Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.

Minecraft movie makes $720M+

Plus: Nvidia in China, Google loses again

⚡ Tech News Takes ⚡

Nvidia goes to China

• What’s up: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Chinese officials in Beijing, just one day after the US opened an investigation into Nvidia’s chip sales to China, and less than a week after announcing a $500B AI investment in the US. Huang said US export controls have significantly impacted the company and pledged to keep serving the Chinese market. The US’ probe includes Nvidia’s ties to Chinese AI firm DeepSeek and could affect $5.5 billion in planned inventory.

• So what: This is quite a tightrope walk for Nvidia. On the one hand, they need to continue playing the game (link) with President Trump, following the rules and not shipping chips to China (not even their older versions). On the other hand, they want to keep Chinese customers and avoid losing share to Huawei, etc. Historically, they were able to toe the line by reserving their most advanced chips for non-Chinese customers, and selling anything else to China. But with the US’ new restrictions, that’s not good enough — they have to go back several “generations” of chips to satisfy the new export guidance.

Minecraft movie makes $720M+

• What’s up: “A Minecraft Movie” has earned $344 million domestically and $720 million globally after three weekends, making it 2025’s top film and the second-highest-grossing video game movie to date. Fueled by viral TikTok hype and fan engagement, the film has become a box office phenomenon. Warner Bros. is considering a sequel.

• So what: Pretty fascinating. Movie-makers are discovering the same truths that game-makers have discovered — proven IP is more profitable than risky new content. And Minecraft isn’t the only one…. the Super Mario Bros took the #1 spot, grossing $1.4B in 2023. Minecraft is also an interesting story for the TikTok hype that helped it succeed. I predict we’ll continue to see memes and viral videos win out over traditional trailers and billboards in terms of driving box office excitement.

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Other quick hits

• The EU is playing nicely with Trump… by postponing enforcement actions against Apple and Meta over Digital Markets Act violations. Analysts believe they’re trying to avoid provoking Trump during U.S. trade negotiations. The rulings, which could include fines and restrictions, are still expected soon.

• Google illegally monopolized the ad market… according to the latest DOJ ruling. In particular, they abused their control over the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets, hurting publishers and users. Google plans to appeal part of the ruling. It's the company’s second recent (major) antitrust loss — they lost a case for their search business in August 2024.

• Meta’s FTC trial is revealing fascinating internal comms… including this old Zuckerberg quote re: Facebook’s decline and what to do about it:

  • “Every other modern social network is built on following rather than friending, so it seems possible that the FB app is just outdated because it never adopted this... The way to rectify this would be to fully adopt following. If we wanted to do this, I don’t think that simply supporting following for public accounts would be sufficient. I think we’d have to switch from friending to following on private accounts as well… and we’d probably want to get rid of the concept of liking pages...”

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