AI Daily Brief — 01 February 2025
Saturday opened February with a Washington tariff salvo and an Altman Asia tour. Trump signed three executive orders imposing a 10% tariff on China imports and 25% on Canada and Mexico — direct knock-on for AI hardware supply chains. Sam Altman touched down in Tokyo for the first leg of a Japan-Korea-India-Germany-UAE swing widely read as a Stargate-financing push. DeepSeek’s regulatory dogpile broadened: Texas AG Paxton opened a probe, Gov Abbott banned DeepSeek along with RedNote and Lemon8 on state devices, and Ireland’s DPC sent a formal data-processing inquiry. The EU AI Act’s first hard deadline sat 24 hours away.
Top stories
- Trump signs three tariff EOs: 10% on China imports, 25% on Canada and Mexico. Citing fentanyl flow, the orders take effect Feb 4. The China move escalated US-China trade tension with direct downstream effects on AI hardware supply chains — chip packaging, assembly, and adjacent components routed through North America. via Winston & Strawn
- Sam Altman’s Asia tour begins — Japan first. Multi-country swing (Japan, South Korea, India, Germany, UAE) opens with meetings alongside SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and PM Shigeru Ishiba in Tokyo. UTokyo student event Feb 3, Seoul Builder Lab Feb 4. Widely framed as a Stargate-financing push and counter-DeepSeek partnership drive. via Business Standard
- Texas AG opens DeepSeek probe; Gov Abbott bans DeepSeek, RedNote, Lemon8 on state devices. First US state ban, layered atop DISA’s Jan 28 Pentagon block and the US Navy’s Jan 24 “shipmates” memo. Ireland’s DPC sent a formal data-processing inquiry Jan 29. via Euronews
- DeepSeek still restricting non-mainland sign-ups after large-scale cyberattack. CCTV later attributed the brute-force DDoS waves to US-based IPs. The lockout — new registrations limited to mainland China mobile numbers — was still in effect heading into the Feb 1 weekend. via CyberScoop
Who shipped
OpenAI’s o3-mini continued rolling out to all ChatGPT tiers including free — the first reasoning model on the free plan, framed directly as a response to DeepSeek pricing pressure. Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta, xAI, and Mistral made no dated Saturday launches.
Quiet corners
arXiv announcement system paused for the weekend. The eve of the EU AI Act’s first hard deadline — Article 5 prohibitions and Article 4 AI-literacy obligations go live Sunday.
Money, infra & hardware
Trump’s Jan 27 floated 100% tariff on Taiwanese semiconductors remained the dominant infra/chips overhang: roughly 44.2% of US logic-chip imports come from Taiwan; analysts cited up to 59% potential price increase under disruption. Microsoft Pentagon and Navy lockouts of DeepSeek foreshadowed the No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act introduced Feb 7. via Radio Free Asia
By the numbers
- 3 Trump tariff EOs signed Feb 1
- 10% / 25% — China / Canada+Mexico tariff rates
- 5 countries on Altman’s Asia tour
- Most-mentioned actor: Trump administration
Compiled by AI Feed’s editor from verified web sources for 1 February 2025.