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  • A timeline of the US semiconductor market in 2025 | TechCrunch

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    Last year was a tumultuous one for the U.S. semiconductor industry.  

    From leadership changes at legacy companies to continuously changing dialogue around AI chip export controls, a lot has happened. If the first few weeks of 2026, which saw new chip tariffs and international semiconductor deals, are any indicator — this year will be as unexpected as the last.  

    But before we get too deep into 2026, here is a final look at everything that happened in the U.S. semiconductor industry in 2025:  

    December

    Nvidia finds gold with Groq 

    December 24: Nvidia announced that it struck a non-exclusive licensing deal with chip maker Groq. While this wasn’t an acquisition, Nvidia hired Groq’s founder and president, in addition to other employees. The company also bought $20 billion worth of Groq’s assets.  

    Chips to China 

    December 8: The U.S. Department of Commerce decided that Nvidia and AMD can send AI chips to China after all, a stark reversal to past messaging. The U.S. government specifically said Nvidia could sell its H200 chips, which are much more advanced than its H20 chips, to approved customers.  

    November 

    Nvidia keeps climbing 

    November 19: Nvidia reported record results in its third-quarter earnings report. The company racked up $57 billion in revenue in Q3, a 66% increase over the same quarter in 2024. A large portion of that revenue came from Nvidia’s data center business.  

    October

    Intel makes processor progress 

    October 9: Intel announced a new processor, dubbed Panther Lake, that is part of the company’s Intel Core Ultra processor family. This will be the first one built on the company’s 18A semiconductor process and will be exclusively made at Intel’s Arizona fab factory.  

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    September

    A taste of tariffs 

    September 26: We got the first inkling of what the Trump administration’s semiconductor tariffs could look like at the end of September. Rumors started swirling that the administration would require semiconductor companies to produce the same volume of chips domestically as they do internationally, or they would otherwise be subject to tariffs.  

    China shuts out Nvidia 

    September 17: China’s campaign against Nvidia continued when the country told its domestic companies not to buy Nvidia’s chips. The Cyberspace Administration of China banned local companies from buying Nvidia’s chips in an effort to boost domestic chip sales.  

    China calls out Nvidia

    September 15: Despite being given a loose green light to start selling chips again in China, the process was not going to be smooth sailing for Nvidia. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation ruled that Nvidia violated the country’s antitrust regulations regarding the company’s 2020 acquisition of Mellanox Technologies.  

    A leadership shakeup

    September 9: Just a few short weeks after the U.S. government took an equity stake in Intel, the company made some notable leadership changes. Michelle Johnston Holthaus, the chief executive officer of Intel products, departed after three decades. The company also created a central engineering group.  

    August

    Nvidia reports record quarter

    August 27: The turmoil in the semiconductor market over the year had clearly not hurt Nvidia. On August 27, the company reported that it had record sales in the second quarter. The highlights were the growth of its data center business, which saw its revenue grow 56% year over year.

    U.S. Government takes equity stake in Intel

    August 22: The U.S. government announced it was converting existing government grants into a 10% stake in Intel. The deal was structured to penalize Intel if the company’s ownership in its foundry program dropped below 50%.

    SoftBank takes a stake in Intel

    August 18: Japanese conglomerate SoftBank announced it was taking a $2 billion stake in Intel. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son called the deal “strategic.” The transaction was announced as rumors were swirling that the U.S. was going to take a stake in the company.

    Chip companies strike a deal to sell in China

    August 12: Nvidia and AMD announced that they struck a deal with the U.S. government to gain the necessary license to sell their AI chips in China. Both companies agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of revenue from their chip sales in China.

    Trump and Lip-Bu Tan meet

    August 11: Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan went to the White House to meet with President Trump. The pair talked about Tan’s past and how Intel can help the U.S. with its goal of bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. Both called the conversation productive.

    Trump comes for Lip-Bu Tan

    August 7: President Donald Trump demanded that Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan “resign immediately” due to “conflicts of interest” in a Truth Social post. While Trump didn’t clarify what the conflicts of interest were, this came the day after Republican Senator Tom Cotton sent a letter to Intel’s board of directors inquiring about Tan’s ties to China.

    Trump says tariffs are coming for the industry

    August 5: President Donald Trump told CNBC’s Squawk Box that he was planning to announce tariffs on the semiconductor industry as soon as the following week. At the time, he didn’t mention specifics on what these tariffs could look like. As of September 5, no tariffs have been announced for this industry.

    July

    Intel spins out business unit

    July 25: Just one day after its second-quarter earnings call, Intel confirmed that it was spinning out its Network and Edge group, which is responsible for making chips for the telecom industry. The business unit produced $5.8 billion in revenue for the semiconductor company in 2024.

    Intel continues to look for efficiency

    July 24: Intel announced that it was pulling back on some of its manufacturing operations. The company said it will longer pursue its previously announced projects in Germany and Poland and that it was consolidating its test operations. Intel also announced it plans to end this year with around 75,000 employees.

    Trump’s AI Action Plan

    July 23: The Trump administration unveiled its much-anticipated AI Action Plan alongside multiple related executive orders. While the plan included a lot regarding the need for U.S. chip export controls and for the U.S. to coordinate with its allies on this effort, it didn’t provide concrete information on what those restrictions would look like.

    Groundbreaking UAE AI deal reportedly on hold

    July 17: The Trump administration helped foster a groundbreaking deal in May that resulted in a commitment from the United Arab Emirates to buy billions of dollars’ worth of AI chips from Nvidia. But now that deal was reportedly on hold as the U.S. worked through national security concerns and fears that those chips could be smuggled from the Middle East to China.

    Nvidia is a bargaining chip

    July 16: A day after semiconductor firms like Nvidia and AMD got the green light to resume selling certain AI chips to China, we found out why. U.S. Commerce Security Howard Lutnick said the plans to allow U.S. companies to start selling AI chips in China are tied to ongoing trade discussions between the U.S. and China regarding rare earth elements.

    U.S. chips head back to China

    July 14: Nvidia said it was filing an application to restart sales of H20 AI chips in China, confirming rumors from a few weeks prior. The company also announced that it would be selling a new chip, the RTX Pro, which was designed specifically for the Chinese market.

    Malaysia fights chip smuggling

    July 14: Malaysia announced that it was launching trade permits for U.S.-made AI chips. Under this new restriction, any individual or business would need to give the Malaysian government 30 days’ notice before exporting any U.S. AI chips.

    June

    Intel appoints new leadership

    June 18: Intel announced four new leadership appointments that Intel said will help it move toward its goal of becoming an engineering-first company again. Intel announced a new chief revenue officer in addition to multiple high-profile engineering hires.

    Intel began layoffs

    June 17: Intel began laying off a significant chunk of its Intel Foundry staff in July, according to various media reports. The company later confirmed it was restructuring. Reports said it planned to eliminate 15% to 20%, of workers in that business unit. These layoffs weren’t a shock: Layoffs were rumored back in April, and Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan had said he wants to flatten the organization.

    Nvidia won’t report on China

    June 13: Nvidia wasn’t counting on the U.S. backing off from its AI chip export restrictions. After the company took a financial hit from the newly imposed licensing requirements on its H20 AI chips, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company will no longer include the Chinese market in future revenue and profit forecasts.

    AMD acquired the team behind Untether AI

    June 6: AMD made another acquisition — this time focused on talent. The company acqui-hired the team behind Untether AI, which develops AI inference chips, as the semiconductor giant continues to round out its AI offerings.

    AMD is coming for Nvidia’s AI hardware dominance

    June 4: AMD continued its shopping spree. The company acquired AI software optimization startup Brium, which helps companies retrofit AI software to work with different AI hardware. With a lot of AI software being designed with Nvidia hardware in mind, this acquisition isn’t surprising.

    May

    Nvidia laid out the impact of chip export restrictions

    May 28: Nvidia reported that U.S. licensing requirements on its H20 AI chips cost the company $4.5 billion in charges during Q1. The company expected these requirements to result in an $8 billion hit to Nvidia’s revenue in Q2.

    AMD acquired Enosemi

    May 28: AMD kicked off its acquisition spree. The semiconductor company announced that it acquired Enosemi, a silicon photonics startup. Enosemi’s tech, which uses light photons to transmit data, is becoming an increasing area of interest for semiconductor companies.

    Tensions started to flare between China and the U.S.

    May 21: China’s Commerce Secretary didn’t like the U.S. guidance, issued on May 13, that warned U.S. companies that using Huawei’s AI chips “anywhere in the world” was a U.S. chip export violation. The commerce secretary issued a statement that threatened legal action against anyone caught enforcing that export restriction.

    Intel began the process to offload units

    May 20: Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan seemingly got right to work on his plan to spin out Intel’s non-core business units. Back in May, the semiconductor giant was reportedly looking to offload its Networking and Edge units, which make chips for telecom equipment, and was responsible for $5.4 billion of the company’s 2024 revenue.

    The Biden administration’s AI Diffusion rule was officially dead

    May 13: Just days before the Biden administration’s Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Rule was set to go into place, the U.S. Department of Commerce formally rescinded it. The DOC said that it plans to issue new guidance in the future, and in the meantime, companies should remember that using Huawei’s Ascend AI chips anywhere in the world is a violation of U.S. export rules.

    A last-minute reversal

    May 7: Just a week before the “Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion” was set to go into place, the Trump administration planned on taking a different path. According to multiple media outlets, including Axios and Bloomberg, the administration wouldn’t enforce the restrictions when they were supposed to start on May 15 and is instead working on its own framework. 

    April

    Anthropic doubles down on its support of chip export restrictions

    April 30: Anthropic doubled down on its support for restricting U.S.-made chip exports, including some tweaks to the Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, like imposing further restrictions on Tier 2 countries and dedicating resources to enforcement. An Nvidia spokesperson shot back, saying, “American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in ‘baby bumps’ or ‘alongside live lobsters.’” 

    Planned layoffs at Intel

    April 22: Ahead of its Q1 earnings call, Intel said it was planning to lay off more than 21,000 employees. The layoffs were meant to streamline management, something CEO Lip-Bu Tan has long said Intel needed to do, and help rebuild the company’s engineering focus. 

    The Trump administration further restricts chip exports

    April 15: Nvidia’s H20 AI chip got hit with an export licensing requirement, the company disclosed in an SEC filing. The company added that it expected $5.5 billion in charges related to this new requirement in the first quarter of its 2026 fiscal year. The H20 was the most advanced AI chip Nvidia can still export to China in some fashion. TSMC and Intel reported similar expenses the same week. 

    Nvidia appears to talk its way out of further chip exports

    April 9: Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang was spotted attending dinner at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to reports. At the time, NPR reported Huang may have been able to spare Nvidia’s H20 AI chips from export restrictions upon agreeing to invest in AI data centers in the U.S. 

    An alleged agreement between Intel and TSMC

    April 3: Intel and TSMC allegedly reached a tentative agreement to launch a joint chipmaking venture. This joint venture would operate Intel’s chipmaking facilities, and TSMC would have a 20% stake in the new venture. Both companies declined to comment or confirm. If this deal doesn’t come to fruition, this is likely a decent preview of potential deals in the industry to come. 

    Intel warned it will spin off non-core assets

    April 1: CEO Lip-Bu Tan got to work right away. Just weeks after he joined Intel, the company announced that it was going to spin off non-core assets so it could focus. He also said the company would launch new products, including custom semiconductors for customers. 

    March

    Intel names a new CEO 

    March 12:  Intel announced that industry veteran and former board member Lip-Bu Tan would return to the company as CEO on March 18. At the time of his appointment, Tan said Intel would be an “engineering-focused company” under his leadership. 

    February

    Intel’s Ohio chip plant gets delayed again

    February 28: Intel was supposed to start operating its first chip fabrication plant in Ohio this year. Instead, the company slowed down construction on the plant for the second time in February. Now the $28 billion semiconductor project won’t wrap up construction until 2030 and may not even open until 2031.

    Senators call for more chip export restrictions

    February 3: U.S. senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo), wrote a letter to Commerce Secretary Nominee-Designate Howard Lutnick, urging the Trump administration to further restrict AI chip exports. The letter specifically referred to Nvidia’s H20 AI chips, which were used in the training of DeepSeek’s R1 “reasoning” model. 

    January 

    DeepSeek releases its open “reasoning” model

    January 27: Chinese AI startup DeepSeek caused quite the stir in Silicon Valley when it released the open version of its R1 “reasoning” model. While this isn’t semiconductor news specifically, the sheer alarm in the AI and semiconductor industries DeepSeek caused continues to have ripple effects on the chip industry. 

    Joe Biden’s executive order on chip exports

    January 13: With just a week left in office, former president Joe Biden proposed sweeping new export restrictions on U.S.-made AI chips. This order created a three-tier structure that determined how many U.S. chips can be exported to each country. Under this proposal, Tier 1 countries faced no restrictions; Tier 2 countries had a chip purchase limit for the first time; and Tier 3 countries got additional restrictions. 

    Anthropic’s Dario Amodei weighs in on chip export restrictions

    January 6: Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei co-wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal endorsing existing AI chip export controls and pointing to them as a reason why China’s AI market was behind the U.S. He also called on incoming president Donald Trump to impose further restrictions and to close loopholes that have allowed AI companies in China to still get their hands on these chips.

    This story was originally published on May 9, 2025, and is regularly updated with new information.

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    Rebecca Szkutak

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

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    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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  • OpenAI’s recent chip deals heap more pressure on TSMC

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    In recent weeks, OpenAI has signed blockbuster deals with AMD and Broadcom to build vast numbers of AI chips. Much of the focus has been on the financial implications, since OpenAI will need hundreds of billions of dollars to make good on its promises. As important as it is to look at the quite implausible financials, we also need to look at the broader implications for the industry. Like, the chips themselves, what that spells for the AI industry as a whole, and the added pressure on TSMC, the only chip company that can actually build this stuff.

    The Deals

    OpenAI’s deal with AMD will see the chip giant build out 6 gigawatts’ (GW) worth of GPUs in the next few years. The first 1 GW deployment of AMD’s Instinct MI450 silicon will start in the back end of 2026, with more to come. AMD’s CFO Jean Hu believes that the partnership will deliver “tens of billions of dollars in revenue” in future, justifying the complicated way the deal is funded.

    Meanwhile, Broadcom’s deal with OpenAI will see the pair collaborate on building 10 gigawatts’ worth of AI accelerators and ethernet systems that it has designed. The latter will be crucial to speed up connections between each individual system in OpenAI’s planned data centers. Like the deal with AMD, the first deployments of these systems will begin in the back half of 2026 and is set to run through 2029.

    Phil Burr is head of product at Lumai, a British company looking to replace traditional GPUs with optical processors. He’s got 30 years experience in the chip world, including a stint as a senior director at ARM. Burr explained the nitty-gritty of OpenAI’s deals with both Broadcom and AMD, and what both mean for the wider world.

    Burr first poured water on OpenAI’s claim that it would be “designing” the gear produced by Broadcom. “Broadcom has a wide portfolio of IP blocks and pre-designed parts of a chip,” he said, “it will put those together according to the specification of the customer.” He went on to say that Broadcom will essentially put together a series of blocks it has already designed to suit the specification laid down by a customer, in this case OpenAI.

    Similarly, the AI accelerators Broadcom will build are geared toward more efficient running of models OpenAI has already trained and built — a process called inference in AI circles. “It can tailor the workload and reduce power, or increase performance,” said Burr, but these benefits would only work in OpenAI’s favor, rather than for the wider AI industry.

    I asked Burr why every company in the AI space talks about gigawatts worth of chips rather than in more simple numbers. He explained that, often, it’s because both parties don’t yet know how many chips would be required to meet those lofty goals. But you could make a reasonable guess if you knew the power draw of a specific chip divided by the overall goal, then cut that number in half, then remove an extra 10 percent. “For every watt of power you burn in the chip, you need about a watt of power to cool it as well.”

    In terms of what OpenAI gets from these deals, Burr believes that the startup will save money on chips, since there’s “less margin” from making your own versus buying gear from NVIDIA. Plus, being able to produce custom silicon to tailor the work to their needs should see significant speed and performance gains on rival systems. Of course, the next biggest benefit is that OpenAI now has “diversity in supply,” rather than being reliant on one provider for all its needs. “Nobody wants a single supplier,” said Burr.

    The Factory

    Except, of course, OpenAI may be sourcing chips from a variety of its partners, but no matter what’s stamped on the silicon, it all comes from the same place. “I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t TSMC,” said Burr, “I’m pretty sure all of the AI chips out there use TSMC.” TSMC is short for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company which, over the last decade, has blown past its major rivals to become the biggest (and in many cases only) source of bleeding-edge chips for the whole technology industry. Unlike historic rivals, which designed and manufactured their own hardware, TSMC is a pure play foundry, only building chips designed by others.

    Interior at one of TSMC’s Fabs

    (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.)

    Gil Luria is Managing Director at head of technology research at investment firm DA Davidson. He said that TSMC isn’t just a bottleneck for the western technology industry, but in fact is the “greatest single point of failure for the entire global economy.” Luria credits the company with an impressive expansion “considering it has had to ramp the production of GPUs tenfold over the last three years.” But said that, “in a catastrophic scenario where TSMC is not able to produce in Taiwan, the disruption would be significant.” And that won’t just affect the AI world, but “mobile handset sales as well as global car sales.”

    TSMC supplanted Intel for a number of well-documented reasons, but the most relevant here is its embrace of Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV). It’s a technology that Intel had initially backed, but struggled to fully adopt, allowing TSMC to pick it up and run straight to the top. EUV produces the headline-grabbing chips used by pretty much everyone in the consumer electronics world. Apple, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD (including the SOCs inside the PS5 and Xbox) all use TSMC chips. Even Intel has been using TSMC foundries for some consumer CPUs as it races to bridge to gulf in manufacturing between the two companies.

    “TSMC is the current leader in advanced 3 nanometer (nm) process technologies,” said University of Pennsylvania Professor Benjamin C. Lee. The company’s only meaningful competitors are Intel and Samsung, neither of which pose a threat to its dominance at present. “Intel has been working for a very long time to build a foundry business,” he explained, “but has yet to perfect its interface.” Samsung is in a similar situation, but Professor Lee explained it “has been unable to attract enough customers to generate a profitable manufacturing business.”

    Professor Lee said that TSMC, by comparison, has become so successful because of how good its chips are, and how easy it is for clients to build chips with its tools. “TSMC fabricates chips with high yield, which is to say more of its chips emerge from the fabrication process at expected performance and reliability.” Consequently, it should be no surprise that TSMC is a money making machine. In the second quarter of 2025 alone it reported a net profit of $12.8 billion USD. And in the following three months, TSMC posted net profits of $14.76 billion.

    “TSMC’s secret sauce is its mastery of yield,” explained ARPU Intelligence, an analyst group that prefers to use the group name over individual attribution. “This expertise is the result of decades of accumulated process refinement [and] a deep institutional knowledge that cannot be replicated.” This deep institutional knowledge and ability to deliver high quality product creates a “powerful technical lock-in, since companies like Apple and NVIDIA design their chips specifically for TSMC’s unique manufacturing process … It’s not as simple as sending the [chip] design to another factory,” it added.

    The downside, at least for the wider technology industry, is that TSMC is now a bottleneck that the whole industry has come to rely upon. In the company’s most recent financials, it said more than three quarters of its business comes from North American customers. And in a call with investors, Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei talked about the efforts the company has made to narrow the gap between the enormous demand and its constrained supply. While he was reticent to be specific, he did say that the company’s capacity is “very tight,” and would likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.

    In fact, TSMC’s capacity is so tight that it’s already caused at least one major name a significant headache. Earlier this year, Reuters reported that NVIDIA canceled an order of its H20 AI chips after being informed the US would not permit them to be exported to China. Once the ban was lifted, however, NVIDIA was unable to find space in TSMC’s schedule, with the next available slot at least nine months later.

    “TSMC has no room for error,” said ARPU Intelligence, “any minor disruption can halt production with no spare capacity to absorb the shock.” It cited the Hualien earthquake which struck Taiwan on April 3, 2024, and how it negatively impacted the number of wafers in production.

    Naturally, TSMC is spending big to increase its production capacity for its customers, both in Taiwan and the US. Close to its home, construction on its A14 fab is expected to begin in the very near future, with the first chips due to be produced in 2028. That facility will harness TSMC’s A14 process node, producing 1.4 nm chips, which offer a speed boost over the 2nm silicon that’s expected to arrive in consumer devices next year.

    Image of TSMC's Arizona Campus

    Image of TSMC’s Arizona Campus

    (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.)

    Meanwhile, work continues apace on building out TSMC’s sprawling facility in Arizona, which broke ground in April 2021. As Reuters reported at the time, the first facility started operating in early 2025, producing 4 nm chips. Last week, NVIDIA and TSMC showed off the first Blackwell wafer produced at the Arizona plant ahead of domestic volume production.

    Plans for the operation have grown over time, expanding from three facilities up to six to be built over the next decade. And while the initial outline called for the US facilities to remain several process generations behind Taiwan, that is also changing. In his recent investors call, Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei pledged to invest more in the US facility to bring it only one generation behind the Taiwanese facility.

    No amount of investment from TSMC or catch-up from rivals like Samsung and Intel will solve the current bottleneck swiftly. It will take many years, if not decades, for the world to reduce its reliance on Taiwan for bleeding-edge manufacturing. TSMC’s island remains the industry’s weak point, and should something go wrong, the consequences could be dire indeed.

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  • NVIDIA shows off its first Blackwell wafer manufactured in the US

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    NVIDIA has taken a big step towards strengthening its domestic chip manufacturing, revealing the first Blackwell wafer made in the US. The hardware company assembled the wafer, which is the base material for NVIDIA’s AI chips, in TSMC’s semiconductor manufacturing facility in Phoenix, Arizona.

    NVIDIA revealed its Blackwell platform last year, boasting a goal of revolutionizing the AI industry through tech giants like Amazon, Google, OpenAI and others who already committed to adopting the next-gen architecture. NVIDIA said the latest platform was more powerful and translated to 25x less cost and energy consumption compared to its predecessor. Now that Blackwell wafers can be made at the TSMC plant, NVIDIA can better insulate itself from the ever-evolving tariff situation and geopolitical tensions.

    “It’s the very first time in recent American history that the single most important chip is being manufactured here in the United States by the most advanced fab, by TSMC, here in the United States,” Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s founder and CEO, said at the celebration event.

    With NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture ready for the volume production stage, the company is still working on expanding its manufacturing footprint across the US. Earlier this year, NVIDIA said it had plans to funnel half a trillion dollars towards building AI infrastructure in the US through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn and other companies.

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    Jackson Chen

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  • Trump administration official says some CHIPS Act companies won’t need to give up equity

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    Last week, the Trump administration said it might take a stake in Intel in exchange for the $10.86 billion in federal grants the company is receiving from the Chips and Science (CHIPS) Act. However, not all companies receiving funds under the same program will need to give up equity, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Companies like TSMC and Micron that increased their US investments won’t have any additional obligations, according to a government official familiar with the matter.

    Ealier, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick appeared to royally screw NVIDIA with comments about the company’s H20 AI chips, and may have also rubbed chip giant TSMC the wrong way. “The Biden administration literally was giving Intel [money] for free, and giving TSMC money for free, and all these companies, just giving them money for free,” he told CNBC on Tuesday. “Donald Trump turns that into saying, ‘Hey, we want equity for the money. If we’re going to give you the money, we want a piece of the action.’”

    However, TSMC may have noticed the Intel equity kerfuffle and executives reportedly held preliminary discussions about handing back subsidies if the US government asks to become a shareholder, according to the WSJ‘s sources. TSMC was awarded $6.6 billion for its Arizona plant that started producing chips late last year for Apple and others. However, the company recently said it would invest another $100 billion over the next four years to build three more fabrication plants, two advanced packaging facilities and a major research and development center.

    Because of that extra investment, the Trump administration won’t ask for a piece of TSMC or Micron (which also expanded its US facilities in Idaho, New York and Virginia). “The Commerce Department is not looking to take equity from TSMC and Micron,” an unnamed official said.

    In any case, attempts by the US government to take equity in companies will likely face legal challenges due to language in the contracts. Companies are already required to share revenue with the US government if profits rise above a certain amount.

    In another development, the US government may divert up to $2 billion in CHIPS Act funding toward critical minerals projects in the US, Reuters reported. The move aims to reduce US dependence on China for key minerals extensively used in the electronics and defense industries. “The administration is creatively trying to find ways to fund the critical minerals sector,” Reuters’ source said, adding that those plans could change.

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    Steve Dent

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  • TSMC Hikes Revenue Outlook in Show of Confidence in AI Boom

    TSMC Hikes Revenue Outlook in Show of Confidence in AI Boom

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    (Bloomberg) — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. raised its target for 2024 revenue growth after quarterly results beat estimates, allaying concerns about global chip demand and the sustainability of an AI hardware boom.

    Most Read from Bloomberg

    The main chipmaker to Nvidia Corp. and Apple Inc. now expects sales to climb about 30% in US dollar terms this year, up from previous projections for about a mid-20% rise. That’s after TSMC reported better-than-predicted earnings for the September quarter. And it foresees capital expenditure rising in 2025 from roughly $30 billion this year.

    TSMC’s outlook should help tamp down concerns that investors mis-judged the AI and semiconductor demand. Those fears crystallized after chip industry linchpin ASML Holding NV stunned markets by reporting about half the orders investors had expected. On Thursday, Chief Executive Officer C. C. Wei sought to dispel those doubts. Shares of the company trading on Tradegate gained 7.4% versus their last close on the German exchange.

    Shares of Japanese chip gear makers including Lasertec Corp. pared losses in Tokyo, while Infineon Technologies AG rose in Europe alongside sector peers.

    “The demand is real and I believe it’s just the beginning,” Wei said, echoing a number of executives including Nvidia Corp.’s CEO. In terms of overall chip demand, “everything’s stabilized and start to improve.”

    TSMC’s shares have surged more than 70% this year, outpacing many of Asia’s biggest tech firms in a reflection of strong sales of the Nvidia chips vital to artificial intelligence development.

    For a liveblog on TSMC’s earnings, click here.

    Taiwan’s largest company had raised its outlook for 2024 revenue just a few months ago in July, underscoring expectations for spending on AI infrastructure from the likes of Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. Steady adoption of artificial intelligence should also help fuel sales of iPhones and other gadgets in the long run.

    Still, investors had watched for deviations in TSMC’s outlook after ASML blamed slower-than-expected recovery in the automotive, mobile and PC markets, impacting expansion plans for chip plants. AI remains a bright spot, its executives said.

    On Thursday, TSMC reported a better-than-projected 54% rise in September-quarter net profit to NT$325.3 billion ($10.1 billion). And it expects revenue of $26.1 billion to $26.9 billion in the final quarter, beating an estimate for $24.9 billion.

    While official trading of the company’s American depositary receipts won’t begin for a while, the ADRs were up about 4.5% on Robinhood’s overnight trading platform. TSMC is popular among US retail investors seeking to bet on the AI theme.

    What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

    TSMC’s guidance of a 57%+ gross margin, which surpasses consensus, coupled with a fast ramp-up of N3 nodes, indicating continuous robust high-performance computing chips, like AI training chip, production demand from Nvidia and others. This aligns with our expectations. Sales growth should be able to exceed 25% in 2025, supported by strong AI chip demand and TSMC’s leadership in 3- and 5-nm nodes, alongside advanced CoWoS packaging.

    – Charles Shum, analyst

    Click here for the research.

    The world’s largest maker of advanced chips has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of a global race to develop artificial intelligence. Its shares have more than doubled since that boom took off in late 2022 with the debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. TSMC’s market capitalization briefly crossed the $1 trillion mark in the US.

    Yet even before ASML, some investors have grown cautious about the trajectory of global AI spending. They question whether big tech firms like Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc. will continue to splash out on AI chips and data centers without a truly killer AI application.

    The risks of data center over-capacity and geopolitical issues have unnerved some investors. Bloomberg reported this week that Biden administration officials have discussed capping sales of advanced AI chips from Nvidia and other American companies on a country-specific basis.

    On Thursday, Wei said he expects revenue from AI server processors to more than triple this year, yielding a mid-teens percentage of total sales in 2024.

    Longer-term, TSMC is pursuing a rapid international expansion.

    It’s planning more plants in Europe with a focus on the market for artificial intelligence chips, according to a senior Taiwanese official. That’s on top of construction underway in Japan, Arizona and Germany.

    –With assistance from Vlad Savov, Cindy Wang, Mayumi Negishi and Lianting Tu.

    (Updates with shares and executives’ comments from the fourth paragraph.)

    Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

    ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

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  • This Is What the Latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) Earnings Reports Say About Nvidia Stock’s Future

    This Is What the Latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) Earnings Reports Say About Nvidia Stock’s Future

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    The artificial intelligence (AI) market has continued gaining traction in 2024 as companies spend huge amounts of money on building up infrastructure so that they don’t fall behind in the race to deploy and integrate AI applications.

    According to one estimate, global spending on AI is expected to cross a whopping $200 billion this year, and chipmakers such as Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) have allowed investors to get rich from this massive splurge. Looking ahead, the market for semiconductors powering AI applications is expected to deliver a whopping $341 billion in annual revenue in 2033. The latest developments in the AI chip market signal that Nvidia continues to remain the best bet for investors to capitalize on this tremendous opportunity.

    AMD’s and Intel’s earnings reports make it clear that they are far behind Nvidia

    Nvidia enjoyed an early start in the AI chip market. Its A100 processors were used for training ChatGPT, the chatbot that kicked off the AI revolution toward the end of 2022. The company’s AI GPUs (graphics processing units) gained immense popularity and its H100 processor became a runaway success.

    Rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices and Intel were left to play catch up as they didn’t have a chip powerful enough to compete with Nvidia’s H100. Both companies were behind Nvidia by at least a year on the AI chip development curve. This is evident from the fact that AMD’s rival to Nvidia’s H100, the MI300X accelerator, was launched in December 2023. Meanwhile, Intel’s H100 opponent, the Gaudi 3, was announced last month and will start shipping later this year.

    Nvidia’s H100 went into full production in September 2022. This lead has allowed Nvidia to exercise a solid grip over the AI chip market and also explains why its competitors’ latest offerings aren’t gaining much traction. For instance, AMD sees its AI GPU sales hitting at least $4 billion in 2024. Intel is further behind and expects the Gaudi 3 launch to help it generate $500 million in AI chip sales in the second half of 2024.

    Nvidia is leagues ahead of both Intel and AMD considering that it sold $47.5 billion worth of data center chips in fiscal 2024, an increase of 217% from the previous year. This also indicates that AMD and Intel’s new chips, which were supposed to help them cut into Nvidia’s 90%-plus market share, aren’t making much of a dent in the latter’s dominant position.

    One of the reasons why that’s the case is because Nvidia has cornered a huge chunk of the supply of AI chips from its foundry partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (popularly known as TSMC). More specifically, Nvidia reportedly commands half of TSMC’s advanced chip packaging capacity that’s deployed for manufacturing AI chips.

    What’s more, Nvidia is all set to widen the technology gap with its rivals with the launch of new AI GPUs based on the Blackwell architecture later this year. Market research company TrendForce expects Nvidia to secure a dedicated chip supply from TSMC for its next-generation chips.

    TSMC’s monthly capacity to make advanced chips is expected to increase 150% this year to 40,000 wafers a month. By next year, TSMC is expected to double its capacity once again. The key thing to note here is that Nvidia is expected to consume more than half of TSMC’s advanced chip packaging capacity. So, Nvidia’s tight control over TSMC’s advanced chip supply is going to help it keep the likes of Intel and AMD at bay.

    Nvidia’s AI lead is set to translate into terrific growth

    Investment bank UBS recently increased its Nvidia price target to $1,150 from $1,100 citing the impending arrival of its next-generation AI GPUs. UBS is expecting the company to deliver $175 billion in revenue in 2025 (which will coincide with its fiscal 2026), along with earnings of $41 per share. Those estimates point toward a massive jump compared to Nvidia’s fiscal 2024 revenue of $60.9 billion and $12.96 per share in earnings.

    Assuming Nvidia does hit $41 per share in earnings this fiscal year and trades at 30 times earnings, in line with the Nasdaq-100 index’s earnings multiple (using the index as a proxy for tech stocks), its stock price could hit $1,230 within a couple of years. That would be a 36% jump from current levels. However, Nvidia currently trades at 74 times earnings, and it is likely to trade at a premium valuation in the future as well thanks to its AI chip dominance.

    So, it won’t be surprising to see this AI stock delivering much stronger gains than what analysts are expecting, which is why it would be a good idea to buy Nvidia following the latest earnings reports from its peers.

    Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now?

    Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this:

    The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

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    Harsh Chauhan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends Intel and recommends the following options: long January 2025 $45 calls on Intel and short May 2024 $47 calls on Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

    This Is What the Latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) Earnings Reports Say About Nvidia Stock’s Future was originally published by The Motley Fool

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  • UPDATE 1-TSMC’s Q1 revenue rise beats market expectations on AI boom

    UPDATE 1-TSMC’s Q1 revenue rise beats market expectations on AI boom

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    (Recasts, adds details)

    TAIPEI, April 10 (Reuters) – Taiwan chipmaker TSMC reported a 16.5% rise in first-quarter revenue on Wednesday, beating market expectations and at the high end of the company’s own guidance as its sales boom on demand for artificial intelligence applications.

    The world’s largest contract chipmaker, whose customers include Apple and Nvidia, has benefited from a surge towards AI that has helped it weather the tapering off of pandemic-led demand and pushed TSMC’s stock to a record high.

    Revenue in the first three months of this year came in at T$592.64 billion ($18.54 billion), up from $16.72 billion in the year-ago period.

    That was towards the higher end of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) previous prediction for first-quarter revenue to range between $18 billion and $18.8 billion.

    The result beat an LSEG SmartEstimate of T$581.45 billion drawn from 23 analysts, weighted toward those who are more consistently accurate.

    The first half of the year is traditionally quieter for Taiwanese tech firms, coming after the end-of-year holiday rush for goods like tablets and smartphones in major Western markets, but the AI trend is boosting demand even in the off season.

    For March alone, TSMC reported revenue rose 34.3% year-on-year to T$195.21 billion and was up 7.5% from the previous month.

    TSMC, Asia’s most valuable publicly listed company with a market capitalisation of $662 billion, did not provide any details or forward guidance in its brief revenue statement.

    It is scheduled to report first quarter earnings on April 18, where it will also update its outlook for the current quarter and the year.

    TSMC is expected to report a 4% rise in first quarter net profit, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate.

    TSMC’s Taipei-listed shares closed down 0.5% on Wednesday ahead of the release of the sales data. The broader market ended down 0.2%.

    The chipmaker’s shares have surged 37% so far this year, compared with a 16% gain for the broader market. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Faith Hung; Editing by Kim Coghill and Jamie Freed)

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  • Could Congress actually pass a data privacy law? | TechCrunch

    Could Congress actually pass a data privacy law? | TechCrunch

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    Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Monday show, where we dig into the weekend and take a peek at the week that is to come.

    Now that we are finally past Y Combinator’s demo day — though our Friday show is worth listening if you haven’t had a chance yet — we can dive into the latest news. So, this morning on Equity Monday we got into the chance that the United States might pass a real data privacy law. There’s movement to report, but we’re still very, very far from anything becoming law.

    Elsewhere, the U.S. and TSMC have a new deal, there’s gaming news to consider (and a venture tie-in), and Spotify’s latest AI plans, which I am sure will delight some and annoy others. Hit play, and let’s talk about the news!

    Oh, and on the crypto front, I forgot to mention that trading volume of digital tokens seems to have partially arrested its free fall, which should help some exchanges breath a bit more easily.

    Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

    You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

    For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.

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    Alex Wilhelm

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  • Morning Bid: Markets brace for supply chain aftershock

    Morning Bid: Markets brace for supply chain aftershock

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    A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Tom Westbrook

    The strongest quake to hit Taiwan in at least 25 years has also hit a pressure point in the global supply chain.

    The island accounts for about 90% of production for chipmaker TSMC and while its plants are mostly on the opposite coast from the epicentre, they are full of fragile equipment that’s crucial to turning out chips for global firms.

    TSMC said it had evacuated some fabrication plants and its safety systems were operating normally, while it confirmed details of the impact. The quake has killed four people, knocked down buildings in the eastern county of Hualien, and was felt in Shanghai as aftershocks rattled Taipei through the morning.

    Serious damage to chip foundries would ripple around the world and highlight the urgency of U.S. President Joe Biden’s strategy of encouraging onshore production to reduce reliance on Taiwan’s output.

    Shares of TSMC, which has a more than 60% share of global contract chipmaking and a monopoly over advanced microprocessors, were down 1.4% in early trade.

    Apple supplier Foxconn’s stock fell more than 2% and shares of flat-panel maker Au Optronics dropped 1.7%. Markets more broadly also slipped as investors await an appearance from U.S Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and U.S. services and jobs figures due later in the day.

    Easter Monday’s stronger-than-expected U.S. manufacturing data seemed to trigger selling in the bond market that pushed benchmark 10-year yields past major chart resistance, unleashing even more selling.

    Ten-year yields steadied at 4.35% in Asia trade on Wednesday. An uneasy calm has settled on foreign exchange markets, with traders leery of testing the mettle of Japanese authorities who have ramped up warnings of possible intervention.

    The yen was steady at 151.55 per dollar. [FRX/]

    European inflation figures are also due later in the session, with a slight cooling expected.

    Key developments that could influence markets on Wednesday:

    Economics: Euro zone inflation, U.S. non-manufacturing ISM, ADP employment

    Speeches: Fed’s Powell

    (Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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  • Japan kicks in another $4.8 billion for TSMC plant, calls chips ‘extremely essential for the future of industries’ 

    Japan kicks in another $4.8 billion for TSMC plant, calls chips ‘extremely essential for the future of industries’ 

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    The Japanese government will provide an additional ¥732 billion ($4.86 billion) in subsidies for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to expand its plant in the country, Economy Minister Ken Saito said on Saturday.

    “TSMC is the most important partner for Japan in realizing digital transformation, and its Kumamoto factory is an important contributor for us to stably procure cutting-edge logic chips that is extremely essential for the future of industries in Japan,” he said at the opening ceremony for TSMC’s Kumamoto factory.

    The chipmaker, Taiwan’s largest company, plans to start shipping logic chips for CMOS camera sensors and automobiles from the facility in Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu by the end of this year through its venture with iconic local companies including Sony Group Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. The government has already allocated ¥476 billion for the factory.

    The new aid will go toward construction of a new fabrication building next to the existing one, the company’s first in Japan. Known as TSMC Fab-23 Phase 2, the project announced by TSMC earlier this month will produce chips as narrow as 6 nanometer and plans mass production by 2027.

    Japan has paid trillions of yen for companies such as TSMC, Samsung Electronics Co. and Micron Technology Inc. to move some operations to the country to secure supply of chips used in everything from automobile production to mobile phones.

    “Governments around the world are fiercely competing by throwing in a large amount of money so that they can secure domestic supply of chips, and Japan investing this amount of money is necessary for us to foster further development of industries and economic security,” the minister said. “We learned from mistakes in the past, and I’m sure we have dazzled the rest of the world by the speed with which we have implemented.”

    Subscribe to the Eye on AI newsletter to stay abreast of how AI is shaping the future of business. Sign up for free.

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    Takashi Mochizuki, Bloomberg

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  • TSMC’s Outlook Backs Hopes for Global Tech Recovery in 2024

    TSMC’s Outlook Backs Hopes for Global Tech Recovery in 2024

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    (Bloomberg) — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. expects a return to solid growth this quarter and gave itself room to raise capital spending in 2024, suggesting the world’s most valuable chipmaker anticipates a recovery in smartphone and computing demand.

    Most Read from Bloomberg

    The main chipmaker to Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp. projected revenue growth of at least 8% to $18 billion to $18.8 billion in the March quarter, versus expectations for around $18.2 billion. And it’s budgeting capital expenditure of $28 billion to $32 billion, potentially up from 2023’s $30 billion.

    The Taiwanese company’s outlook, while not quite surpassing the most bullish estimates, comes after a years-long slump in tech demand. But signs of a recovery for the chipmaking sector have emerged in recent weeks. The Semiconductor Industry Association estimated chip sales increased in November after more than a year of declines. Chief Executive Officer C. C. Wei reiterated he expects a return to “healthy growth” this year.

    TSMC, which also counts Android chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. among its biggest customers, got a boost from frenzied demand for Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips in 2023. It reported net income for the fourth quarter of NT$238.7 billion ($7.6 billion), beating the average analyst estimate. Revenue was $625.5 billion, TSMC reported earlier, matching the previous holiday quarter and arresting a series of falls.

    “Our business has bottomed out on a year-over-year basis, and we expect 2024 to be a healthy growth year for TSMC,” Wei said.

    Click here for a liveblog on the numbers.

    What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

    TSMC could lead global chip foundries through 2023-24 industry headwinds thanks to growing AI chip demand and migration to next-gen process nodes such as N3 in 2H23 and N2 by 2025. Although the smartphone and PC chip market remains stagnant, TSMC’s advanced packaging tech, both 2.5D and 3D, fortifies its position in the contract-chipmaking market, allowing a potential return to a 53% gross margin following a brief 2H downturn.

    — Charles Shum, analyst

    Click here for the full research.

    TSMC’s revenue should grow in the low- to mid-20% range this year, Wei said. That’s a rebound from the modest decline of last year.

    Over the course of 2023, TSMC moderated its capital expenditure plans as the consumer electronics industry grappled with a glut of unsold inventory.

    But uncertainty persists. This month, fellow chipmaker Samsung Electronics Co. posted its sixth successive quarter of declining operating profit, as it weathered the impact of muted consumer demand in its own smartphone and memory businesses.

    Questions also overshadow China, the world’s largest computing, smartphone, internet and chip market.

    Apple — long one of TSMC’s most important customers — faced headwinds with its latest iPhone generation. Several analysts downgraded Apple on expectations of soft demand, and Jefferies has said the iPhone sales slump in China is likely to deepen. The US company has also been hit by a widening ban on foreign-device use among Chinese agencies and state-owned companies.

    –With assistance from Debby Wu.

    Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

    ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

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