Street is expecting inflation to be around 2.5%. And we've got a few interesting earnings on deck this week as well. Circle, Corweave, and Kava, all report earnings. I think that Circle earnings report is going to get a lot of attention.

And one more thing we're keeping an eye on is the U.S.-China trade truce, which is set to expire tomorrow. Now, there's been whispers of a possible extension to that truce, but nothing officially. has been signed yet. So we're keeping an eye on all of that along with anything else that might pop up this week. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast and tuning in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Nvidia and AMD. Nvidia and AMD just agreed to a deal with the U.S. government that's unlike anything we've seen before. According to the Financial Times, both companies will hand over 15% of their China AI

chip revenues to the U.S. government in exchange for export licenses. So for Nvidia, this applies to their H20 chips and for AMD, this applies to their MI308 chip. On a side note, I think they need to come up with better names here. I mean, this is a pretty wild story because there's never been a deal like this before between the U.S. government and a U.S. company where a portion of sales from exports is paid to obtain the export license. I mean, normally you either get an export license or you don't. And the money here is, you know, pretty significant, according to Bernstein research, Nvidia could sell about $15 billion worth of age 20 chips to China, while AMD is projected to pulling around $800 million from its chips.

So if you're just doing some simple math here, the U.S. government could make more than $2 billion from this deal. Now, what the U.S. government plans to do with the money is still unknown, and beyond that, like, what is the policy trying to achieve here is still to be determined? Because if there was national security concerns about exporting chips to China, this doesn't address that at all. Let us know in the comments and vote in the Spotify poll on what? what you think of the Trump administration taking a 15% cut from Nvidia and AMD.

Now, it is a short-term win for Nvidia and AMD who have faced constant export bans to China. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang thinks the Chinese market is very crucial for them. He said that restrictions would allow Chinese rivals like Huawei to take market share and cause the U.S. to fall behind in AI. In fact, Nvidia designed the H20 chip specifically for the Chinese market to comply with Biden-era chip export restrictions, but the Trump administration put a ban on the H20 chips earlier this year until just now. Now, if that wasn't enough drama, over the weekend, Chinese state media went after Nvidia's

H20 chips, calling them outdated, unsafe, and even claiming they have backdoor access that could enable remote shutdowns. Now, Nvidia was quick to deny those claims, saying that they have no backdoor access to their products. But it is pretty interesting that the Chinese state media is targeting Nvidia right now. They've actually done this before to U.S. companies. Most famous example might be in 2013 when they accused Apple of mistreating Chinese customers, which turned into a PR nightmare for Apple and Tim Cook had to issue an apology and the company had to tweak their policies in China.

So yeah, while Nvidia and AMD may be back in China again, they might face some resistance from the Chinese government this time. Let's shift gears and talk about Paramount and the UFC. Paramount has acquired exclusive U.S. rights to the UFC for Cesar. seven years in a deal worth $7.7 billion. This deal goes into effect starting in 2026. Now this package includes all of the 30 UFC fight nights plus 13 marquee events every year. And here's the kicker. No more pay-per-view. Paramount plans to get rid of the pay-per-view and put all of their fights on Paramount Plus. The subscribers can watch all the fights for just 13 bucks a month or 8 bucks a month with ads. It's a much cheaper setup than ESPN's

current setup where you pay 12 bucks a month for ESPN plus plus an additional 80 bucks for each big fight. So I gotta say big win for UFC fans, no more paying for pay-per-view and also a big win for the UFC. Paramount is paying double what ESPN was paying in their previous deal. In fact, it's been a pretty good stretch for UFC's parent company TKO. TKO also owns WWE, which just signed a $1.6 billion deal with ESPN for premium content over the next five years. So yeah, big moves happening in the screaming space. You know, it's only been five days since Skydance completed its takeover of Paramount, and its new owner, David Ellison, is already making a big splash. I wonder what he's going to be up to next. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. AMC's stock is getting a nice pop this morning

after the theater chain beat on earnings estimates for the quarter. Revenues in Q2 jump more than 35% thanks to a decent amount of hits at the box office, including the Minecraft movie, which made nearly a billion dollars worldwide, and there was also other hits like Lilo and Stitch and the Michael B. Jordan movie Sinners, which also drew a strong crowd. AMC stock is up nearly 8% this morning at the time of this recording. So if you still got some AMC stock left over from 2021,

might be a good time to check it out. Now, on the flip side, the AI software company, C3.A.I is getting crushed after the company said that preliminary quarterly revenues came in more than 30% below its own guidance. I mean, that is a brutal miss. C3 is in the business of selling enterprise AI tools, including generative AI, agentic AI platforms, the whole buzzword salad. Their clients include the U.S. Air Force, ExxonMobil, and U.S. Steel.

But the problem is that Enterprise AI is a brutal space right now, especially with OpenAI, steamrolling the market, adding about a million new paying business accounts between February and June, bringing their total to $3 million. I mean, it's hard to compete with a juggernaut like OpenAI that has such a huge brand name. And as a result, C3.A.I. shares are down. more than 30% this morning. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's iconic leather jackets are extremely expensive. They're designed by Tom Ford and costs up to $10,000.

And Jensen has multiple styles when it comes to rocking these leather jackets. The one that stood out to me the most was a lizard skin jacket that he wore last year, which apparently costs like $9,000. Now, Jensen's worth over $100 billion, so $9,000 is like pennies. But he is continuing the tradition of tech CEOs sticking to one style forever. The most iconic being Steve Jobs with his black turtleneck. Zuck had his hoodie face for a while. And then now Jensen's rocking his leather jacket,

which I think looks the best, but is definitely the most expensive. I think Steve Jobs' turtlenecks were around $200 bucks. I also think that Steve Jobs kind of ruined turtlenecks too because anytime someone tries to wear one, people think that you're doing a Steve Jobs impersonation. I actually really like turtlenex. I might have to rock one in a future deep dive episode we do about Apple. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today.

Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. We got a lot to look forward to this week, especially tomorrow with that China deadline coming up and the CPI report. So make sure you guys are following the podcast so you guys don't miss that. Each episode is less than 10 minutes long, so it's a quick listen. We're trying to get these episodes up earlier in the day so you guys can listen to it on your commute. We've heard the feedback. We're trying our best to get them up as early as possible.

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here tomorrow.