When China's leader Xi Jinping hosts his American counterpart in Beijing this week, Donald Trump will be reminded of his last visit in 2017 - he was wooed hard, complete with dinner inside the Forbidden City, an honour no US president before him had received. This week's reception promises to be just as grand, including a stop inside Zhongnanhai, the rarefied compound where China's top leadership lives and works. The agenda too will be just as thorny, with Iran being a new source of tension, alongside trade, technology and Taiwan. But a lot has changed as Trump returns to a stronger and far more assertive China. Now well into an unprecedented third term, an ambitious Xi has been pushing forward with plans for new productive forces with heavy investments in renewable energy, robotics and artificial intelligence.

Now, Activists Are Taking On Elon Musk's SpaceX IPO Activists, a leading labor union, and a big retirement fund are asking challenging questions about what's expected to be the largest-ever stock market debut. Elon Musk's SpaceX is facing protests against its expected initial public offering from some of the same advocacy groups that helped erase $600 billion from Tesla's market cap early last year. SpaceX's IPO is poised to be the largest ever, raising tens of billions of dollars for the Musk-founded company and valuing it above $2 trillion. If all goes as intended come June, the conglomerate that now owns a rocket manufacturer, a social media app, and an AI chatbot developer will instantly rank among the world's top 10 largest publicly-traded companies. On Wednesday, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote to the US Securities and Exchange Commission urging it to scrutinize SpaceX's IPO preparations.

This story appears in the June 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. The courtship between Silicon Valley and MAGA was consummated on June 6, 2024, in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, on a street known as "Billionaires' Row," at the 22,000-square-foot, $45 million French-limestone mansion of a venture capitalist named David Sacks. Along with Chamath Palihapitiya, a fellow venture capitalist and a colleague on the podcast, Sacks hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump. He knew that other technology titans were coming around to the ex-president but remained in the closet. "And I think that this event is going to break the ice on that," Sacks said on the podcast the week before the fundraiser. "And maybe it'll create a preference cascade, where all of a sudden it becomes acceptable to acknowledge the truth." Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. A few years earlier, Sacks had described the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as an "insurrection" and pronounced Trump "disqualified" from ever again holding national office. "What Trump did was absolutely outrageous, and I think it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics," he said on the podcast a few days after the event. "He will pay for it in the history books, if not in a court of law." Palihapitiya was more colloquial, calling Trump "a complete piece-of-shit fucking scumbag." These might seem like tricky positions to climb down from--but the path that leads from scathing denunciation through gradual accommodation to sycophantic embrace of Trump is a well-worn pilgrimage trail. The journey is less wearisome for self-mortifiers who never considered democracy (a word seldom spoken on the podcast) all that important in the first place.

Varun Chandra advises Keir Starmer on trade negotiations including AI investment. Varun Chandra advises Keir Starmer on trade negotiations including AI investment. Exclusive: Varun Chandra's talks with Google, Meta, Apple and others raise fears of'lobbying behind closed doors' An influential government adviser close to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves held 16 undisclosed meetings with top US tech executives, the Guardian can reveal. The No 10 business aide Varun Chandra discussed regulatory changes, AI and Donald Trump's second administration with tech corporations during confidential meetings between October 2024 and October 2025. In one meeting he offered to help a top executive meet the prime minister directly.

Japan's Terra Drone expands investment in Ukraine drone sector A soldier from Ukraine's Taifun unmanned aerial vehicle unit holds a new model Marsianin attack drone on April 7 in Kharkiv region, Ukraine. Tokyo-based Terra Drone is expanding its investment in Ukrainian interceptor drones as it looks to bring battlefield-tested technology back to Japan to tap into a multibillion-dollar defense budget for unmanned systems. On Tuesday, Terra Drone CEO Toru Tokushige said the company was entering a new strategic partnership with Ukraine's WinnyLab to develop fixed-wing interceptor drones. It comes after the company announced in March that it would make an investment in Ukraine's Amazing Drones to develop vertical take-off interceptor drones. "Starting with interceptor drones we are looking for products that are good for increasing the defensive power of Ukraine and also the defensive power of Japan," Tokushige said in an interview.

The company will add up to $40 billion to its recent investments in the AI startup. Google plans to invest up to $40 billion into Anthropic in what could be viewed as a circular deal with the AI startup (and frequent competitor), reports . The search giant has invested in Anthropic at multiple points in the past, but this new investment comes after an announcement that the AI startup had signed a joint agreement with Google and Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity. According to Anthropic, Google is committing $10 billion now at the company's current valuation, with an additional $30 billion on offer if Anthropic meets specific performance milestones. Through Anthropic's existing commitment to use Google's TPUs (tensor processing units) and servers, Anthropic says Google will also provide 5 gigawatts of computing capacity in 2027.

The ninth edition of the Artificial Intelligence Index Report was published on 13 April 2026. Released on a yearly basis, the aim of the document is to provide readers with accurate, rigorously validated, and globally-sourced data to give insights into the progress of AI and its potential impact on society. The 2026 AI Index Report comprises nine chapters, covering: research and development, technical performance, responsible AI, economy, science, medicine, education, policy and governance, and public opinion. AI capability is accelerating and reaching more people than ever. Model performance continues to improve against benchmarks, and 80% of university students now use generative AI.

Japanet is expanding its venture capital fund with Pegasus Tech Ventures, after early investments in firms like SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI showed strong growth. Japanese home shopping company Japanet is expanding its venture capital fund with San Jose-based Pegasus Tech Ventures, following the success of early bets in SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. The Nagasaki-based retailer known for infomercials targeting seniors in aging Japan will allocate $200 million to the fund, up from an initial $50 million in 2021, following significant growth" in investments so far, the companies said in a statement. The fund, of which Pegasus is general partner, will focus on areas such as generative AI, robotics and space technology. Its Japan portfolio includes startup Aillis, which seeks to use artificial intelligence to analyze medical scans. Asian companies have struggled to win stakes in promising startups in Silicon Valley, hampered by a lack of personal connections and reputation for slow decision-making. Pegasus also manages startup investments on behalf of Toyota Motor-affiliate Aisin, Japanese chemical maker Denka, Taiwan's Asustek Computer and Acer and Indonesia's pharma company Kalbe Farma. Everybody wants a piece of the Silicon Valley AI action," Pegasus Chief Executive Officer Anis Uzzaman said on a video call.

'Workslop' is an unintended consequence of the AI boom. 'Workslop' is an unintended consequence of the AI boom. Bosses say AI boosts productivity - workers say they're drowning in'workslop' Ken, a copywriter for a large, Miami-based cybersecurity firm, used to enjoy his job. But then the "workslop" started piling up. Workslop is an unintended consequence of the AI boom.

An AI crash could bring down the economy. Some in the tech world think that's the price of progress. The tech billionaire Hemant Taneja admits that AI is a bubble. In fact, he welcomes it: "Bubbles are good," Taneja, the CEO of General Catalyst, a venture-capital firm, told me in an email. If AI comes crashing down, it will lead to "some spectacular failures," he said--companies will go under and people will lose their jobs--but that's a price worth paying for "enduring companies that change the world forever."