AI Daily: Nvidia to pay U.S. 15% on H20 chip sales to China

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

H20 CHIPS SALES: President Trump, while speaking in a press conference from the White House, confirmed that Nvidia (NVDA) has agreed to pay 15% of its H20 chip sales to China to the U.S. under a new pact that will allow for the export of older generation AI chips. President Trump said that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang negotiated down to 15% from the 20% the president requested to secure the export licenses. Trump added that the H20 is “obsolete, but it still has a market” and said he would not make a deal for export to China of Nvidia’s latest generation AI chip.

PRELIMINARY RESULTS: C3 AI (AI) reported preliminary Q1 revenue of $70.2M-$70.4M, with consensus at $99.9M, and preliminary Q1 non-GAAP loss from operations ($57.7M) – ($57.9M).  C3 AI also said that in the course of Q1, it restructured its global sales and services organization, including new leadership. That restructuring is now complete, the company said in a statement. The new leadership includes Rob Schilling joining C3 AI as EVP and Chief Commercial Officer, responsible for all sales.

“The good news is we have completely restructured the sales and services organization, including new and highly experienced leadership across the board to ensure a return to accelerating growth and increased customer success at C3 AI. The bad news is that sales results in Q1 were completely unacceptable. Having given this a lot of thought, I attribute this to two factors. One: It is clear that in the short term, the reorganization with new leadership had a disruptive effect. Two: As we have previously announced, I have had a number of health issues in the past six months including multiple hospitalizations and vision impairment. Unfortunately, dealing with these health issues prevented me from participating in the sales process as actively as I have in the past…I am pleased to also report that, but for vision impairment, my health has improved dramatically. I am feeling strong and am fully engaged. As you also know, we are actively engaged in an executive search for a successor CEO at C3 AI and are moving expeditiously to identify some excellent candidates in short order,” said Thomas Siebel, CEO of C3 AI.

Meanwhile, DA Davidson downgraded C3 AI to Underperform from Neutral with a price target of $13, down from $25. The company late Friday announced results that came in significantly below guidance and a restructured sales and services organization, bringing in new leaders across regions, the firm tells investors in a research note. DA Davidson says it previously lacked conviction around the durability of C3 AI’s growth amid its increasing reliance on non-recurring revenue. It suspects the preliminary results reflect this trend finds it likely the business gets worse before it gets better.

PARTNERSHIP: Dell (DELL) AI Data Platform, now with Nvidia and Elastic (ESTC), accelerates AI workflows, boosts creativity and scales enterprise innovation seamlessly, the company said in a blog post. “The Dell AI Data Platform is built precisely for a world where data is gold. Designed for today’s scale and complexity, it empowers creative teams to break down data silos, accelerate every step in their production pipeline and build rich, AI-enabled experiences. Through deeper collaboration with NVIDIA and a new partnership with Elastic, we are delivering a tightly integrated AI stack that streamlines the ability to build, deploy and scale enterprise AI – whether for media and entertainment or any other industry,” the company stated.