ReportWire

Tag: Semiconductors

  • A.I.’s Data Center Rush Will Create Six-Figure Trade Jobs, Jensen Huang Predicts

    Jensen Huang speaks during the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 21, 2026. Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

    Much has been said about A.I.’s potential to replace jobs. But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is more concerned about A.I. creating a labor shortage—at least in the short term. As tech companies race to build data centers across the U.S. and around the world, they will need tradespeople such as plumbers, electricians and construction workers to make it happen. “This is the largest infrastructure buildout in human history. That’s going to create a lot of jobs,” said Huang during an interview with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21.

    New labor opportunities will be especially concentrated in the trades, where Huang claims pay has already nearly doubled. Those who help build semiconductor plants, computer factories and data centers will soon be making “six-figure salaries,” according to the executive.

    “Everyone should be able to make a great living,” said Huang. “You don’t need a Ph.D. in computer science to do so.”

    The median annual pay for electricians in 2024 was around $62,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was roughly $46,000 for construction laborers and nearly $63,000 for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters. Growth for all three professions from 2024 to 2034 is expected to outpace the average occupational growth rate of 3 percent, with demand for electricians in particular surging. The field is projected to expand by 9 percent over the next decade, with about 81,000 openings projected annually on average.

    The U.S. is already seeing a “significant boom” in these areas, according to Huang—so much so that it has led to a “great shortage” in tradecraft roles. The A.I. boom is expected to worsen a worker deficit the industry was already facing. In December 2022, some 490,000 construction positions went unfilled, according to a McKinsey report, the highest level recorded this century.

    Huang isn’t the only CEO who believes A.I. will be a boon for trade jobs. Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, described vocational skills as “very valuable, if not irreplaceable,” while speaking in Davos earlier this week. Ford CEO Jim Farley has made similar arguments on behalf of the blue-collar community, saying the country does not yet have a large enough workforce to support its data center ambitions. “I think the intent is there, but there’s nothing to backfill the ambition,” he told Axios in August.

    The opportunity for A.I.-driven manual labor jobs won’t be limited to the U.S., Huang added, but will extend around the world as data center construction accelerates. “There is not one country in the world I can imagine where you [don’t] need to have A.I. as part of your infrastructure.”

    A.I.’s Data Center Rush Will Create Six-Figure Trade Jobs, Jensen Huang Predicts

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • Economic oasis emerges in the Arizona desert

    Arizona is fast becoming a major hub for computer chip production thanks to what’s being called the largest foreign direct investment in U.S. history. Kris Van Cleave takes us to a sprawling campus in Phoenix that is providing thousands of jobs while reducing America’s reliance on overseas products.

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  • TSMC says it started mass production of ‘most advanced’ 2nm chips

    TAIPEI: Taiwanese tech titan TSMC has started mass producing its cutting-edge 2-nanometre semiconductor chips, the company said in a statement seen by AFP on Wednesday (Dec 31).

    TSMC is the world’s largest contract maker of chips, used in everything from smartphones to missiles, and counts Nvidia and Apple among its clients.

    “TSMC’s 2nm (N2) technology has started volume production in 4Q25 as planned,” TSMC said in an undated statement on its website.

    The chips will be the “most advanced technology in the semiconductor industry in terms of both density and energy efficiency”, the company said.

    “N2 technology, with leading nanosheet transistor structure, will deliver full-node performance and power benefits to address the increasing need for energy-efficient computing.”

    The chips will be produced at TSMC’s “Fab 20” facility in Hsinchu, in northern Taiwan, and “Fab 22” in the southern port city of Kaohsiung.

    More than half of the world’s semiconductors, and nearly all of the most advanced ones used to power artificial intelligence technology, are made in Taiwan.

    TSMC has been a massive beneficiary of the frenzy in AI investment. Nvidia and Apple are among firms pouring many billions of dollars into chips, servers and data centres.

    AI-related spending is soaring worldwide, and is expected to reach approximately US$1.5 trillion by 2025, according to US research firm Gartner, and over US$2 trillion in 2026 – nearly two per cent of global GDP.

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  • Trump administration says China’s chip policies are unfair but will delay tariffs to 2027

    Trump administration trade officials said China should be punished for employing unfair tactics to dominate the semiconductor industry, but will wait 18 months to impose tariffs.

    A U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) investigation concluded China’s targeting of semiconductors “for dominance is unreasonable and burdens or restricts US commerce and thus is actionable,” the agency said in a public notice posted Tuesday.

    The current tariff level of zero will be increased “in 18 months on June 23, 2027 to a rate to be announced not fewer than 30 days prior to that date,” USTR said.

    The public notice comes after a year-long investigation into China’s approach to the chip industry, undertaken through Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Under that law, the U.S. president may impose country-based tariffs at a rate of his choosing if the U.S. Trade Representative finds that another country is engaging in unfair foreign trade practices.

    “For decades, China has targeted the semiconductor industry for dominance and has employed increasingly aggressive and sweeping non-market policies and practices in pursuing dominance of the sector,” the public notice said.

    Opposition from Beijing

    Beijing said Wednesday it “firmly opposes” the move and accused Washington of abusing tariffs to “unreasonably suppress Chinese industries”.

    This “disrupts the stability of the global supply chain, hinders the development of all countries’ semiconductor industries and harms others while hurting itself,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian.

    “We urge the United States to quickly correct its erroneous practices,” Lin said at a regular press briefing.

    USTR officials launched the probe in December 2024 in the final weeks of Joe Biden’s presidency, extending the initiative when President Trump took office in January.

    Mr. Trump has been a prolific purveyor of tariffs, unveiling sector-specific levies on steel, autos and other items as well as broader measures to achieve a variety of policy objectives.

    The White House has jousted with Beijing but reached a broad truce with China after a major escalation in the spring.

    The USTR’s probe concluded that China’s policies have included “massive and persistent” state support of private actors and “wage-suppressing labor practices.”

    The USTR did not respond to an AFP query on the reason for the 18-month timeframe on tariffs.

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  • Four Indicted In Alleged Conspiracy to Smuggle Supercomputers and Nvidia Chips to China

    Stern said text messages obtained by authorities show Li boasting about how his father “had engaged in similar business on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.” Stern alleged the messages also show Li, who works at a hardware distribution company, was aware through news articles he shared that the Nvidia chips were subject to export controls. “He explained that his father had ways to import them,” Stern said, again citing Li’s text messages.

    Stern told the court that Li “did admit to various facts” during questioning by federal agents on Wednesday that implicated him.

    The defendants face various charges related to violating export control laws and up to 20 years in prison.

    Ho and Raymond did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent to LinkedIn accounts purportedly belonging to them. Public defenders for Chen and Li declined to comment.

    Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo said in a statement that “even small sales of older generation products on the secondary market are subject to strict scrutiny and review” and that “trying to cobble together datacenters from smuggled products is a nonstarter, both technically and economically.”

    Corvex, an AI cloud computing business Raymond consulted for, said in a statement that it had rescinded a job offer for him to join the company full-time and that it had no connection to the alleged wrongdoing.

    Earlier this year, the US Department of Commerce was reportedly considering restricting the sale of advanced chips to Malaysia and Thailand in an effort to curb chip smuggling, but the regulations have yet to be finalized. The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Magistrate Judge Westmore ordered Li to hire an attorney because she said he had significant equity in a San Leandro, California, home and other assets, making him ineligible for a public defender. The magistrate also set a hearing for Tuesday to decide whether Li is a significant flight risk and should continue to be detained. He holds a US green card and Hong Kong citizenship.

    Li, wearing glasses, flipflops, and a black windbreaker, nodded in response to some of Westmore’s statements but did not speak. Kaitlyn Fryzek, his temporary public defender, said Li is planning to marry a US citizen. “His incentive is to stay and get married to his fiancée,” Fryzek said.

    Paresh Dave

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  • Nvidia CEO Dismisses Concerns of an AI Bubble. Investors Remain Skeptical

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn’t need any prompting on Wednesday to address the elephant in the room. “There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” he said on an earnings call before quickly getting to his main point: “From our vantage point, we see something very different.”

    Huang went on to spend about five minutes trying to explain how the chipmaker, which has soared to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company over the past three years, would be able to sustain unprecedented customer demand. His thesis is that AI is taking over the world, and Nvidia chips will be sorely needed to power that technological revolution underway. “All industries, across every phase of AI, across all of the diverse computing needs in a cloud, and also from cloud to enterprise to robots,” will need Nvidia’s products, Huang said.

    The CEO’s pep talk ultimately drew mixed reactions from Wall Street. Nvidia shares have fallen about 10 percent in recent weeks after hitting an all-time high in late October. Shares budged up about 5 percent in after hours trading on Wednesday after Nvidia reported record quarterly sales and Huang made his anti-bubble comments. But the increase was not enough to fully make up for the recent selloff.

    Nvidia has enjoyed three years of booming success since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT and caused a massive surge in demand for the company’s GPUs, which are used to train and operate generative AI systems. Nvidia dominates the global market for GPUs, and its latest releases have become highly sought after with demand far exceeding supply. On Wednesday, Nvidia executives reiterated that it has about $500 billion in unfilled orders.

    The company has used its newfound wealth to buy back its own shares and invest billions of dollars in AI companies, including top users and customers of its chips such as ChatGPT developer OpenAI, data center operator CoreWeave, and Elon Musk’s xAI, which develops the chatbot Grok.

    Nvidia’s deals have fueled concerns among some investors that the company is unsustainably propping up sales. AI industry executives contend that partnering closely with Nvidia is crucial for getting access to chips and technical support, and that their revenues will eventually increase enough to fund their GPU purchases.

    On Wednesday’s call, Huang addressed a financial analyst’s question about the rationale for investing in companies such as OpenAI. “The partnership that we have with them is one so that we could work even deeper from a technical perspective, so that we could support their accelerated growth,” Huang said. “I fully expect that investment to translate to extraordinary returns.”

    Paresh Dave

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  • Netherlands Hands Back Control of Chip Maker Nexperia to Chinese Owner

    The Dutch government handed back control of semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia to its Chinese owner, moving toward resolving a spat that had blocked vital chip supply to the auto industry.

    Dutch economic-affairs minister Vincent Karremans said Wednesday that the decision had been made in consultation with the Netherlands’ European and international partners and followed recent meetings with Chinese authorities.

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    Adrià Calatayud

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  • Chips Held Hostage in Trade War Start Flowing Again to Auto Suppliers

    Nexperia microchips are leaving China again, easing a shortage of simple but ubiquitous parts that threatened to paralyze the auto industry.

    German automotive supplier Aumovio, which was recently spun out of tire giant Continental, said Friday that the Sino-Dutch company’s semiconductors and components containing them were on their way from China to Aumovio’s distribution hub in Hungary.

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    Stephen Wilmot

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  • Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

    Shortly before President Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, an urgent issue emerged. Trump wanted to discuss a request by Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang to allow sales of a new generation of artificial-intelligence chips to China, current and former administration officials said.

    Greenlighting the export of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips would be a seismic policy shift potentially giving China, the U.S.’s biggest geopolitical competitor, a technological accelerant. Huang—who speaks to Trump often—has lobbied relentlessly to maintain access to the Chinese market.

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    Lingling Wei

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  • Exclusive | White House to Announce Resumption of Auto Chip Shipments From China

    The White House is set to announce that the Dutch semiconductor company that paused shipments weeks ago and risked upending global car production will resume sending chips under a framework agreement reached during talks between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, people familiar with the plans said. 

    The new policy on the Dutch chips is part of a forthcoming document from the White House laying out the details of the U.S.-China trade deal signed this week, according to the people.

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    Ryan Felton

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  • Chip Startup Backed by Peter Thiel and In-Q-Tel Seeks to Revolutionize the Semiconductor Biz

    Another company backed by tech magnate (and part-time apocalypticist) Peter Thiel is seeking to disrupt Silicon Valley.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that Substrate, a U.S.-based chip startup, recently raised $100 million, and plans to use the funding to support its ongoing mission to upend the semiconductor industry. The company’s website lists a number of prominent venture capital firms as its backers, including Thiel’s Founders Fund, General Catalyst, the CIA-backed In-Q-Tel, Long Journey, and MITIMco, which is associated with MIT.

    So how does Substrate plan to reinvent the semiconductor game? According to the Journal’s report, it wants to vertically integrate all of the various activities associated with chip production so that it “owns the entire [manufacturing] process.” Currently, the chip industry is—much like many other industries—a complex supply chain, that sources hardware infrastructure from all over the globe. Large parts of that supply chain originate in Asia.

    Given the political turmoil in Asia, there’s been ongoing talk about the need to reshore chip production in the U.S. Substrate would appear to be trying to do just that but, if its activities all sound very impressive, unfortunately, industry experts are skeptical that it can accomplish its goal. The Journal notes that “industry veterans have said vertical integration is unsustainable” for their business.

    Substrate’s co-founder, James Proud (described by the Journal as a Thiel “protégé”), promises to return “the United States to dominance in semiconductor production,” but has admitted that his plan may sound a little far fetched. “If I had come from the existing industry, I probably wouldn’t believe it’s possible because I’d probably know too much about how hard it’s going to be, and it was and it has been immensely hard,” he said.

    On the company’s website, it frames its efforts in existential terms: “The only chance the United States has to return to dominance in semiconductor production would be to create a new type of more vertically-integrated foundry, one that continues pushing Moore’s Law in both performance and cost,” the site states. “To achieve this, Substrate is building next-generation semiconductor fabs to return America to dominance in semiconductor production and will use our technology—a new form of advanced X-ray lithography—to power them.”

    Proud further explained to the Journal that one of his company’s advantages is its more “compact machine that uses ultrashort-wavelength laser light to etch intricate and microscopic patterns on silicon wafers.”

    The Journal also notes that Substrate “has received attention from the Trump administration,” although it’s unclear what kind of attention its been or the extent to which it has helped the company. In the current era in which the AI industry is ascendant, the physical infrastructure necessary to produce that AI is taking on ever more vital importance. The Trump administration has also sought to encourage domestic chip production so, in that sense, Substrate is making the most of the current political moment.

    Lucas Ropek

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  • This Startup Raised $100M to Take on One of Tech’s White Whales: American-Made Computer Chips

    Substrate, a small San Francisco startup is making waves in the global semiconductor industry, a business widely believed too complex to break into. With its proprietary technology, Substrate emerges as a potential rival to Dutch company ASML, the current sole global manufacturer of the lithography equipment which produces microchips. 

    According to the New York Times, ASML uses a massive machine to create semiconductors for the chips essential to smartphones and AI systems. Founder James Proud, 34, says Substrate’s solution cuts the cost in half, using a proprietary particle accelerator to funnel light through a more compact lithography machine. 

    With over $100 million in funding, backed by firms including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and General Catalyst, the company is valued at over $1 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. But industry experts say ASML has a 10-year head start navigating the overwhelming expenses and technical challenges involved in building advanced microchips. 

    Fundamentally altering chip production is the one of the biggest challenges in tech, which is why few have tried. While Proud has yet to navigate the obstacle-ridden road to commercialization, it seems he’s emerged in an opportune moment: a time when the Trump administration has expressed keen interest in reducing reliance on foreign manufacturers. 

    Vice President JD Vance met with Proud to discuss the innovations in March. According to the New York Times, Vance declined to comment for their recent story on Substrate.

    Proud doesn’t have roots in the lithography industry, which he says actually drove his ambition. He says if he had prior experience, “I probably wouldn’t believe it’s possible because I’d probably know too much about how hard it’s going to be, and it was and it has been immensely hard.” 

    The company says it aims to produce its first chips by 2028, at which point it plans to have built its own ecosystem of chip manufacturers. 

    Ava Levinson

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  • Anthropic Strikes Major Compute Deal With Google, Echoing OpenAI’s Chip Alliances

    Dario Amodei, a former OpenAI executive, founded Anthropic in 2021. Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images for HubSpot

    The latest sign of the A.I. industry’s unrelenting hunt for computing power comes from an expanded agreement between Anthropic and Google—a deal that, like several others struck in recent months, underscores the rise of circular arrangements across Silicon Valley. Under the new agreement, Google will provide Anthropic with well over one gigawatt of computing capacity by 2026, the companies announced yesterday (Oct. 23).

    Anthropic noted that the deal is worth “tens of billions of dollars” but didn’t provide an exact figure. The partnership further deepens the startup’s ties with Google, which has already invested about $3 billion in Anthropic and is expected to supply the company with up to 1 million of its custom A.I. chips, called tensor processing units (TPUs).

    Such partnerships are increasingly essential as leading A.I. startups scale at a breakneck pace. Anthropic, which now serves over 300,000 business customers, said the number of clients generating more than $100,000 in annual revenue has grown nearly sevenfold in the past year. “Anthropic and Google have a longstanding partnership, and this latest expansion will help us continue to grow the compute we need to define the frontier of A.I.,” said Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer, in a statement.

    Founded in 2021 by CEO Dario Amodei and several former OpenAI employees, Anthropic positioned itself as a safety-focused alternative to early A.I. players. Best known for its chatbot Claude, the company recently hit a $183 billion valuation and is reportedly on track to generate $9 billion in annual revenue.

    Despite its closer ties with Google, Anthropic emphasized that it remains committed to its “primary training partner,” Amazon, which has invested $8 billion in exchange for providing compute through its chips and A.I. cluster Project Rainier. The company also continues to rely on Nvidia’s GPUs as part of what it calls a “multi-platform approach.” Anthropic said it will keep investing in additional compute capacity as demand grows.

    Anthropic’s mutually beneficial partnerships with Google and Amazon reflect a broader trend: a broader industry trend: a growing web of interconnected A.I. partnerships between model developers and compute providers, each investing in and purchasing one another’s technology. OpenAI has been at the forefront of this shift, announcing a flurry of major deals in recent months, including an agreement with AMD to access six gigawatts of computing power, a deal with Nvidia to access 10 gigawatts of compute, and a $300 billion, five-year partnership with Oracle.

    The growing prevalence of such circular arrangements has raised some eyebrows in Silicon Valley, recalling the speculative interdependencies of the dot-com bubble and its eventual crash. But unlike that era, today’s A.I. spending is bolstered by stronger capitalization and clearer monetization potential, said Stephanie Aliaga, global market strategist for JPMorgan Chase, in a blog post earlier this month.

    Still, Aliaga cautioned that the concern isn’t misplaced. “The scale of spending is enormous, the pace unprecedented, and some assumptions around ROI, like the useful lives of assets, remain open questions,” she said. “History reminds us that enthusiasm can run ahead of reality,” she wrote.

    Anthropic Strikes Major Compute Deal With Google, Echoing OpenAI’s Chip Alliances

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • Trump’s Investment in Intel Is Paying Off

    The Trump administration’s investment in Intel appears to be paying off, but the once-mighty chipmaker has a long way to climb back to industry dominance.

    In August, the US government announced it was converting about $9 billion in federal grants that Intel had been issued during the Biden administration into a roughly 10 percent equity stake in the company. During its third-quarter earnings on Thursday—its first financial update since President Trump’s surprise investment—Intel reported that it earned $13.7 billion in revenue over the past three months, a 3 percent increase year-over-year. It’s the fourth consecutive quarter that Intel has beat revenue guidance.

    Intel’s stock price is up more than 90 percent since it made the deal with Trump over the summer. Back then, the company’s shares were trading around $20. On the heels of its earnings report today, its stock price had risen to $38.16.

    The White House announced it was investing in Intel weeks after Trump publicly called for CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign over his alleged problematic ties to China. The president changed his stance only days later, however, after having what he described as a positive meeting with Tan.

    On the earnings call, Tan said he was “honored by the trust and confidence” that Tump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had placed in him. He added that Intel was “fully committed to the Trump administration’s vision and proudly welcomes the US as an essential partner in our efforts.”

    Intel’s stronger-than-expected revenue suggests that global demand for x86 chips, the kind that Intel specializes in, continues to rise as the tech industry invests heavily in AI infrastructure. While GPUs, such as Nvidia’s H100s, continue to be the gold standard for training AI models, data center buildouts include a combination of GPUs and x86 CPUs, which power different AI workloads.

    Intel noted in the earnings call that it hasn’t been able to supply its device customers with enough older chips, which aren’t as advanced as newer generations of AI semiconductors. This is partly because consumer demand for AI-powered PCs isn’t particularly strong, so device manufacturers are still seeking older—and cheaper—chips.

    Intel also reported a net income of $4.1 billion. A year ago, the company said it had more than $16 billion in losses. Under Tan’s leadership, Intel has aggressively tried to cut costs, including by laying off 15 percent of its workforce.

    The past few months have been busy for Intel. Along with the Trump administration, GPU giant Nvidia and the multinational tech conglomerate Softbank also funneled money into the company in exchange for common stock. During the most recent quarter, Intel received $5.7 billion from the US government, $5 billion from Nvidia, and $2 billion from Softbank. It received an additional $5.2 billion by selling off stakes in chipmaker Altera and the autonomous driving company Mobileye.

    Lauren Goode

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  • Broadcom Gets a Stock-Target Increase. Analyst Thinks Anthropic Is a Big, New Customer.

    Broadcom Gets a Stock-Target Increase. Analyst Thinks Anthropic Is a Big, New Customer.

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  • Dutch Government Takes Control of Chip Maker From Chinese Parent

    The Dutch government wrested control of a Netherlands-based semiconductor company from its Chinese owner, a new flare-up in tensions between China and the West over key technologies and materials.

    Officials at the Dutch Economic Affairs Ministry said Sunday that they had assumed the power to block or reverse decisions at Nexperia 600745 -10.00%decrease; red down pointing triangle, which is owned by China’s Wingtech Technology, to keep Europe from losing “technological knowledge and capabilities” necessary for its economic security.

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    Sam Schechner

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  • Inside Intel’s Hail Mary to Reclaim Chip Dominance

    Everyone who enters the fabs has to wear a bunny suit, and get dressed—or be dressed—in a clean room. Makeup, hair products, perfumes, colognes, and any aerosol products are prohibited. Workers are separated by a metallurgical hierarchy: There are those who work with copper, and those who do not. The copper people wear orange suits, not white, and have to suit up and strip down in their own clean room.

    The Intel fab worker who helped me suit up proudly told me that he has done the same for two US presidents: Obama, who visited Fab 42, and Biden, who visited Fab 52 while it was under construction. As of late September, Trump still hadn’t visited, though Intel spokesperson Cory Pforzheimer said, “We’d eagerly welcome President Trump to see the most advanced R&D and leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing in the US.”

    The workers shuffling around are not pulling levers and grinding away at the gears of manufacturing as much as quietly managing robots. They stand at (sterilized) computer stations while containers called front-opening unified pods, or FOUPs, whoosh by overhead through a labyrinth of robotic tracks. The rows of equipment appear endless. The floor below has been reinforced, then reinforced again, because the tiniest of shakes can ruin a whole batch of chips.

    The lithography section of the facility is awash in a strange glow, which turned our white suits neon green and the copper-suited people pink. Intel demanded that the fab tourists not share the names of its suppliers, with the exception of one: ASML, the Dutch manufacturer of the world’s most cutting-edge lithography machines. WIRED witnessed two massive ASML Twinscan machines that appeared to be operational. The floor next to them was tape-marked with space for two more.

    Intel has not yet publicly said how many semiconductors it expects to successfully yield, or manufacture, at Fab 52 annually. For now, the chips produced there will be used in consumer devices like laptops. But what Intel really needs is the same thing the entire industry is chasing: A hyperscaler customer, a giant data center deal, someone looking to spend billions to get an edge in AI. A whale.

    Design Overhaul

    Intel’s Panther Lake and Clearwater Forest chips will be made using a manufacturing process that tosses aside decades of proven design techniques in favor of two new technologies the company calls RibbonFET and PowerVia. RibbonFet is an architecture for transistors, stacking them in a way that allows for more density, while PowerVia moves the power interconnects from above the silicon stacks in the chip to below them.

    Intel began working on the new design approach in 2021, and early tests have shown that RibbonFet and PowerVia led to performance gains. Reports suggest these new chips also use 30 percent less energy than the prior generation.

    Lauren Goode

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  • AMD Inks Huge Compute Power Deal With OpenAI, Mirroring Nvidia’s Move

    OpenAI’s Sam Altman and AMD’s Lisa Su testify before the Senate on May 08, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    Nvidia may be dominating the graphics processing unit (GPU) market right now, but its closest rival, AMD, is catching up. Today, (Oct. 6), AMD announced a landmark collaboration with OpenAI that mirrors a recent deal between OpenAI and Nvidia. Under the agreement, AMD will deploy six gigawatts of computing power to OpenAI, which will in turn have the option to acquire up to 10 percent of AMD’s stock—a stake worth roughly $33 billion now after the announcement sent AMD shares to soar 24 percent.

    The partnership gives OpenAI a critical boost in computing resources as it continues to roll out new A.I. models and tools. “This partnership is a major step in building the compute capacity needed to realize A.I.’s full potential,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement.

    OpenAI’s first one-gigawatt deployment is scheduled for the second half of 2026 and will use AMD’s MI450 chips. This initial rollout will coincide with a vesting schedule of AMD stock for OpenAI, allowing OpenAI to acquire up to 160 million shares as deployments scale to six gigawatts. The stock grant will vest based on OpenAI hitting technical and commercial milestones. The full deal will only be executed if AMD’s stock reaches $600 per share. AMD shares are currently traded at $204 apiece.

    The AMD partnership is the latest in a string of blockbuster A.I. deals. Nvidia recently announced its own long-term pact with OpenAI, pledging up to $100 billion in investments over the next decade. In return, OpenAI will obtain as much as 10 gigawatts of computing power from Nvidia’s systems.

    Global venture capital funding rose 38 percent year-over-year to $97 billion in the third quarter, according to Crunchbase, with nearly half of that money flowing into A.I. ventures. Analysts say the current boom evokes the early days of the internet.

    “We still believe we are in the early innings of this spending cycle,” said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, in a client note. AMD’s new deal with OpenAI marks a “1996 moment” for the tech world, he added, likening today’s A.I. momentum to the foundational years of the tech economy.

    Nvidia’s shares slipped more than 1 percent today following AMD’s announcement, but the company still holds a commanding lead with more than 90 percent of the global GPU market. Nvidia’s early success in meeting A.I.-fueled GPU demand has propelled its market cap to $4.5 trillion and fueled $41 billion in data center revenue between May and July. AMD, in comparison, has a market cap of $334 billion and brought in $3.2 billion in data center revenue in its most recent quarter.

    Lisa Su, who has led AMD as CEO since 2014, is confident that the OpenAI deal will accelerate that growth. Her company has a “clear line of sight” to achieve tens of billions of dollars in data center revenue by 2027, Su told analysts today, adding that these numbers could grow even higher. “In addition to the OpenAI opportunity, and the very significant revenue addition there, we expect to generate well over $100 billion in the next several years,” she said.

    AMD Inks Huge Compute Power Deal With OpenAI, Mirroring Nvidia’s Move

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • China starts probes targeting US semiconductor sector | Fortune

    China launched two investigations targeting the US semiconductor sector ahead of planned talks between the two nations on trade and other issues.

    The Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Saturday that it’s opened an anti-dumping probe relating to certain American-made analog IC chips, the sort of products sold by Texas Instruments Inc. and Analog Devices Inc. At the same time, the ministry also kicked off an anti-discrimination investigation into US moves against the Chinese chip sector, according to a separate statement.

    The probes comes shortly after the US added 23 more China-based companies to its entity list, which imposes restrictions on businesses deemed to be “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the US.”

    China’s public rebuke of US trade measures sets up a tense opening for a multi-day meeting between top officials on both sides. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is set to meet with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Madrid to discuss trade, economic and national security issues. The talks come after months of back and forth on trade negotiations and a pause on the Trump administration’s elevated tariffs on China while the two sides seek to work out a mutually agreeable deal.

    Read more: Trump Extends China Truce for 90 Days, Averting Tariff Hike

    Semiconductors have grown into a key ground of contestation, as the US has cut off China’s access to the most advanced artificial intelligence accelerators and used the licensing of some less-powerful Nvidia Corp. hardware as a bargaining chip — though Chinese officials have pushed backand expressed reservations about security risks.

    The unsettled state of negotiations has also found expression in China recently making its first use of a so-called anti-circumvention investigation that led to anti-dumping duties on US optical fiber imports. That tool is expected to play a greater role in the future, according to state TV.

    Read more: China Slams US for Imposing New Sanctions Ahead of Spain Talks

    “The US has taken a series of prohibitions and restrictions against China in the field of integrated circuits over recent years, including 301 investigations and export control measures,” a commerce ministry spokesperson said in another statement. “Those protectionist practices are suspected of discrimination against China and are a containment and suppression of China’s development of advanced computing chips and high-tech industries such as artificial intelligence.”

    Officials at the US Trade Representative and spokespeople for Texas Instruments and Analog Devices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Bessent and He’s discussions will cover, among other matters, the status of ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, a service that President Donald Trump has estimated could be worth as much as $500 billion to the US. TikTok has until next week to reach a deal to ensure it continues operations in the US, though such deadlines have already been extended several times this year. Efforts to combat money laundering will also be on the agenda, according to the US Treasury Department.

    Read More: China Begins Probe Into US Chip Grants, Alleged Dumping

    China said in January that it will investigate allegations the US dumps lower-end chips and unfairly subsidizes its own chipmakers, marking one of Beijing’s strongest retaliatory moves against American technology sanctions. The anti-dumping probe will run for about a year and may be extended by another six months, if needed, while the anti-bias probe usually takes about three months, according to the trade regulator.

    Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.

    Bloomberg

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  • Nvidia Tops Wall Street Estimates, But China Tensions Cloud Its A.I. Chip Business

    Strong earnings highlight Nvidia’s dominance, but China export curbs weigh on growth. Adek Berry/AFP via Getty Images

    Nvidia delivered another estimate-beating quarter, but regulatory setbacks and U.S.-China tensions are casting doubt over its core data center business even as Wall Street continues to demand more from the world’s most valuable public company.

    Revenue for the May–July quarter jumped 56 percent year-over-year to $46.7 billion, while net income climbed 59 percent to $26.4 billion, reported Nvidia yesterday (Aug. 27). Both figures beat analyst expectations. However, shares fell more than 3 percent after the earnings release as Nvidia’s core data center sales slightly missed estimates.

    The chipmaker’s data center revenue, its most important line of business, came in at $41.1 billion for the quarter compared to expectations of $41.3 billion. It was hampered in part by geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. Sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips, which are designed specifically for the Chinese market in compliance with America’s export restrictions, in April were blocked under the Trump administration.

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has since convinced the President to lift the ban on H20 exports to China, agreeing to cut the government 15 percent of the company’s revenue from such sales. However, Washington “has not published a regulation codifying such requirement,” said Colette Kress, the company’s chief financial officer, on yesterday’s earnings call.

    If restrictions do ease, Nvidia expects $2 billion to $5 billion in H20 revenue in the current quarter, Kress said. That will likely come from Nvidia’s existing inventory of H20. The company has reportedly halted H20 production after the Chinese government banned it, citing security risks. Nvidia is said to be developing another China-specific chip.

    Huang has spent much of the past year shuttling between Washington and Beijing in an effort to soothe over tensions. While speaking to analysts, he stressed China’s importance as home to roughly half of the world’s A.I. researchers, the second-largest computing market globally and its status as a leader in open-source models through releases from DeepSeek and Qwen. Such advances, Huang argued, should be supported by U.S. technology to “help make the American tech stack the global standard.”

    China’s A.I. market could represent a $50 billion opportunity for Nvidia, one that grows at 50 percent a year, said Huang. Globally, A.I.-native startups have already raised $180 billion in 2025, up from $100 billion last year, according to the CEO. Their revenues are growing even faster, reaching $20 billion this year, compared with $2 billion in 2024. “Next year being ten times higher than this year is not inconceivable,” he said.

    In other business, Nvidia’s gaming division generated $4.2 billion in quarterly sales, while its professional visualization and equipment manufacturer units brought in $601 million and $173 million, respectively. Nvidia’s auto and robotics segment remains small, at just 1 percent of overall sales. Yet its $586 million in revenue marked a 69 percent year-over-year jump, reflecting Nvidia’s push into “physical A.I.” “As a result of agentic A.I. and vision-language models, we are now seeing a breakthrough in physical A.I. in robotics and autonomous systems,” Huang told analysts.

    Nvidia Tops Wall Street Estimates, But China Tensions Cloud Its A.I. Chip Business

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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