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1.	Elon Musk Says He’s Launching His Own Political Party By Laura Mandaro Source: The Information

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Friday that he planned to launch his own political party, the “America Party,” and suggested the party would “laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts.”

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” he wrote on his social media network, X.

His plans follow a bitter falling-out with President Donald Trump over Trump’s landmark budget bill, which will slash rebates on electric cars and which analysts expect will increase the budget deficit.

Musk was the largest donor to Trump in his successful presidential race, donating more than $250 million and personally directing some of the real estate mogul’s voter outreach. But after months spent as confidante to the president and head of an effort, dubbed DOGE, to cut government spending, Musk returned to running his several companies last month.

2.	TikTok Building New Version of App for U.S. Users By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan and Juro Osawa Source: The Information

TikTok is building a new version of its app for users in the U.S. ahead of a planned sale of the app to a group of investors, The Information reported.

The company has developed a plan to launch the new TikTok app, known internally as “M2,” to U.S. app stores on September 5. Under the plan, TikTok users will eventually have to download the new app to be able to continue using the service. The existing app is slated to be shut down in the U.S. in March 2026.

The effort to migrate the app’s 170 million U.S. users to a new app comes as the Trump administration says it is getting close to an agreement for the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations. Under that deal, a consortium of investors including Oracle is expected to buy TikTok’s U.S. business, while the app’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, is expected to retain a minority stake. Any deal, however, would require approval from the Chinese government.

Late Friday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that the U.S. was close to a deal for a group to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations and that the administration would start talking to Chinese authorities in the next week.

3.	Trump Says U.S. Will Resume Talks With China on TikTok By Laura Mandaro Source: The Information

President Donald Trump said late Friday that the U.S. was close to a deal for the American operations of TikTok and his administration would start talking to the Chinese government on Monday or Tuesday about the plan.

“I think the deal is good for China, and it’s good for us,” he told reporters traveling on Air Force One Friday night. “It’s money, it’s a lot of money.”

Last week, Trump said on Fox News that the U.S. had found a buyer for TikTok, described as a “group of very wealthy people.”

In April, the White House reached a deal for a group of non-Chinese investors to own a majority of the company, an arrangement that could put it in compliance with a law passed last year requiring TikTok in the U.S. to separate from its Chinese parent ByteDance. But the deal stalled after Trump threatened steep hikes in tariffs on China.

4.	U.S. Mulls AI Chip Curbs on Malaysia, Thailand By Juro Osawa Source: Bloomberg

The Trump administration is planning to restrict the sale of key artificial intelligence chips to Malaysia and Thailand as part of an effort to block China’s access to such chips through intermediaries in Southeast Asia, Bloomberg reported.

The Commerce Department is working on draft export rules for Malaysia and Thailand to crack down on suspected smuggling of Nvidia’s AI chips into China, the report said, adding that the rules aren’t yet finalized and could still change. It is unclear whether the administration would consider similar restrictions for more countries beyond Malaysia and Thailand.

While the U.S. already restricts the export of advanced AI chips to China, Chinese companies have found ways to gain access to the banned chips. Smuggling of Nvidia chips into China has become an organized, multinational enterprise involving brokers and shell companies in Southeast Asia, as The Information last year reported. Chinese companies have also been using Nvidia’s advanced AI chips overseas by renting servers at data centers in Southeast Asia that are equipped with such chips.

5.	TSMC Delays Japan Chip Plant Amid Concerns Over U.S. Tariffs By Qianer Liu Source: The Wall Street Journal

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest chipmaker, is delaying the construction of its second plant in Japan, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the plans.

TSMC is pushing back the plans in Japan because it is prioritizing the expansion of its U.S. operations instead. The company is trying to ensure sufficient chipmaking capacity in the U.S., following President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on imported chips.

The change in TSMC’s plans is the latest example of how the Trump administration’s aggressive trade policies are affecting tech companies as well as Washington’s allies such as Japan. The Japanese chip plant’s delay is a potential blow to Japan’s economy, which is already facing the impact from Trump’s tariffs on cars and steel. TSMC doesn’t have a new timetable for Japan, and it is unclear how long the delay will be, according to the Journal.

TSMC is expected to accelerate its U.S. expansion. Last year, the company said it would invest another $100 billion to increase its chip production capacity in the U.S, in addition to the $65 investment it had previously announced.

6.	Apple Considers Launching Public Cloud By Aaron Tilley Source: The Information

Apple has considered launching its own public cloud for its millions of developers, The Information reported Thursday.

The service would run on Apple’s chips and could potentially handle certain workloads more efficiently than the major cloud players. Apple sees its cloud as potentially useful for tasks like artificial intelligence inference, the process of using pre-trained AI models to interpret new information.

Although this plan could pose a challenge to existing cloud vendors, Apple still spends heavily on those clouds. Apple spends around $7 billion annually between Amazon and Google, The Information also reported.

7.	YouTube, Trump Having ‘Productive Discussions’ Over Censorship Case By Erin Woo Source: The Information

YouTube has engaged in “productive discussions” with Donald Trump “regarding next steps” in a 2021 case in which Trump sued YouTube and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai for banning his accounts after the January 6 riots, according to a May court filing. Additional discussions were “anticipated in the near future,” implying that the parties could soon reach a settlement, according to the ruling.