Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 1

Elon Musk has been at war against bots on X since he bought the company and his latest strategy to curb the spread of bots is to charge new users a fee to enable posting.

X began testing its "Not-A-Bot" program in New Zealand and the Phillipines in October last year, which involved charging users in those regions $1 to access the platform. Users that paid the $1 received features such as posting, replying, liking and bookmarking X posts.

It remains unclear how successful the test program was, but it appears it was at least somewhat successful as it will be expanded upon as Musk moves to combat "Current AI (and troll farms)" as they "can pass"are you a bot"with ease," wrote Musk on X.

ASML has just shipped its second-ever High-NA EUV lithography machine to a mystery new customer, with the first chip-making tool -- worth $370 million, by the way -- received by Intel not too long ago now.

The Dutch company shipped its newest High-NA EUV lithography machine to Intel earlier this year, but it wouldn't announce who its second customer was. It's expected to be a company like TSMC, NVIDIA, Apple, or even Samsung.

Intel will use ASML's new Twinscan EXE:500 High-NA EUV lithography machine in early production sometime between 2026 and 2027, to make its next-gen Intel 14A-based processors. ASML is the largest company in the Netherlands, with the Dutch government recently enacting "Operation Beethoven" to keep ASML from branching out overseas, and keeping its most valuable asset in the Netherlands by improving infrastructure, schooling, housing, and more around the Eindhoven region where ASML is based.

The US government has been splashing cash and grants from its CHIPS Act, with US-based Micron Technology receiving $6.1 billion to produce advanced memory chips in New York and Idaho.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer personally courted Micron to build four new chip factories near Syracuse in the town of Clay, where he said: "It will be the biggest memory chip plant in America, for the Syracuse area, this is the best thing that's happened probably since the Erie Canal".

The mention of the Erie Canal dates back to the 1825 infrastructure project that connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, with Schumer underlining how big of an economic impact -- and national security -- these new deals are creating with Micron.

Taipower made an important call to TSMC on Monday to help generate electricity to avoid blackouts, while Taoyuen had a two-hour power outage on Tuesday.

After the earthquake in Taiwan a couple of weeks ago and with recent temperature rises as the country heads into summer, annual maintenance and the failure of air conditioners across Taiwan saw Taipower's power supply pressure immediately increase. On Monday night, Taipower called TSMC to help them generate enough electricity, which saw them close to power outages.

Taipower spokesperson Cai Zhimeng said on Tuesday that the power supply was very tight on Monday night, and that TSMC helped out greatly by turning on its own diesel generators and providing 200,000 kilowatts of electricity. Taipower quickly pointed out that TSMC was helping increase its power supply and not cause a reduction in electricity consumption or have any negative effects on TSMC's operations.

The US government is awarding Samsung up to $6.4 billion in grants to expand its chip production facilities in Texas, USA, to boost US-based semiconductor chipmaking.

The new $6.4 billion in funding is being fed through the 2002 CHIPS and Science Act, which will assist in the first two chip production facilities, an advanced packaging facility, and a research and development center planned by Samsung. These new facilities will be located in Taylor, Texas, USA.

These new funds will also help Samsung expand its semiconductor facility in Austin, Texas while boosting chip output for aerospace, defense, and auto industries while bolstering national security, administration officials told reporters and reported by Reuters.

Samsung Electronics co-CEO Qing Guixian reportedly visited Taiwan recently in a "low-key manner," according to a new report from UDN.

It was reported that his first priority was to promise Samsung's HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), which is used in AI GPUs; the faster and more, the better. Samsung has been focusing on pushing high-end DRAM technologies, including HBM (HBM3, HBM3E, and next-gen HBM4) and DDR5, where it needs help from Taiwanese ODM manufacturers, expanding outsourcing of mature and niche products.

Samsung met with both TSMC and Quanta Group subsidiary Werder, reports UDN. According to the sources, the Samsung co-CEO had 'two major tasks during this trip': promoting Samsung's HBM and possible AI cooperation with Taiwanese manufacturers.

Japanese video game developer Koei Tecmo officially filed a lawsuit against Youzu (Singapore) (Yoozoo Games) in Tokyo court on April 8.

The iconic Japanese video game developer has alleged that Youzu (Singapore) has been using content such as music, images, and trademarks from two of its titles, "Nobunaga's Ambition" and "Taiko Risshiden". The suit alleges Youzu (Singapore) has been continuously using Koei Tecmo's intellectual property in web advertisements for 成り上がり～華と武の戦国, which roughly translates to "The Uprising: The Warring States of Flowers and War," Infinity Kingdom, and Dynasty Origins, all of which are published by Youzu (Singapore).

The suit states that Koei Tecmo has warned Youzu (Singapore) multiple times via letters but alleges the company has continued to infringe on its intellectual property. Koei Tecmo is seeking an injunction as well as compensation for damages, but it's not immediately clear if Youzu (Singapore) will lose the case as Japan isn't a part of the Reciprocal Enforcement of Foreign Judgements Regime Act, meaning before any enforcement takes place, the claims will have to be first filed in Singapore.

Google has slapped down $1 billion to construct two new cables designed to link the US and Japan. These cables are called Proa and Taihei.

According to the announcement, the new cables will be subsea and will be built by Japanese tech giant NEC Corp. More specifically, the company has planned to route Japan, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), and then Guam, with reports indicating that Google is already working on the Taiwan-Philippines-US (TPU) cable system, which will also be getting an extension to CNMI. Current plans for the TPU system are in the name - connect Taiwan, the Philippines, and the United States, with estimates putting its completion sometime in 2025.

As for Taihei, this cable system will be a direct connection between Hawaii and Japan. Moreover, Google has planned an extension of its Tabua cable system to Hawaii on its way to from the US to Fiji and Australia. The Tabua cable is being built by SubCom. Google has also said it will be constructing an interlink cable between Hawaii, the CNMI and Guam to "connect the transpacific routes, improving their reliability and reducing latency for users in the Pacific Islands and around the world."

Intel is well aware that it faces multiple obstacles in its course to becoming the biggest in the semiconductor foundry industry; where we're hearing Intel is talking to Taiwan-based factories that have worked with TSMC, to help its Intel Foundry business.

In a new report from DigiTimes, the outlet says that the strength of Intel's R&D power shouldn't be underestimated. The R&D technology -- including ASML's bleeding-edge EUV lithography machine delivered to its US operations at the cost of $380 million and split into a new Intel Foundry business -- is as good as and even ahead of TSMC with some of its revolutionary, innovative technologies.

The hurdles that Intel faces are a few: companies don't have the same trust in Intel to fab their chips as they do with TSMC, with high manufacturing costs, yield rates, efficiency, and on-schedule in terms of mass production aren't close to what TSMC is, and has been capable of over the years.

TSMC's list of its biggest customers has been teased. The top seven customers are Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Broadcom, and Intel, in that order.

In a new media report from Ctee citing unnamed investors, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) has 7 main customers with their chips being fabbed in Taiwan: Apple with 25% of revenue for TSMC in 2023, NVIDIA is second with 11% and AMD third with 7% revenue generation for TSMC.

These companies -- Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Broadcom, and Intel -- all use TSMC's newer advanced processes. The report says that 5nm market share sits at around 70-80% while 3nm market share over 90%, which is thanks to the insatiable demand of high-performance computing (HPC) which includes AI chips like NVIDIA's A100 and H100 AI GPUs, AMD's new Instinct MI250 and MI300 series AI GPUs.