Finance
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping to speak after rare U.S. security advisor trip to China
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) shakes hands with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at Yanqi Lake in Beijing on August 27, 2024.
Ng Han Guan | Afp | Getty Images
BEIJING — U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to speak over the phone in “coming weeks,” the White House said Wednesday.
The announcement came amid U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan’s trip to Beijing this week to meet with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat.
Both sides said their military leaders would also hold a call in the near future.
Chin added that plans for the second round of U.S.-China talks on artificial intelligence are underway. The White House noted John Podesta, senior advisor to the president for international climate policy, would soon travel to China, without specifying a date.
In official readouts of Sullivan’s trip, the two nations maintained their positions on tech restrictions, Taiwan, the South China Sea and Ukraine.
Biden is not running for reelection in November after this summer, ceding the nomination to his vice president, Kamala Harris. The White House statement did not name the presidents, instead it noted plans for a “leader-level call.”
The Chinese side’s statement used its typical language of “two heads of state,” and said both sides were discussing “a new round of interaction,” according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese.
Biden and Xi held a nearly two-hour phone call in early April, after the two leaders had met in November 2023 on the sidelines of a summit in Woodside, California.
High-level communication between the world’s two largest economies hasn’t been easy in recent years amid heightened tensions and Covid-19 restrictions.
Then-U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August 2022 and a high-profile “balloon incident” in February 2023 had further strained their relationship, suspending some planned talks.
First U.S. security advisor visit since 2016
Sullivan arrived in Beijing Tuesday, wrapped up two days of meetings with Wang on Wednesday and is set to depart Thursday. This is his first trip to China as national security advisor, despite multiple meetings with Wang in recent years.
The last official trip to China by a U.S. president’s national security advisor was in 2016, when Susan Rice traveled to Beijing under the Obama administration.
While the outcome of November’s presidential election remains unclear, being tough on Beijing is a rare issue that both U.S. political parties agree on.
Harris’ current national security advisor, Phil Gordon, said in May at a Council on Foreign Relations event that the “China challenge” is much greater than Taiwan, and requires ensuring that Beijing “doesn’t have the advanced technology, intelligence and military capabilities that can challenge us.”
Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Anthropic is in talks to raise a $3.5 billion funding round, significantly more than the amount previously expected, CNBC has confirmed.
The round would roughly triple the artificial intelligence startup’s valuation to $61.5 billion, according to two sources familiar with the deal, who asked not to be named because the details aren’t public. Lightspeed Ventures is leading the funding, with participation from General Catalyst and others, the sources said.
The financing, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, signals continued investor demand for top-tier AI companies, even in the face of potential disruption from China’s DeepSeek. Anthropic is backed by Amazon and Google, and had initially set out to raise $2 billion, according to a source.
Anthropic declined to comment.
The company’s last private market valuation was $18 billion. Amazon has poured $8 billion into the startup.
Anthropic was founded by early OpenAI employees and is the creator of the popular chatbot Claude. Earlier Monday, Anthropic released what it says is it’s “most intelligent AI model yet. Its so-called hybrid model combines an ability to reason — or stopping to think about complex answers — with a traditional model that spits out answers in real time.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Monday said the U.S. government is inefficient and in need of work as the Trump administration terminates thousands of federal employees and works to dismantle agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Dimon was asked by CNBC’s Leslie Picker whether he supported efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. He declined to give what he called a “binary” response, but made comments that supported the overall effort.
“The government is inefficient, not very competent, and needs a lot of work,” Dimon told Picker. “It’s not just waste and fraud, its outcomes.”
The Trump administration’s effort to rein in spending and scrutinize federal agencies “needs to be done,” Dimon added.
“Why are we spending the money on these things? Are we getting what we deserve? What should we change?” Dimon said. “It’s not just about the deficit, its about building the right policies and procedures and the government we deserve.”
Dimon said if DOGE overreaches with its cost-cutting efforts or engages in activity that’s not legal, “the courts will stop it.”
“I’m hoping it’s quite successful,” he said.
In the wide-ranging interview, Dimon also addressed his company’s push to have most workers in office five days a week, as well as his views on the Ukraine conflict, tariffs and the U.S. consumer.
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