Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

America's motto, its kind of foundational statement, is, in God we trust. But a spirituality

less tied to the usual denominations seems to be taking hold. In fact, in religious affiliation

surveys, the fastest growing response is nothing in particular. And there hasn't traditionally been

a culture of surfing in China. If anything, it had been seen as a dangerous pursuit to be looked

down upon. That is changing and it's women who are leading the charge to ride the waves.

Though even if you haven't heard of Nvidia, chances are you've used a product that contains one of its chips.

The American multinational was co-founded nearly three decades ago, but in the past five years,

its market value has skyrocketed by a factor of 15, eclipsing that of its biggest rival Intel

and giving co-founder, Jensen Huang, plenty to crawl about. There are powerful forces shaping the

world's industries. Accelerating computing that we pioneered has supercharged scientific discovery

while providing the computer industry a path forward. Last September, the company announced plans

to get even bigger by acquiring ARM, a British firm whose chips are in most of the world's smartphones

for $40 billion. That bid is a window into how few companies are behind the products and services

now available to billions and just how pervasive artificial intelligence is becoming in all of them.

Now it's up to regulators to approve the deal. Britain's competition authorities are due to

rule in the coming week and China's have just delayed their formal review of it. Nvidia has a

firm grip on a fast growing market, one that authorities don't want to see turn into a stranglehold.

Nvidia is really well established in AI already and remember machine learning, it's not just about

geeky, go-playing competitions. AI is increasingly important to a huge number of industries.

Tams and Booth is the economist's technology and business editor. An Nvidia's bid to buy ARM

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