• Ned's Club is a private members-only space geared towards high-achieving professionals.
• The club's new location in Washington, DC, has three floors for socializing, dining, and events.
• Members' names are kept private, and it costs up to $125,000 to join at the highest membership tier.

Washington, DC's hottest club has everything.

A historic location steps from the White House. An elite, secret membership roster. Four fine-dining restaurants, each offering a different cuisine. A six-figure top-tier membership fee.

Welcome to Ned's Club, a private members-only space designed for high-achieving professionals across industries to lounge, dine, and mingle away from prying eyes.

A spinoff of Soho House members' clubs, Ned's Club began in London in 2017 and has since opened locations in New York, Doha, and now Washington, DC.

Managing director Gareth Banner estimates that about 90% of Ned's Club members are C-suite-level professionals, founders, and entrepreneurs. While the club doesn't disclose the names of its members, reported sightings have included Mark Cuban, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Clinton operative and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, and CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.

"If the truth be told, and we make no apology for it, we are focused on probably attracting the top 1%, 2% of people," Banner told Business Insider. "So it doesn't really matter what you do, but you should be at the absolute top of your game."

Admission to the nearly 60,000-square-foot club comes at a price. Regular membership costs $5,000 to join and $5,000 a year. The top-tier Founders' membership, which includes additional perks such as access to the Founders' Dining Room, costs $125,000 to join and $25,000 a year.

Ned's Club granted Business Insider rare access to the exclusive space. Take a look around Ned's Club in Washington, DC.

Ned's Club occupies the top three floors of the Milken Institute, a five-building complex in Washington, DC.

The Milken Institute, a think tank founded by former Wall Street financier and billionaire philanthropist Mike Milken, is located around the corner from the Treasury Department and a five-minute walk from the White House.

The Ned's Club brand is named for Sir Edwin "Ned" Landseer Lutyens, the architect who designed the former Midland Bank building that houses the original London location.

"We love working with an old building and repurposing it in a way that makes it relevant for a different intended purpose," Banner said. "A great old building gives you so much in terms of character."

Privacy is paramount at Ned's Club — no photography is permitted, and members aren't allowed to disclose the names of other members.

Members and visitors are required to cover their phone cameras with stickers provided by the club upon entry.

"We work very hard to make sure that everything that happens here is off the record," Joiwind Ronen, executive director of membership and programming at Ned's Club, told Business Insider.

While the club's membership remains private, Ronen could disclose that the membership committee includes Kellyanne Conway, Paramount executive DeDe Lea, MSNBC host Symone D. Sanders-Townsend, and Zach Leonsis, whose family owns the Washington Wizards and the Capitals.

Members enter Ned's Club through what was once the Walker Building and is now part of the Milken Institute.

Built in 1937, the former Walker Building's entrance has been restored with handpainted wallpaper featuring DC's iconic cherry blossoms.

In the lobby, Ronen pointed out a sign advertising upcoming members-only events including comedy and trivia nights, a supper club for expats, and an Earth Day gathering with the Nature Conservancy featuring Chesapeake oysters. The club's offerings also include occasional off-site events such as test-driving a new line of Ferraris in Bethesda or viewing Elizabeth Taylor's private jewel collection at Bulgari.

The elevators open into the ninth-floor hallway featuring pieces from a curated art collection called "The First 47."

"The First 47" highlights the work of 47 female artists, juxtaposing the all-male history of 47 US presidents.

All of the artwork in Ned's Club is curated by Soho House.

Ned's Club and Soho House remain separate entities with no crossover membership access, but they do overlap in other ways.

Ron Burkle, who owns Ned's Club's umbrella organization called The Ned, is the majority shareholder of Soho House & Co Inc. Soho House also collaborated with Stonehill Taylor to design the Ned's Club location in Washington, DC.

Banner described Ned's Club as an "offshoot" of Soho House geared toward a broader, more professional audience, not just creatives.

"We look for the high-performance people who are leading their sector — the movers and the shakers," he said.

The two-story Library is the only room at Ned's Club where members are allowed to use their laptops, but only until 5 p.m.

It's also the only room with a TV, which the club uses to host watch parties for events like the Oscars and the Super Bowl.

The striped blue wallpaper was modeled after the wallpaper in the Obama White House.

A tapestry by Malaika Temba hangs above the mantle depicting a woman reading a newspaper with the headline "War is not a shortcut to lasting change." The piece is part of "The First 47."

With its 1920s-inspired decor, I felt like I'd walked into a speakeasy.

Members can order cocktails and snacks at the Library Bar, which serves items including chicken Parmesan tenders, burgers and fries, and mini lobster rolls.

Since Ned's Club began as a British organization, there's also a tea service complete with individual teapots.

"I think in DC — and I've lived here for 30 years — we're known as a very type-A intense town," Ronen said. "To see people just relaxing, having tea, having an extended conversation for an extended period of time, feels so luxurious. There's something really beautiful about seeing people engage that way."

My tour continued in The Gallery, Ned's Club's Italian-American restaurant.

The restaurant, which serves dishes like Margherita pizza, branzino, and rigatoni bolognese, features plush velvet seating and a custom mural by Patricia Cronin.

The Gallery leads into the Conservatory, which was once an outdoor space.

The enclosed Conservatory still feels like an outdoor terrace with wicker furniture, numerous plants, and large windows that let the sun stream in.

The Drawing Room serves as a lounge where members can mingle.

The Drawing Room features an intricate wood ceiling and more plush seating.

The room also hosts live music performances every weeknight.

Ned's Club provides a piano and drum set for musicians.

The Founders' Dining Room is available to those who pay $25,000 a year on top of the $125,000 joining fee for the higher membership tier.

The decor, which includes wood accents, stained-glass windows, and other fine dining touches, was inspired by the Kennedy administration.

"It's meant to evoke that period of some of the Camelot days of DC," Ronen said, referring to the way Kennedy's presidency was romanticized after his assassination as akin to King Arthur's court.

The Founders' Dining Room is one of only two restaurants in North America that serves beef from the esteemed Four Sixes Ranch.

Four Sixes Ranch, one of the oldest cattle ranches in the US, became known for its role in the drama series "Yellowstone."

Prices at the Founders' Dining Room include a $70 filet mignon and a $195 bone-in ribeye.

Kaia, Ned's Club's Pan-Asian restaurant, is adjacent to the building's rooftop terrace.

Kaia serves sushi, sashimi, and assorted grilled meats.

The ceiling of the restaurant and lounge is painted with a mural by artist Rose Jaffe.

Kaia also features a custom mosaic floor.

The highlight of my tour was the wraparound rooftop terrace, where I sat to enjoy the sunshine and the view.

When I visited midday on a Friday, the balcony was mostly empty aside from a few members. Despite the small crowd, I watched as staff members straightened chairs and fluffed seat cushions with meticulous attention to detail.

From the roof, I could see the Washington Monument, the White House, the Tidal Basin, and other DC landmarks.

The club brings in a DJ to play music on the roof on Sundays.

In addition to the members-only club, Ned's Club offers five private event spaces that anyone can book.

The rooms range from a boardroom for 60 people to the Riggs Room with a capacity of 150.

With 1,300 members and counting, Ned's Club already has a long waitlist of people eager to enjoy the lush space and rub shoulders with some of DC's most influential figures.

To Banner, the most luxurious aspect of Ned's Club isn't the fine dining or the furnishings — it's the sense of community often sought through "third places" that aren't home or work.

"I think there is a certain experience you get in a club — the stuff that you can't get in, say, a restaurant or a hotel," he said. "I think people want to belong to something."

• Patrick Collison said Stripe invites a customer to leadership meetings every two weeks.
• The fintech CEO says it sparks new ideas — even with other feedback systems in place.
• Elon Musk gave the move his seal of approval on X, calling it a "good idea."

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison has a direct way to get customer feedback: invite them to management meetings.

Collison shared a post on X this week that Stripe invites one customer to join the first 30 minutes of its leadership meetings every other week, which are attended by around 40 of the company's top managers.

The guest then shares "candid" feedback about their experience with the payments platform.

The move may be unusual, but it received some support, including from Elon Musk, who replied on X the next day, "Good idea."

Collison said the practice consistently generates "new thoughts and investigations" despite Stripe already having plenty of other feedback channels.

Stripe, founded in 2010 by brothers Patrick and John Collison, provides software tools for online and in-person payment processing to millions of businesses globally.

Originally built as a payments platform for startups, it's now used by half of the Fortune 100 and processed $1.4 trillion in payments in 2024, a 38% increase from the previous year, the company said in its most recent annual letter.

Following a secondary share sale in early 2025, the company was valued at $91.5 billion, making it one of the world's most valuable private fintech companies.

However, as Stripe has scaled, it has faced criticism from some users who think the company's focus has shifted toward large enterprise clients.

"Hi Patrick — you know I admire Stripe — but you should pay attention to the extent things have degraded for the indie community using Stripe," Pascal Levy-Garboua, an investor and cofounder, commented on the post. "I messaged support a week ago - no reply, things are super complicated. There's more stuff, but it's a mess."

Others praised the customer-in-the-room tactic as a way to maintain customer empathy. "Love this," one user replied. "Keeps the culture focused on what matters."

When Cloudflare's chief technology officer, Dane Knecht, asked when they'd get an invite, Collison replied, "Would love to have you guys… will reach out." Shopify's head of engineering, Farhan Thawar, also weighed in, calling it a "great idea" and adding, "Lmk when you'd like @Shopify to attend."

Stripe laid off 300 employees in January — about 3.5% of its workforce — Business Insider previously reported.

Despite the cuts, the company's chief people officer, Rob McIntosh said it still planned to grow headcount to around 10,000 by the end of the year.

• JPMorgan posted first-quarter earnings on Friday.
• The banking giant posted strong growth in revenue and profits but also grew its reserves.
• CEO Jamie Dimon said the US economy faces "considerable turbulence" from tariffs and other factors.

Jamie Dimon reiterated his warning about a turbulent US economy in JPMorgan's first-quarter earnings report on Friday, as the banking giant reported earnings that beat Wall Street's expectations.

JPMorgan's net revenue rose 8% year-on-year to $45.3 billion, driving net income up 9% to $14.6 billion.

The bank bolstered its provision for credit losses — money set aside in anticipation of bad debts — by $973 million to $3.3 billion in the first three months of this year, citing a worse macroeconomic outlook.

JPMorgan reported earnings per share of $5.07, trouncing AlphaSense's consensus forecast of $4.65.

Shares rose 2.6% in premarket trading. The stock has fallen 5.4% this year.

"The economy is facing considerable turbulence (including geopolitics), with the potential positives of tax reform and deregulation and the potential negatives of tariffs and "trade wars," ongoing sticky inflation, high fiscal deficits and still rather high asset prices and volatility," Dimon commented in the earnings report, pulling from his letter to JPMorgan shareholders on Monday.

In his letter, Dimon cautioned the Trump administration's latest tariffs were likely to accelerate inflation and slow the US economy's growth. He also said he supported the US demanding that "unfair" trade and tax policies be rectified.

The billionaire banker later told Fox Business that a recession had become a "likely outcome."

• Trump and China are locked in a trade war, and for some products, the situation is getting out of hand.
• Thanks to the US and China's tariff tit-for-tat, EVs from China now face a 247.5% tariff rate.
• So don't expect to see cars from Tesla rivals BYD or Xiaomi on the road anytime soon.

It was already nearly impossible to buy a BYD in the US, but now things are getting somewhat out of hand.

After a rapid escalation in the trade war between the US and China over the past few days, anyone trying to import a Chinese electric car to the US faces a tariff rate of 247.5% — so don't expect to see any cars from Tesla rivals BYD or Xiaomi on the road anytime soon.

A spokesperson for the US International Trade Commission confirmed the total tax rate to Business Insider on Thursday.

That includes the 145% tariffs on Chinese goods announced by Donald Trump in recent days and the 100% levy on Chinese electric cars implemented by Joe Biden last year, plus a 2.5% duty rate on all EVs bought into the US for good measure.

The enormous number is a sign of how the trade war between the world's two largest economies has escalated to almost ludicrous levels. China retaliated against the latest US tariffs on Friday with its own 125% tariff on US goods.

It also shows how far successive US administrations have gone to prevent a wave of affordable, high-tech Chinese electric vehicles from reaching American shores.

According to classic car importer CFR Classic, the cost of importing a car from China to the US starts from $2,749. This means that anyone trying to import a Chinese EV would face extra shipping costs of at least $6,800.

That's not far off the cost of the $7,800 Seagull, BYD's cheapest electric car — and thanks to a host of additional regulations and restrictions, it is unlikely anyone would be able to legally drive one on US roads even if they could afford the shipping fees.

Chinese EVs pose an existential threat

Having once dismissed Chinese carmakers, the US auto industry has now decided BYD and its fellow upstarts represent an existential threat.

Elon Musk warned last year that China's EV companies would "demolish" their Western rivals without trade barriers. At the same time, Ford CEO Jim Farley was so impressed by Xiaomi's SU7 electric sedan that he flew one from Shanghai to Chicago.

The 250% trade barrier protects Tesla, Ford, and other automakers from having to compete with BYD and Xiaomi in the US, but it does little to protect them elsewhere.

Not content with crushing Western automakers at home, China's EV makers are now expanding rapidly in developing markets like Brazil and Southeast Asia.

They are also building factories and entering new markets in Europe, which is reportedly considering removing its own tariffs on Chinese electric cars after getting dragged into Trump's trade war.

Americans, who in surveys have consistently cited a lack of affordability and choice as major barriers to buying an EV, are starting to take notice.

YouTuber iShowSpeed, real name Darren Watkins Jr., showed off some of BYD's most eye-catching cars to his 38.6 million subscribers during a recent visit to China.

In a livestream with around 8 million views on YouTube, the streamer drove BYD's Yangwang U8 SUV, which can float on water for up to 30 minutes, and the U9, a $233,000 electric supercar with remote-controlled suspension that allows it to "dance" and jump over obstacles.

When he attempted to buy the U9 to take back to the US, however, the influencer was told it wasn't possible.

For many US drivers who want to see the Seagull or SU7 in action, high tariffs mean YouTube is their only option. Or they can just cross the border to Mexico, where Chinese EVs are rapidly becoming a common sight on local roads.

• Disney is working on a "Star Wars" horror project, according to "Andor" creator Tony Gilroy.
• The showrunner spoke to Business Insider on the red carpet for "Andor" season two.
• Gilroy previously suggested that the "Star Wars" franchise should expand into other genres.

"Andor" creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy says Disney is working on a horror project within the "Star Wars" universe.

The showrunner briefly touched on the future of the "Star Wars" franchise when speaking to SFX Magazine in March ahead of the final season of "Andor." He joked that he'd like to see "a three-camera sitcom in 'Star Wars' or a horror movie."

Gilroy spoke to Business Insider on the "Andor" season two red carpet in London on Thursday.

Asked what he would do with a "Star Wars" horror project, he said Lucasfilm and Disney already had one in development: "They're doing that. I think they're doing that. I think that's in the works, yeah."

Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gilroy didn't say whether the project was a TV show or a movie.

He also clarified his previous comments: "I'm agnostic about what should be done. I was riffing on the thing where I said, 'Oh, do a three-camera comedy,' so I was riffing. Sometimes riffing doesn't work with the 'Star Wars' community."

Referring to "Andor," Gilroy said: "The right creator, and the right moment, and the right vibe … you can do anything. So, my hope is that the show connects, and then we can pass along the favor that we were given from 'Mandalorian,' and we can pass along a good healthy backwind to someone else who wants to do something else cool."

The "Andor" series is a more serious affair than some of the other "Star Wars" projects of late. The political thriller focuses on the growing rebellion against the Empire in the years before 2016's "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," as well as 1977's "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope."

The first season, released in 2022, was met with widespread critical acclaim and earned a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Its success showed that the "Star Wars" franchise can explore wider themes and genres without relying on the Jedi, lightsabers, and the Force to keep its audience engaged.

"Andor" season two starts streaming on Disney+ on April 22.

• Marine leaders emphasize wargaming to foster learning and adaptability in troops.
• Wargaming helps Marines understand adversary tactics and adapt to emerging technologies.
• Marine leaders say it's important to embrace losing.

A Marine Corps general said this week that officers and troops can't shy away from wargaming, tough exercises in critical thinking.

They also can't be afraid to lose, he said.

"Why isn't everybody wargaming today, right now?" Brig. Gen. Matthew Tracy, the commanding general for the Corps' Education Command, asked Tuesday at the Sea, Air, and Space symposium, a big annual event for military and defense industry insiders.

"We know it's the best way to learn," Tracy said.

"We know they need to get some reps."

Some military leaders might be holding back from making wargaming more common because they fear losing in front of fellow Marines, including junior troops. It will take some bold leadership to help overcome fears of embarrassment, he said.

"We have to get down behind the weapon and show that it's okay to fail." That's key to leadership.

What is wargaming?

Thoughts of military wargames might bring to mind images of senior military officers clustered around a table with figurines representing maneuvering units. That's not wrong. Such games are still important for wargaming.

But nowadays, wargames also come in boxes, on computers, and even in the form of plain flash cards. Some are also played in the field with red and blue teams and aggressor squadrons.

They're for all ranks, but not as commonplace as some would like to see. Leaders like Tracy don't just want to see colonels sweating through these mental gymnastics. They also want to see the trigger-pullers at the lowest tactical levels involved.

At the symposium, a young Marine officer demonstrated the latest computer-based wargame while nearby cadets from the Naval Academy played an almost human-size version of a game that resembled the classic board game "Battleship."

Other games included increasingly complex elements for troops to consider, such as friendly and enemy nations' economic and diplomatic concerns, or how another country's civilians might react to the presence of US troops.

"When you have the time to think, it gives you the muscle memory about things to consider," explained retired Marine Lt. Gen. Lori Reynolds. She previously led the service's Cyber Command and also participated in Tuesday's event.

According to Reynolds, wargaming "improves your ability to understand adversary tactics and capabilities."

The tests force players to constantly check their assumptions about what's happening on the battlefield, she said, making it an ideal environment for learning by failure.

"It's important that we lose when it's okay to lose," she said. Better at the table than in battle.

Amid the Corps' efforts to modernize for a great-power fight in the Pacific after decades of war in the Middle East, checking old assumptions is even more important.

"When you think about Marine Corps Force Design efforts, we're going to be in a more distributed laydown than ever before," Reynolds said, referring to the Corps' initiative to cut mainstays like tanks and sniper units to build a force for combat on the island chains in the Pacific.

The geography of the Pacific — with its remote islands and varying degrees of infrastructure availability — has had war planners spinning their wheels in recent years to discern what the logistics support for such a war might look like.

Wargaming has previously forced planners to confront uncomfortable realities about Pacific warfare. For the rank-and-file, it could help troops to grapple with other emerging issues, like drone warfare and advancements in electronic warfare.

"The ability to teach at the lowest levels, not just what the capability of these emerging technologies can do, but how to properly employ it," makes wargaming more critical, Reynolds said, especially for the most junior ranks.

The notoriously rigid Marine Corps is known for favoring decentralized command structures to foster decision-making in the most junior ranks.

The idea is that when far removed from high-ranking leadership in combat, even the most junior enlisted troops can understand what's going on and make sound decisions to lead their small squads effectively.

Tougher wargaming

"Each year's wargaming efforts should surpass the last in complexity, challenge, and effectiveness," Tracy told Business Insider in an email after the symposium.

Part of the complexity that he envisions for thornier gaming could come in the form of AI-assisted games.

By including AI in wargaming scenarios, "you can look at a whole lot more potential outcomes, and you can look at them a whole lot faster," said Steven Wills, who moderated Tuesday's event and who serves as a research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses.

"Being able to examine a wider problem set, the thought is that we can think and operate faster than the bad guys and get ahead of their decision-making." Good wargaming, he explained, exposes unforeseen consequences of decision-making, setting off more complex chains of events.

But it doesn't give a participant a road map for winning.

"It lets you play through a whole lot of different outcomes so that when you think about an actual fight, you have an idea of what the outcomes might or could be," Wills said.

"It's all about trying to get you to think about the problem."

But thinking about those problems is going to take a level of vulnerability from Marine leaders, Tracy said.

"Creating a culture of wargaming starts at the highest levels, where leaders set the example by participating directly, making themselves vulnerable, and demonstrating a willingness to lose in order to learn," he told BI.

If you're always winning, you aren't being challenged, Reynolds explained. "It's okay to fail in a safe place that teaches growth."

"It teaches the importance of being a learning organization," she said. "You don't learn if you constantly win."

• US firms like OpenAI often keep their most advanced AI models behind paywalls.
• Chinese tech giants have been giving models away and are quickly integrating them into services.
• Analysts explain the key difference in strategies between China and the US.

Chinese tech giants are playing a different AI game.

US AI companies — like OpenAI and Anthropic — usually keep their most powerful models locked behind paywalls for consumers or license them to enterprises.

China's biggest players, in contrast, are handing theirs out for free — and rolling them out across everyday tech at breakneck speed, Ray Wang, a Washington-based analyst who specializes in AI and US-China tech statecraft, told Business Insider.

Instead of trying to outbuild leading players like OpenAI, China is out-deploying AI and "undergoing consolidation" — in other words, embedding AI into everything, Wang said.

That rapid integration could prove just as crucial as model quality in determining a country's overall competitiveness in AI, he said.

While the US maintains "a limited lead in frontier AI models over China," China's aggressive push to embed AI into everyday tech could give it an edge in real-world adoption, Wang added.

"China could have broader and faster — or on par with the US — AI integration in consumer devices and applications despite not having the most advanced LLM," Wang said, referring to large language models.

China's AI strategy

In recent weeks, companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent have flooded the market with powerful AI models and upgrades.

In late March, Alibaba announced a new AI model designed for developing cost-effective AI agents. That same month, DeepSeek unveiled an upgraded version of its open-source V3 large language model.

Models like Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Omni-7B and DeepSeek's V3 are freely available for anyone to download, modify, and integrate.

DeepSeek's latest models — especially the reasoning-focused R1 and R2 set to launch later this month or in May — mark a "significant inflection point," said Wei Sun, the principal analyst for AI at Counterpoint Research.

"These models not only match the best-in-class performance globally, but are also open-sourced under the most permissive MIT License," she said.

"That changes the game," she added.

Amid high costs and chip shortages, Chinese firms are also prioritizing rapid AI deployment and consolidation to stay competitive, said Wang.

Tencent has deployed its Hunyuan model and DeepSeek R1 across its massive ecosystem, including WeChat, he said. WeChat, China's biggest social media app, is used by nearly 1.4 billion people.

Baidu has also integrated DeepSeek R1 into its search engine, Wang said.

Baidu last month released two newer versions of its AI model — Ernie X1, a reasoning model, and Ernie 4.5, a revamped version of the company's foundational model. The tech giant said it will "progressively integrate" Ernie 4.5 and X1 into its product ecosystem, including Baidu Search, China's dominant search engine.

"These developments underscore China's increasing emphasis on AI integration, application-driven innovation, and enterprise solutions rather than solely competing on model sophistication," Wang said.

The US's AI upgrades

In contrast, the dominant trend in the US is to build advanced, closed-source AI models that require significant investment in computing power, said Wang.

Big Tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta have spent billions on the infrastructure underpinning emerging AI tech. The four companies are expected to spend a collective $320 billion in capital expenditures this year to broaden their AI capabilities.

Their flagship models — including OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini — are typically closed-source and monetized through APIs or enterprise licensing. This restricts access and limits how widely developers can experiment or build on them. However, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, said in January that the company needs to "figure out a different open source strategy."

On April 10, Anthropic introduced a new $200-per-month subscription tier for its Claude chatbot — matching the premium pricing of rival OpenAI.

Meta is an exception with its open-source Llama model series. But despite its open-source stance, Meta still takes a capital-heavy approach, Wang said. Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has committed as much as $65 billion to AI projects this year.

Where China is catching up

A report released on Monday by Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Index found that US private AI investment grew to $109.1 billion last year — nearly 12 times China's $9.3 billion.

While the US has produced more AI models than China, the report found that Chinese models have "rapidly closed the quality gap."

China also continues to lead in AI publications and patents, the report found.

"Chinese vendors have come a long way from being caught surprised by ChatGPT to now competing head-to-head with top Western vendors," Lian Jye Su, the chief analyst at Omdia, told BI.

"It will take a while for China to compete in AI chipsets, but China has managed to provide solid alternatives to users looking at non-US AI software and applications," he added.