Take Sam Altman’s royal UK visit with a pinch of salt

ON HIS UK trip to dine with King Charles III this week, US President Donald Trump is accompanied by Silicon Valley royalty: Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Both were expected to highlight billions of dollars of investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, echoing similar jaunts to France and the Middle East, where the tech leaders have promised to help these countries establish greater “AI sovereignty”.

As Bloomberg columnist Lionel Laurent has pointed out, the term borders on meaningless when so many European businesses rely on American cloud companies.