Cook dinner and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink had been among the many roughly 300 attendees at this $2,000-a-plate dinner, the place Xi spoke of America and China’s historical past of combating as allies in World Warfare II and pressured his willingness to be a accomplice slightly than competitor to America.

That night, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff posted a photograph with Musk on X, previously Twitter, captioning it: “Go San Francisco! Go APEC! Everyone seems to be right here!”

Tech leaders are cheering the thaw in relations between the USA and China, hoping that much less rigidity between the 2 main economies means decrease threat to the billions of {dollars} firms make from Chinese language customers and the important provide chains that crisscross the Pacific. The optimism led to shares of main tech giants from Nvidia to Google rising.

However among the many pronouncements and well-wishes, a significant challenge remains to be boiling: management over cutting-edge synthetic intelligence and entry to the expertise essential to develop it.

Starting final 12 months, the USA has more and more curtailed the sorts of superior laptop chips that American firms can promote to China, saying that doing so is essential to nationwide safety.

In an hours-long assembly earlier this week, President Biden and Xi did focus on AI, and in an announcement afterward, the White Home mentioned the 2 nations had agreed to “deal with the dangers of superior AI methods and enhance AI security by U.S.-China authorities talks.” On the identical time, Biden emphasised that the 2 nations are opponents, and the USA had held the road all through the APEC summit that the export controls over chips which are important to processing AI aren’t going anyplace.

“The USA and China for now seem like heading towards a expertise chilly conflict. That has not been mounted, that has not been addressed,” Ian Bremmer, president of world politics analysis agency Eurasia Group, mentioned in a speech on the summit.

AI fever has gripped the tech world during the last 12 months, after OpenAI launched ChatGPT and confirmed the potential of “generative” AI expertise. Large Tech firms and start-ups alike have scrambled to supply new enterprise and shopper merchandise primarily based on the tech, generally pushing them out earlier than they’re prepared. Governments around the globe are finding out methods to regulate AI, and debate is ongoing about how critical the potential dangers of the expertise are.

The AI increase has given additional weight to Biden’s chip export controls. Superior laptop chips, particularly graphic processing items or GPUs made by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia, are important to coaching and operating the massively advanced algorithms behind fashionable AI, and the corporate’s inventory has greater than tripled during the last 12 months as companies all around the world purchase the chips quicker than it may possibly produce them. Each rounds of the U.S. export controls have impacted Nvidia, and the second spherical, rolled out final month, particularly blocked the corporate from exporting a particular line of slower AI chips it had been promoting to Chinese language corporations.

Whereas Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has mentioned the controls are geared toward China’s army, she has acknowledged they might have a broader impression on China’s economic system.

On the APEC CEO Summit on Thursday, tech CEOs took the stage to speak about how vital AI is to the longer term and the world economic system.

“It’s going to have a big effect,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned, however growing the tech safely would require governments to work collectively on floor guidelines. “There isn’t a approach you make progress over the long run with out China and the U.S. deeply speaking to one another on one thing like AI.”

Biden himself talked about AI in his speech. “The world is at an inflection level the place the choices we make right this moment — this isn’t hyperbole — are going to form the path of the world for many years to come back,” he mentioned. “Simply consider AI.”

Tech leaders have usually been reluctant to wade straight into the general public dialog about the USA and China. Nvidia has warned traders that the export controls may impression its backside line within the long-term. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday that solely a small portion of the corporate’s enterprise is in China. “We don’t see this as a significant, main challenge for us, fairly frankly, apart from any disruption to the availability chain,” Nadella mentioned.

However regardless of statements like that, the tech business remains to be intertwined with China, mentioned Jon Bateman, a tech and worldwide affairs analyst on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace. The U.S. laptop chip business will get an enormous portion of its income from Chinese language patrons. Apple sells tens of billions of {dollars} price of telephones and providers there. And even firms akin to Fb and Google, that are blocked on the Chinese language web, generate income from Chinese language companies trying to promote to worldwide customers. Hundreds of extremely expert Chinese language nationals work within the American tech business.

“U.S. tech firms are very involved about this trajectory however they really feel disempowered and unvoiced,” Bateman mentioned. The chip producers are lobbying in opposition to the export controls behind the scenes, he mentioned.

“However they’re usually unwilling to make an enormous deal about it in public, as a result of they know the politics are so in opposition to them,” Bates mentioned. They “reside in worry of being hauled in entrance of a congressional committee and being referred to as a good friend of China.”

John Hudson contributed to this report.