The calm in the U.S.–China AI race is misleading. The tariff truce runs until January, but BOTH governments are seen intervening to more AI and tech deals. 1. Meta x Manus AI ($2 BILLION) In April, Beijing ordered Meta to unwind its Manus acquisition amid reported national security and export-control concerns over AI talent and technology moving to the U.S. Manus went independent again in August, setting a precedent for Beijing to intervene even after an AI deal closes. 2. SoftBank × ABB Robotics ($5.4 BILLION) On Nov. 5, Beijing blocked the Chinese portion of Japan’s SoftBank’s $5.4B takeover of Swiss group ABB’s robotics unit. China was concerned that robotics data from China could be used to train AI models abroad. SoftBank's shares fell 7% in Tokyo, and ABB says the companies are still pursuing the deal. 3. Oracle × Tencent ($7 BILLION) On Nov 4, Oracle scrapped the lease after U.S. officials raised concerns. The same goes with Tencent, with Guangdong officials urging the firm to back domestic chipmakers. Tencent originally agreed to rent access to up to 100,000 advanced AI chips at Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia for five years. ORCL fell 2% and NVDA dropped 3.2% that day. 4. Nvidia’s 49% cap and China’s chip squeeze Recently, Nvidia reportedly told cloud partners to cap Chinese customers’ share of capacity at 49% in new contracts. This could curb TikTok owner ByteDance’s access to more advanced chips overseas. On Nov. 5, Reuters reported that about 600,000 H200 chips were sitting in Hong Kong as Beijing held off on approving bulk imports. ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent also ordered more than 3 MILLION RTX Pro 5500 cards with a combined sticker price above $35 BILLION.